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New iMac - Inside-Out

From the looks of things the factory installed memory stick is actually quite easy to change, all you have to do is take the four screws off and ba da bing raise the dome and its right there, push the button and boing there it is.

not so hard in my opinon.
 
Is there something like this for the PowerBook G4? I'd be interested in it, if for no other reason than to know more about how this thing is laid out on the inside.

-mikey
 
Factory Ram

The factory ram does look easy to change, however what's this "Thermal" stuff you're suposed to have to re-apply each time you open it up? Sounds like that could be a problem.
 
hassle hassle hassle

sheesh could they make it harder to get to the innards of this thing? thermal pads? thermal paste? they really dont want people messing with the innards of the new imac, what ever happened to the simplicity of the cube or the tower, even the old imac wasnt this complicated...........:confused:
 
simplicity

its actually not as bad as it may seem. Thermal paste is pretty easy stuff to buy and apply. Hey if thats all it takes to keep my 1800 dollar iMac from turning into an expensive lump of silicon slag and plastic, I have no objections. Not to mention that it only has to be applied to areas usually acessed by the average consumer. If you want to dable with your iMac thermal paste isnt such a sacrifice. And as to the original iMac being simplier to take poke around in, that is just simply not the case. Between the risk of massive electrical discharge from the cathode ray tube (the screen) and dealing with the flimsy plastice latches that the chasis hooks onto, the new imac (iMac 2?) is a hardware hacker's dream.
 
Originally posted by Unregistered
Is there something like this for the PowerBook G4? I'd be interested in it, if for no other reason than to know more about how this thing is laid out on the inside.

-mikey
Click to expand...

simply turn it over and take out the 8 screws on the bottom.....lift the casing off....and there u go!
 
The interesting part is it's designed to be strapped to the top of your head and the screen flips down in front of your face.
 
"Faraday cage"

The chassis of the thing looks BEEFY. Explains why it's so heavy. Underneath that plastic veneer is a steel dome Apple calls the "Farady cage." I almost wish they had chromed that too, and left the plastic off.
 
Expandability ...

From my understanding - there are two DIMM slots - one within the dome and generally not easily accessible to mear mortals and one on the bottom - easily gotten too by removing four screws.

In addition to that one DIMM slot on the bottom it's also how you access the AirPort Card slot.

This was suppose to address the issue of ease of expansion that the original iMac was criticized for.

I had my new iMac fitted with a 512 MB chip on the factory side leaving the second slot open for another 512 MB later.
 
SWEET!

The factory installed memory is just a good ol regular piece of RAM! None of that SODIMM stuff. That shouldn't be too hard to change.

Is the picture of the inside of the iMac supposed to have white lines going through it?
 
Imac RAM Prices

Why is it that Apple charges so much for adding the extra RAM at the store? They seem to charge twice as much as other sources! They know people want 1Gb so they make a big profit for upgrades!
 
Re: Factory Ram

Originally posted by dricci
The factory ram does look easy to change, however what's this "Thermal" stuff you're suposed to have to re-apply each time you open it up? Sounds like that could be a problem.
Click to expand...

That's why there's an SO-DIMM slot down there...

Is it really worth the small $$ you'd save in doing a do-it-yourself swap of the internal DIMM (and acquiring thermal paste and the properly sized pads, and a torx wrench if you lack one) vs. going with a massive SO-DIMM?


blakespot
 
Re: Imac RAM Prices

Originally posted by Falleron
Why is it that Apple charges so much for adding the extra RAM at the store? They seem to charge twice as much as other sources! They know people want 1Gb so they make a big profit for upgrades!
Click to expand...

Take it or leave it but I've heard from numerous sources that Apple signed deals w/ memory fabricators with a locked price that ran for a certain amount of time. As a result, the RAM must be sold at a certain price. If this is true, they may not be making a profit on the RAM at all.

