Ok, I won't argue about whether Windows is crappy, because I'm used to it, and have my ways of ensuring the privacy my tinfoil hat loving self deserves, while being okay with a certain amount of intrusiveness,
Oh yes, I understand that completely. I do still boot into for games, but that’s it.
I would like to respond on the topic of booting from flash drives, and I will say this... I know just hitting the certain key isn't enough, and I know it's actually 2 or 3 keys according to a few tutorials I followed, to the letter, including burning a mac OSx install disk to to a flash drive, so believe me, I have tried everything
Including this?
it's just the fact that to me, this Mac as it is, isn't very appealing to me because the hardware is old... (Note that I only took it because otherwise it would go to the landfill, and I wanted to save the case and speakers at the very least) Now if it had dos and not mac that's different, because I like playing around with dos, but alas, it's an old slow Mac... Now why I won't buy a new mac is another thing entirely, because I don't like their idea of right to repair, or lack thereof, and price gouging, but I won't get into that or my other issues where I disagree with their practices
I am not particularly into new Macs either, I agree with you on most those topics. Though I am slightly interested in the in-house ARM models.
As far as the rest... I mean to each their own. My opinion isn’t anymore right or wrong than yours. I grew up using DOS, and Windows 98. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t now. I used some Macs in elementary school that predate your iMac (at the time I didn’t know what they were🤦)
My first ever Mac that was mine was a grape tray loading iMac G3 running 8.6. This was probably around 2006. I was older and knew a bit more, and my main machine was an AMD Athlon XP that had just died (the iMac was cheap and I just needed
something)
Even though it was old and slow even for 2006 standards I fell in love with it and the OS, at least over Windows 98 which is what would’ve been the competitor. I even found it more intuitive than Windows XP despite the obvious lack of true multitasking.
Basically what I’m saying is, if you enjoy DOS of all things, you might enjoy fiddling around with classic Mac OS. There’s quite a lot of old
games if you’re into that.
This is your iMac and do you’re free to do what you want with it obviously. Just from my experience from what you’ve described, it doesn’t sound like a dead Mac. It sounds like you’re inexperienced in how to get a Mac like this to boot USB (also what version of Mac OS did you attempt to put on it? It will absolutely not work with anything above 10.4) If all you have is a PC, that can be pretty challenging to even get the proper USB formatted for the Mac. A CD is ideal (it probably doesn’t have a DVD drive either), I’m assuming you tried that first as you said it’s a dead drive. None of these iMacs usually read CD-RWs. Only the older CD-Rs.
If you’re dead set on no longer investigating the Mac, I did link to some case mods for what you describe in my first post. I have looked into it myself and I know I’ve seen more than those ones. I just found those on a quick google.
If you do decide to investigate the iMac more and get it to work; I have seen plenty of empty iMacs being sold as “cat beds” that would be more than perfect for putting a PC into.
I also failed to ask you which particular iMac it is... there’s a difference between the tray loaders and slot loaders. Tray loaders being a bit more valuable. If you do gut it, perhaps put the parts up on eBay or something.
hackaday.io
