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Possibly my largest project ever. Wow.

Bobdude161

Bobdude161

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 12, 2006
1,215
1
N'Albany, Indiana
I got some iMacs at a school auction. Actually I got ALL of them.

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I knew there were going to be some broken ones and figured I could swap parts to make at least half of them work. Boy was I right. Half of them are not working. LOL. And they all have their unique problems as you can see here.

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Fun times. I got alot of work ahead of me. :eek:
 

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Haha Nice! So 20 Macs total? How much did you get them for? What do you plan on doing with them (the working ones)?
 
I say that you should install Myth and Starcraft on all of them that work and invite a bunch of friends over.
 
phungy said:
Haha Nice! So 20 Macs total? How much did you get them for? What do you plan on doing with them (the working ones)?
Click to expand...

Actually the list goes like this:
19 iMacs, 1 more that you don't see in the pic, a G3 600 Mhz iMac
3 17" Studio Displays, 2 work, 1 will become a MacQuarium
2 G3 B&W towers, 1 for parts, other one works
A broken eMac

I got this all for under a hundred
I'm going to sell most of them. Keep a few. Hopefully I'll make a little profit. I'm going to sell them cheap since I bought them for 5 dollars each pretty much

Xeem said:
I say that you should install Myth and Starcraft on all of them that work and invite a bunch of friends over.
Click to expand...

That would be nice, but I don't have that many freinds. :eek: :( :p :D

liketom said:
thats a nice sight:)

make the ones that work work well with ram and ebay the rest as parts
Click to expand...

eXactly. I'm going to try Craigslist first, so I can get a better profit.
 
Ok, I worked on the slot-loaders and 3 out of nine of those work. With 2 of those working, I can sell these locally and get my 100 dollars back and maybe even more.

Now my next mission is to clear out the HDs on the tray-loaders and install a fresh OS on them. Problem is that I don't have any OS 9 CDs on me, but I do have a USB external HD with OS 9. When I hook it up at start up, the iMac ignores the external HD and uses the internal. What can I do to get the opposite? I can't touch the Startup Disk Control Panel because the HDs in the tray-loaders ask for a password everytime, holding shift key or no. Any suggestions?

Also I parted out the other 6 slot-loading iMacs, mostly the internal speakers and CD-RW and DVD drives. Is there anything else I should consider saving before I throw the iMacs away? And also does anyone know the specs for the internal speakers (Ohms, Watts, yadda yadda)? I was thinking about making a huge speaker out of them, lol.
 
wow. My school has a bunch of older g3 and g4 towers that were donated so they probably won't sell for a while more. But as they brake down I hope to snatch them.
 
Bobdude161 said:
Ok, I worked on the slot-loaders and 3 out of nine of those work. With 2 of those working, I can sell these locally and get my 100 dollars back and maybe even more.

Now my next mission is to clear out the HDs on the tray-loaders and install a fresh OS on them. Problem is that I don't have any OS 9 CDs on me, but I do have a USB external HD with OS 9. When I hook it up at start up, the iMac ignores the external HD and uses the internal. What can I do to get the opposite? I can't touch the Startup Disk Control Panel because the HDs in the tray-loaders ask for a password everytime, holding shift key or no. Any suggestions?

Also I parted out the other 6 slot-loading iMacs, mostly the internal speakers and CD-RW and DVD drives. Is there anything else I should consider saving before I throw the iMacs away? And also does anyone know the specs for the internal speakers (Ohms, Watts, yadda yadda)? I was thinking about making a huge speaker out of them, lol.
Click to expand...


Not one of them came with a factory recovery disk? Bummer!
 
Bobdude161 said:
Ok, I worked on the slot-loaders and 3 out of nine of those work. With 2 of those working, I can sell these locally and get my 100 dollars back and maybe even more.

Now my next mission is to clear out the HDs on the tray-loaders and install a fresh OS on them. Problem is that I don't have any OS 9 CDs on me, but I do have a USB external HD with OS 9. When I hook it up at start up, the iMac ignores the external HD and uses the internal. What can I do to get the opposite? I can't touch the Startup Disk Control Panel because the HDs in the tray-loaders ask for a password everytime, holding shift key or no. Any suggestions?

Also I parted out the other 6 slot-loading iMacs, mostly the internal speakers and CD-RW and DVD drives. Is there anything else I should consider saving before I throw the iMacs away? And also does anyone know the specs for the internal speakers (Ohms, Watts, yadda yadda)? I was thinking about making a huge speaker out of them, lol.
Click to expand...

for the dead slot loaders, you could save the logic boards and ram if they had any....

heck, I might even be interested in a logic board if the price si right :D
 
I work for a School District and 2 summers ago I touched over 1000 of these machines. We only kept the RAM.
 