But you'd have to be crazy to buy anything above the base amount of RAM from any computer manufacturer. Hell, you can get 256MB of SDRAMM on a DIMM for $36 right now.



blakespot
 
The new iMac is one staggering piece of engineering. Amazing that they could do all that in that small, oddly shapen container. Very impressive.


blakespot
 
iMac innards

Most of the responses here seem to be in regards to adding or changing memory, which is of course understandable. I think most of the people reading a board like this that are interested in getting an iMac are probably not in the "normal" consumer range... we're more prone to take stuff apart just to poke around. What *I* see, looking at the exploded iMac, is that the screen appears to be a perfectly standard LCD panel. I will need to check voltages of course, which aren't mentioned in the service source material (at least this draft) but I bet grafting a generic LCD onto there would be quite simple. The only remaining question would be if the iMac is slavishly devoted to 1024x768, or if it would detect a screen's ability to do higher. (I have an 18" panel with a native resolution of 1280x1024 that I would love to stick on there.) Any comments on whether this would work?
 
Up to 1 gig ???

I don't understand how you can have 1 gig of ram.
Page 94 of the PDF says that the factory ram is a PC 133/up to 512 of ram. It also states that the user side can use only PC 100/ up to 256 of ram. This is a total of 768 meg of ram.

Can you tell me how to get 1 gig out of that!

Or is the PDF wrong/ and you can put a PC100 512 SO Dimm in the user space.

???????
 
144pin only up to 256MB

I think when Jobs said the computer can hold 1GB of ram that he was talking about the future.

If you go to Crucial's website and take a look in 144pin PC 100 chips they only offer up to 256MB!!

This is a serious let down. It looks like the PDF file is right. Maybe at some point in the future you will be able to find a 512 144pin chip.

Does anyone know of any other source that offers it in 512MB (it could simply be a very rare chip)

Thanks,
DJ
 
The superdrive model at the apple store allows you to configure the imac with up to 1Gb of RAM. However, this seems to change from day to day. At the moment the apple store only allows you to configure only up to 768Mb!

However, there is an option there of having 1 512Mb DIMM there! Therefore, they must exist.
 
Re: 144pin only up to 256MB

Originally posted by Unregistered

This is a serious let down. It looks like the PDF file is right. Maybe at some point in the future you will be able to find a 512 144pin chip.

Does anyone know of any other source that offers it in 512MB (it could simply be a very rare chip)

Thanks,
DJ
Click to expand...

512MB SO-DIMMs are not difficult to obtain.. I have 2 of them in my PowerBook G4. Other World Computing ( http://eshop.macsales.com ) is where I got mine, but they are available from many sources. The only question I have is whether or not they will fit. As SO-DIMMs go, they are pretty tall. Comparing the size of the cutout in the shielding for the SO-DIMM in the iMac (an unknown) to the size of the Airport card next to it (a known size) strongly suggests that they will indeed fit, but with not a lot of space left over. Although, to be honest, even "just" 768 Megs of RAM is a pretty impressive amount of memory for an iMac. With the limited screen real estate, how much more memory can you use? There's a limit to the number of programs you can effectively interact with at once. Most users will not be running a lot of background services on their iMacs. (But as I said in an earlier post, "most" people aren't going to be taking their iMacs apart within an hour or 2 of unboxing them, while I suspect most people on here will.)
 
Originally posted by Falleron

However, there is an option there of having 1 512Mb DIMM there! Therefore, they must exist.
Click to expand...

The "1 512M DIMM" option in the Apple store refers to the internal 168-pin DIMM, leaving the SO-DIMM socket empty. So, while 512M SO-DIMMs are available, your reasoning for their existence is faulty. I find it strange, however, that the Service Source material states the internal DIMM is 133MHz, while the SO-DIMM spec is for 100MHz memory. We know the system bus is only 100MHz, so I wonder why the 133MHz is there. Simply using 133MHz because that's what they have on hand for the towers, I understand, they are perfectly backwards compatible. But I don't understand why they would state it as though it were a requirement. Probably to give hardware geeks like me yet another reason to experiment inside their iMacs. Or maybe Apple bought stock in a thermal paste manufacturer, and they want us to continually disassemble them and use more paste.
 
Well what is the max?

I am curious as well...
When I ordered last Monday, I was lead to belive that a 512 MB 1 DIMM would be on the internal slot, leaving the "user accessible" slot open, and to quote from the Apple site Tech Specs:

"128MB or 256MB of SDRAM expandable to 1GB;
one factory installed 168-pin DIMM and one open user-accessible SO-DIMM slot."

So, anyone with Apple know what gives???

In customizing an iMac, 768 MB is the max allowed - hmmm.....
 
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