LCGuy
LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Bit over a month ago I was walking back from the bus stop after finishing up at work. We'd just had a bulky goods pickup day, all that was left was the old CRT TVs and things that the council doesn't collect. I thought all the excitement was over...or was it? Walking along, minding my own business, I see this white slab up ahead with a silver stand poking out from underneath it. I think to myself, "....is that what I think it is!?!?!?!?!?!?" I walk up to it, and see this:
At which point I say to myself, "YES IT IS!!!!", pick it up, and keep walking. I knew it was an iSight iMac of some kind, most likely a G5 with a busted LCD. I finished walking back home. Since it had been raining I didn't want to power it up...I checked the part number, turns out it was an Early 2006 Intel Mac. I opened the RAM door and found 2GB of RAM. A couple of days later I plugged it in, hooked up an external display and powered it up. It booted and displayed the default Snow Leopard desktop on the external display. I tried fiddling around to try and get System Preferences onto the external display so that I could set it to mirror displays...no luck. Luckily, it turns out that by disconnecting the internal display on an iMac, you can force it to boot to the external display. Its like having a great big Mac Mini. Turns out its a 2 Ghz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM, 250GB HDD and a SuperDrive.
I thought that the ideal use for this machine would be as a Media Centre/HTPC, so that I don't have to plug the MacBook in when I want to watch media off my network on the TV. I decided to leave it until after Christmas, since at my parents place in QLD I had a 1.66 Core 2 Duo (out of an Acer, believe it or not...that met a much less gentle fate than this iMac...such as the front right tyre of my car [}
] ]'> and some other bits. First thing I did though was a fresh Snow Leopard install, ran Software Update and downloaded all the updates. After getting back home from Christmas and picking up the bits I needed, I took the iMac apart, and put in the C2D, and cleaned out the 6 years of dust that had built up. While I was at it I also installed a spare AirPort Extreme 802.11a/b/g/n card I had (to replace the stock 801.11b/g only card), upgraded to the iMac 5,1 firmware (allowing for 3GB of RAM) and bumped it up to 3GB of RAM, and decided to test it...I watched Project X, since I haven't seen it in a while, and thought it'd give me a good idea as to how it handles HD content:
Handled that without a problem, closed it back up, finished configuring everything and started copying my epic music collection over from my desktop PC. And here is the finished product:
Last step was to hop on YouTube and watch the 2006 ad for the Intel switch, since I guess it is rather appropriate for this project - "For years...its been trapped inside an Acer. Trapped inside a dull little box, dutifully performing dull little tasks, when it could've been doing so much more. Starting today this Core 2 Duo will be set free, and get to live life inside a Mac. Imagine the possibilities." :lol: (for what its worth, as you can see from the pics I've attached, said Acer has since been scrapped after having roughly 1.4 tons of German engineering run over the top of it :lol: )
Either way...I'm quite happy with it...for the price of $0.00 I have a device that streams media from my network to my TV, and can also do anything that a standard desktop Mac can do.
At which point I say to myself, "YES IT IS!!!!", pick it up, and keep walking. I knew it was an iSight iMac of some kind, most likely a G5 with a busted LCD. I finished walking back home. Since it had been raining I didn't want to power it up...I checked the part number, turns out it was an Early 2006 Intel Mac. I opened the RAM door and found 2GB of RAM. A couple of days later I plugged it in, hooked up an external display and powered it up. It booted and displayed the default Snow Leopard desktop on the external display. I tried fiddling around to try and get System Preferences onto the external display so that I could set it to mirror displays...no luck. Luckily, it turns out that by disconnecting the internal display on an iMac, you can force it to boot to the external display. Its like having a great big Mac Mini. Turns out its a 2 Ghz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM, 250GB HDD and a SuperDrive.
I thought that the ideal use for this machine would be as a Media Centre/HTPC, so that I don't have to plug the MacBook in when I want to watch media off my network on the TV. I decided to leave it until after Christmas, since at my parents place in QLD I had a 1.66 Core 2 Duo (out of an Acer, believe it or not...that met a much less gentle fate than this iMac...such as the front right tyre of my car [}
] ]'> and some other bits. First thing I did though was a fresh Snow Leopard install, ran Software Update and downloaded all the updates. After getting back home from Christmas and picking up the bits I needed, I took the iMac apart, and put in the C2D, and cleaned out the 6 years of dust that had built up. While I was at it I also installed a spare AirPort Extreme 802.11a/b/g/n card I had (to replace the stock 801.11b/g only card), upgraded to the iMac 5,1 firmware (allowing for 3GB of RAM) and bumped it up to 3GB of RAM, and decided to test it...I watched Project X, since I haven't seen it in a while, and thought it'd give me a good idea as to how it handles HD content:Handled that without a problem, closed it back up, finished configuring everything and started copying my epic music collection over from my desktop PC. And here is the finished product:
Last step was to hop on YouTube and watch the 2006 ad for the Intel switch, since I guess it is rather appropriate for this project - "For years...its been trapped inside an Acer. Trapped inside a dull little box, dutifully performing dull little tasks, when it could've been doing so much more. Starting today this Core 2 Duo will be set free, and get to live life inside a Mac. Imagine the possibilities." :lol: (for what its worth, as you can see from the pics I've attached, said Acer has since been scrapped after having roughly 1.4 tons of German engineering run over the top of it :lol: )
Either way...I'm quite happy with it...for the price of $0.00 I have a device that streams media from my network to my TV, and can also do anything that a standard desktop Mac can do.
