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The $20 iMac G4 (yep, it happened again.)

I got my G5 Dual 2.0 for free and the 20" iMac G4 1,25 for 100€. And then came the upgrades… make your money bag ready^^
 
Don't forget one of these doohickeys! 🤣

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/NASA_Mars_Rover.jpg/1200px-NASA_Mars_Rover.jpg
 
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I have gotten a few Macs for free.

A friend found a working PowerMac G4 MDD and a non-working 27" Mid-2011 iMac a dumpster at his work.

He wanted the iMac, but couldn't get to work, so he gave them both to me.

After baking the GPU in the oven and replacing the HDD with a SSD, I got it working. It ended up being a top of the line BTO, with the i7 and 2GB GPU. The 2GB GPU was rare for that model, and sells for over $600 on eBay.

I gave it back to him, or I should say sold it back to him for the price of the SSD, but I still have the PM G4. On day, I will mess with it, and probably put some SSDs in it.
 
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Adamscomputerrepair said:
I'm having a goooooooooooooood day.
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Congrats...

I love the iMac G4. It is my favorite Apple design ever, beautiful, but practical. I feel like it was their peak at designing with the consumer's user experience in mind.

I have a 17" one, I think it had the 1Ghz chip. I think I got it in 2004 or 2005 on eBay. It was from a police auction, wouldn't boot and listed as-is and priced really cheap. I took a chance and thought that maybe the HDD was pulled for evidence, and it turned out to be correct. I opened it, replace the non-user replaceable RAM and added a HDD, and it worked great.

I know a lot of people complained that the iMac G4 was underpowered, but coming from my previous main Mac, a 2001 iBook G3, the iMac G4 was a speed demon.
 
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Well I’m gonna shoot straight, TenFourFox has been worse than dial up on this thing. With that being said, I’ve not done any tweaking or anything like that. I did install my OS 9 copy of StarCraft and went on a little nostalgia trip. That’s the one game that worked when I was a kid on my Windows 98 PC. I bought a copy for PowerPC a few years back because it reminds me of those times.
 
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Adamscomputerrepair said:
Well I’m gonna shoot straight, TenFourFox has been worse than dial up on this thing. With that being said, I’ve not done any tweaking or anything like that. I did install my OS 9 copy of StarCraft and went on a little nostalgia trip. That’s the one game that worked when I was a kid on my Windows 98 PC. I bought a copy for PowerPC a few years back because it reminds me of those times.
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StarCraft is actually compatible with Windows and Mac on the same disc, at least all the copies I’ve seen are.
There are OS X versions too btw, I think on the Macintosh garden.

Tenfourfox isn’t gonna be fast but it can be made a little faster, also upgrading your ram to 1GB will help a lot.
 
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Project Alice said:
StarCraft is actually compatible with Windows and Mac on the same disc, at least all the copies I’ve seen are.
There are OS X versions too btw, I think on the Macintosh garden.

Tenfourfox isn’t gonna be fast but it can be made a little faster, also upgrading your ram to 1GB will help a lot.
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Yeah I know. I spent most of last night copying my apps from my FireWire hard drive. I haven’t really had time to play around with it yet. I want to film a video on it too. I’ve done that with every machine so far.
 
vertical smile said:
After baking the GPU in the oven and replacing the HDD with a SSD, I got it working. It ended up being a top of the line BTO, with the i7 and 2GB GPU.
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Those #&%!§#% GPU issues. A high-end 27" 2011 iMac would be one hell of a Snow Leopard rig - but no....
 
Yo, congrats!
Adamscomputerrepair said:
Got a $20 800MHZ iMac G4 with 512 mb of ram, pro keyboard, macOS install discs for 9.2.2-10.3, original papers for the iMac, and copies of AppleWorks 6 and iPhoto 1.0
I'm having a goooooooooooooood day.
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Congrats, lucky You!
I drove all the way from the east-coast to the west-coast, to get hands on such a nice machine!

Edit:
Ok, that was only a 50 miles trip from Kiel to Husum ... :D
 
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Amethyst1 said:
Those #&%!§#% GPU issues. A high-end 27" 2011 iMac would be one hell of a Snow Leopard rig - but no....
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I have a 27" 2011 iMac with the original GPU that has never malfunctioned. If my 2007 MBP is anything to go by, it will die next year on its 10th anniversary with no warning.
 
@timidpimpin Yes, but that's the notorious Columbia model. I've heard that those have reentry disintegration issues if they weren't already shipped with hull revision B, identifiable by a green sticker on the nose.

However, the good news is that I've also heard that @dosdude1 will repair afflicted hulls free of charge. :)
 
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Amethyst1 said:
That's great. However, I'd rather not gamble so no 2011 iMac for me.
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Bah! Where's your sense of adventure? Think of the hours you could waste getting back to square one.

forums.macrumors.com

2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

iMac 2009 to 2011 MXM3 graphics card upgrade (Lastest update 10/13/2023 - this is the official documentation page - you found it finally!) This is the single and only documentation post. During the last years we constantly updated this post to reflect the lastet development of vBIOS and OCLP...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
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bobesch said:
Ok, that was only a 50 miles trip from Kiel to Husum ... :D
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Now that brings back memories. Back at school we had an exchange student assistant German teacher from Husum. He was a very tall, stocky pastor's son, nice but very dull and not very worldly. He grabbed our standard German coursebook one day and decided he was going to pick a lesson from it at random. He managed to open it on a section devoted to Ostfriesland and a page full of rather cruel East Frisian jokes. I have NEVER seen anyone look so disappointed and crestfallen in all my life. He just stared open mouthed at this book (printed in Germany, no less) for what must have been half a minute while all of us sitting close by (small class) tried our very best not to catch each other's eye and burst out laughing. We felt this weird mixed emotion of hilarity, sympathy, tension and embarrassment all at the same time. I still remember that to this day.
 
That's a great find on the G4, for sure! I have always wanted one, but I'm really not sure where I would put it and what I would do with it. I would love to put one in the kitchen, the small 15-incher, but I am almost certain that if my wife left and returned to see an iMac on her kitchen counter that it wouldn't stay there for long ha ha! I wish they had stuck with that design when they added the G5 processors to the iMac, it would have made such an iconic design stay a lot more relevant for a lot longer. Still, I bet the fan noise would be pretty horrific in such a small enclosure for the CPU etc.
 
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