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iMac Dilema...

N

nospeed411

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 15, 2010
586
0
east coast
Ok so I currently have an 800 g4 with a paltry 256 of ram. I am running 10.4.11 and all seems well. I really want to install 10.5.6 but seem to be having no luck getting it to install even with leopard assist.

Last evening while surfing craigs I see someone has a 17" version for sale for parts only. I took the drive down to their house and found it was in perfect shape with all the accessories and the original box. I gave them 40 bucks and loaded it in the trunk. When I get home I decide for giggles to plug it in and see if it actually does have a bad logic board as they stated in the ad. Amazingly it started to the missing operating system screen...you know little folder with a question mark in it. I pulled it apart and found the combo drive and hard drive along with the bracket where completely missing...LOL. At this point I know the logic board is at least some what alive.

My big question is what next? Do I bother scavenging ebay for the missing pieces?..(.found everything used for like 50 bucks) Or do I decapitate him and turn my 15 in to a 17 and pull the extra ram out and use that in the other one as well? Hell at this point it's no loss cause I ended up getting all the original acc. so my old 15 is now complete with working orb speakers and cool clear keyboard.
 
You can swap the HDD and ODD from your 15" into your newly acquired 17".

If it does work, I'd use the 17" since it has a larger nicer display and uses faster DDR memory(2gb Max) and has an Airport Extreme for faster wireless networking.
 
OrangeSVTguy said:
You can swap the HDD and ODD from your 15" into your newly acquired 17".

If it does work, I'd use the 17" since it has a larger nicer display and uses faster DDR memory(2gb Max) and has an Airport Extreme for faster wireless networking.
Click to expand...

Ok well after messing with the two little Luxo Jr's all day I have come to the realization that the logic board in the 17 was in fact junk...LOL

I went to 5 computer stores today and can you believe no one of them had a good used HD that wasn't SATA:mad::mad::mad: So i figured I would just swap in the 60 from the 15 and see if it would boot up....turns out as soon as it did the video was jumpy and full of static. Since I had them both ripped apart I grabbed the bottom half of the 15 and plugged it in. Bingo..it works and boots. I figured at this point I will just leave it as it was and consider myself lucky I got a good 17 inch panel for next to free. The extra ram was also a nice bonus:D This is not a project I want to tackle again...these things are horrible to completely dismantle.

Now that it is all back up and running the new real estate looks amazing. The added ram ...even though it was only 256mgb was like crack to this ol boy. The computer is as responsive as my MBP. Since I had that much success today I figured why not try and put leopard on it. Downloaded "leopard helper" and ran the script, threw my retail copy of 10.5.6 in the drive and it is now installing. Will post a shot of it in a few mins with it's new install.

While I was out I found a amazing deal on a 500gb SATA drive for 42 bucks...think I will grab an enclosure for it and use it to store all my media.
 
Ok as I promised running 10.5.6.

web.jpg


It does seem a little sluggish at first but I surmise it may be due to the volumes of updates that need installed. Will give an update on performance as I make progress. I will say that the dock animations are uber jumpy. Hope I can tweak it to improve

So far so good...took a year and a day to do all the updates and time machine is a no go...lol but with a little more ram on the way and a IDE to SATA adapter this may turn out ok..
 
Last edited:
You can get SATA to IDE adapters for a couple bucks....there's enough room in the G4 to house both the SATA drive and adapter....but I see you have it working now anyway.
 
Yeah I forgot they made the adapters..takes me back to the PC days LOL . I ordered one on ebay last eve should be here soon. Figure I'll just clone the drive and toss it in.
 
Personally I'm sticking to Tiger on my iMac G4,It's really fast and responsive and Tiger is not bad,the only thing I don't like is that iTunes 10 can't be downloaded. But Tiger is really fast on 768MB of ram,this thing I bought on Craigslist for $75 with the original 256MB of ram,I'm glad I had a 512 DIMM fm one of my old PB Titanium's laying around and 5 minutes later I was rocking tripple the RAM. :D Oh,btw,I'm typing this from my iMac G4,I love these iLamps! I bought this machine blind,I was so hoping it was a 20"er,that would have been awesome,but no it's an original 15"er from 2002. :)
 
macgeek18 said:
Personally I'm sticking to Tiger on my iMac G4,It's really fast and responsive and Tiger is not bad,the only thing I don't like is that iTunes 10 can't be downloaded. But Tiger is really fast on 768MB of ram,this thing I bought on Craigslist for $75 with the original 256MB of ram,I'm glad I had a 512 DIMM fm one of my old PB Titanium's laying around and 5 minutes later I was rocking tripple the RAM. :D Oh,btw,I'm typing this from my iMac G4,I love these iLamps! I bought this machine blind,I was so hoping it was a 20"er,that would have been awesome,but no it's an original 15"er from 2002. :)
Click to expand...

Mine was nice with Tiger and the 15"....however I had a hell of a time syncing it with mobile me and it just didn't want to play nice as a media server on my network. The extra real estate the 17 added was an awesome bonus...LOL I can't believe how well Leopard runs on 512 though. I am actively checking my mailbox for the new stuff I ordered though. I am now hooked on refurbing these ol iLamp models as a hobby. Going to pick up two more of craigs tomorrow eve..LOL
 
nospeed411 said:
Mine was nice with Tiger and the 15"....however I had a hell of a time syncing it with mobile me and it just didn't want to play nice as a media server on my network. The extra real estate the 17 added was an awesome bonus...LOL I can't believe how well Leopard runs on 512 though. I am actively checking my mailbox for the new stuff I ordered though. I am now hooked on refurbing these ol iLamp models as a hobby. Going to pick up two more of craigs tomorrow eve..LOL
Click to expand...

Yeah those are still amazing little machines. Just remember to clean and apply new thermal paste when you put them back together. I'd suggest buying the USB 2.0 1ghz+ models or if you can find the best-of-the-best 20" model with the incredible 1680x1050 resolution. That thing is a beast!
 
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