eMac HD replacement - yikes!

[tmtomh]

I just had my first occasion to replace a hard drive in an eMac. My goodness, what a gigantic PIA!

It was easy to do, but it took about an hour from start to finish and included something in the neighborhood of 30-40 screws of nearly a dozen different types. Not one of Apple's finest moments design-wise (though they are pretty sweet-looking machines on the outside).

 

[protocol7]

iBooks are a nightmare too. I'm glad they've made it easier in the MacBooks.

 

[Christopher]

iBooks are a nightmare too. I'm glad they've made it easier in the MacBooks.

Yeah, All iBooks were terrible to work on, clamshell included.

 

[Mars478]

AH! It SUCKS to do an eMac Upgrade. There is no shield over that scary huge CRT. Erhh. It took me hours To complete a DVD Drive upgrade on mine and it doesn't work correctly . iBooks are hard as well. Especially the clams.

 

[phreakout]

I used to work on eMacs all the time. The only frustrating step was the pigtail wire that runs from the power button to the logic board. They made the wire so short and there is very little room to place your hands or to see what you're doing. And if you break the wire, you are SOL.

Other than that, they are good desktop machines.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah, I did an optical drive upgrade on mine; then two weeks later had the hard drive die; then a month later, when I got a MacBook Pro, decided to put the recently-installed optical drive in a FireWire chassis instead, for use on the MBP (stupid lack of dual-layer!); and put the original eMac optical drive back in.

Three eMac disassemblies in a month and a half. The next time I disassemble it, it's going to be by brute force, with a hammer!

 

[Torbar]

I got a free eMac a few months back with a dead HD. Put new one in, wouldn't boot. ended up giving up after my 2nd attempt of taking it apart.

 

[zerotypeq]

Although I thought it did have a bit too many screws I didn't find it difficult to open up and get in.

 

[iMac600]

Geez... eMacs. The kind of machine that you have to stop every 15 minutes, get up and shout as loud as possible into a paper bag to restrain yourself from kicking the neck off the tube. I currently have a dead one in my shed, no idea why it's dead though... just went to swap the HD, now it won't power up. CRT clunks but nothing else comes to life afterward.

Not to mention they sound like wind tunnels when powered up. Vile machines! If their logic boards weren't such prime candidates for a CarMac (that is, a Mac in the dashboard of your car, playing MP3's and syncing wirelessly) i'd probably have let the thing burn years ago.

iBooks certainly aren't much better, but it doesn't feel so frustrating because you're not removing the entire freaking logic board, optical drive and everything in between to get at it, just lifting away the shell. That and they're much smaller, require relatively little physical labour and aren't as fiddly overall.

 

[Mars478]

They're good machines the eMacs but they are very loud and huge. The main part is that retarded cable that goes to the power button.

 

[Mike Richardson]

eMacs are loud? WTF?

Every single eMac I have ever used (it's got to be over 50 by now) has been very quiet. These are mostly 1.25 and 1.42 GHz, so maybe the older models were different or something.

 

[Mars478]

Oh GAWD.

My 700mhz eMac wails like a get being sent through a wood chipper! (Not really but you get the idea... :rambo: )

I must admit the 1.25 ghz leaky caps one in the lab seems quieter than my 700mhz but it may just be because of the two xserves we have under a desk.

 

[luddite]

The noise issue is a common complaint... I used my 700MHz eMac for occasional recording and solved the problem quite easily by hanging a thick fuzzy towel on the wall behind it.

 

[Mike Richardson]

The fan should not be loud. It sounds like the fan has become un-lubricated.

The same thing happens to Power Macintosh 6500 CPU fans, and the really small fans on certain ATI Video Cards in G4 towers. We wasted a ton of money trying to figure this out on our 6500. This one shop sold us on a new power supply for $200 and it stopped for a few months and then started again. (Now I know we were probably ripped off and they just put WD-40 on the CPU fan). Another shop finally figured out it was the tiny little CPU fan and installed a new one.

A year later it started up again so I just lubricated it myself.

Anyway... lubricate the eMac fan, and I bet it will improve significantly.

 

[iMac600]

The fan should not be loud. It sounds like the fan has become un-lubricated.
~

A year later it started up again so I just lubricated it myself.

Anyway... lubricate the eMac fan, and I bet it will improve significantly.

The sound isn't anything like bearing whine or friction though. You could dip the spindle in oil and it probably wouldn't make a difference. What it does sound like is a vacuum suction pulling air through the relatively fine fins on the heat pipe. You could also say that some of us will find them louder than others considering we're used to machines being completely silent. That's also possible.

 

[Mike Richardson]

The fan should not be loud. It sounds like the fan has become un-lubricated.
~

A year later it started up again so I just lubricated it myself.

Anyway... lubricate the eMac fan, and I bet it will improve significantly.

The sound isn't anything like bearing whine or friction though. You could dip the spindle in oil and it probably wouldn't make a difference. What it does sound like is a vacuum suction pulling air through the relatively fine fins on the heat pipe. You could also say that some of us will find them louder than others considering we're used to machines being completely silent. That's also possible.

Maybe pre-1 GHz eMacs are significantly different or something, I dunno. I've only dealt with 1+ GHz and they all sounded fine, an extremely acceptable noise level.

 

[macgeek417]

I have an eMac 800. Much louder than my fanless iMac "Fireball. The only noise it makes is the Quantum Fireball 6.99GB harddrive