Bobdude161 said:
Actually the list goes like this:
19 iMacs, 1 more that you don't see in the pic, a G3 600 Mhz iMac
3 17" Studio Displays, 2 work, 1 will become a MacQuarium
2 G3 B&W towers, 1 for parts, other one works
A broken eMac

I got this all for under a hundred :( :p :D
.
Click to expand...


Holy Smokes...thats crazy! (price wise) also very cool you got all those Macs
 
Wow!!!

Possibly the greatest thing in the world!! The "Broken eMac" in that list turns out to be working! :D :D Ends up whoever had the eMac last, took the case off and forgot to plug back in the power button cable when putting the case back on. 1.46 Ghz, 1 GB of RAM, 10.3.9, tons of software. Basically i got a $300 Mac for $15 dollars. I was literally jumping around for joy. I have won the jackpot!

But on a downside of things, I broke one of my 500 Mhz G3 iMacs when i was testing out 10.3 on it. :( ah well.
 
Bobdude161 said:
Possibly the greatest thing in the world!! The "Broken eMac" in that list turns out to be working! :D :D Ends up whoever had the eMac last, took the case off and forgot to plug back in the power button cable when putting the case back on. 1.46 Ghz, 1 GB of RAM, 10.3.9, tons of software. Basically i got a $300 Mac for $15 dollars. I was literally jumping around for joy. I have won the jackpot!

But on a downside of things, I broke one of my 500 Mhz G3 iMacs when i was testing out 10.3 on it. :( ah well.
Click to expand...

Still, sounds like a fair trade.

God is messing with you.:)
 
Those are all "Blueberry" except for the three "Indigo" systems. "Turquoise" and "Dark Blue" are not their official color names.
 
Bobdude161 said:
Possibly the greatest thing in the world!! The "Broken eMac" in that list turns out to be working! :D :D Ends up whoever had the eMac last, took the case off and forgot to plug back in the power button cable when putting the case back on. 1.46 Ghz, 1 GB of RAM, 10.3.9, tons of software. Basically i got a $300 Mac for $15 dollars. I was literally jumping around for joy. I have won the jackpot!

But on a downside of things, I broke one of my 500 Mhz G3 iMacs when i was testing out 10.3 on it. :( ah well.
Click to expand...


its not really broke, there is a chance to bring it back alive, it just may need a firmware update and it should be back alive. i forget the steps to fix it once OS X has been attempted on one without the firmware patch for it. but www.applefritter.com has a few topics on that subject on how to fix one.
 
I think I have...

I think i have an OS9 Disk I don't need. My G3 is only running tiger ( i think) .. I'm new to macs but i'm 95% sure that the G3 ONLY Has tiger on it.. and NO OS9...

If i don't need this disk.. I'd be willing to part with it..

my mac is a 500MHZ Blueberry G3 - Has a DVD player.
 
gothiquegirrl said:
I think i have an OS9 Disk I don't need. My G3 is only running tiger ( i think) .. I'm new to macs but i'm 95% sure that the G3 ONLY Has tiger on it.. and NO OS9...

If i don't need this disk.. I'd be willing to part with it..

my mac is a 500MHZ Blueberry G3 - Has a DVD player.
Click to expand...

You might what to consider keeping it as your machine will dual boot in to OS 9 & X which you may find useful at some point in the future. If the Mac is new to you it may already have had OS 9 installed on it. Look in system preferences / startup disk, if it shows an OS 9 system file you can chose to restart in that OS.
 
I struck gold this time! 21 eMacs (4 non-functional 7 without memory, 10 working) 8 G4 towers (2 non-functional) and 20 iMacs. All for the low price of $384. :D

The eMacs mostly consist of 1 Ghz (some 700 Mhz and one 1.25) processors and 256 MB of RAM.

The graphite G4 Towers are mostly 400 Mhz with 256 MB. There is one dual (I think it's dual. Very long heatsink) processor G4 but it's missing a power supply. :(

I haven't touched the iMacs. I'm more concerned about the real money makers right now. Estimated GMD would be around $1500 dollars. That's enough for a MacBook! WOOT! :)

But yes I will post pics soon.
 
i would love to get one of those G4 towers off of you if you would be willing to part with one. if you do what model are they.

you can find out by looking at the ID tag on the back. also you can find out info on them with mac tracker. or everymac.com
 
madmax_2069 said:
i would love to get one of those G4 towers off of you if you would be willing to part with one. if you do what model are they.

you can find out by looking at the ID tag on the back. also you can find out info on them with mac tracker. or everymac.com
Click to expand...

Yes, in about a week here, hopefully, I will have these machines posted on the MR marketplace. Just gotta do some re-installing and buff out some scratches. I'll look up the tags here later. work is looming ahead. But it looks like like (based on the I/O port cover design) that i have Sawtooth and non-sawtooth towers.
 
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