iMac G4 (lamp) spots on LCD

[young24601]

Greetings! I just purchased an iMac g4 lamp and the screen has two spots on the monitor. You can still see the background and text but there is clearly a black/gray discoloration/spot on the monitor, maybe the size of a fingernail. Is this something that is possible or reasonable to fix? When I searched for this, I see a lot of posts from the early 2000s about getting it repaired under applecare. Some indicating it is an issue with the polarizing film (and difficult to replace). Do any of you have any experience fixing this issue?




I am guessing this is too hard for me to fix, so I'm looking for other fun things to do with this machine (I was a PC user after 1999). I'm thinking I will update the drive with a SSD. Would I need to buy a PATA/IDE SSD or am I better off buying a sata to ide adapter and buying a modern ssd drive? I see some "Yansen" drives on amazon that seem to fit the bill.

Also, this particular mac is a 2GB ram 1.25ghz G4 running 10.5.8. I was thinking of downgrading to 10.4.11 to run Classic just to run super old stuff, are there any downsides to this. I read you could boot OS9 but that there were some compatibility issues?

Thanks all, looking forward to messing around with this!

 

[Byrd]

The discoloration possibly comes from degrading adhesives, pressure, heat - not really fixable unless you want to replace the LCD, replacement of polarizing film would help however you're not guaranteed of a complete fix and finding a matching polarizer can be difficult at times.

SSDs: I find the more modern you get with solid state the greater the chance of incompatibility, I'd suggest the off the shelf PATA SSD would be the easiest solution and be prepared for some experimentation with adapters and brand of SSDs.

Tiger 10.4.11 will allow you to run Mac OS 9 in a window, but the super old Classic software/games won't run. Other later games aren't too flash running in this environment either. Perhaps look into Mini vMac for old programs.

You might be able to get OS 9 booting natively on your iMac, but seems a bit of a hassle to get there:

Mac OS 9 iMac G4 6,3 1.25 With FX5200 Ultra

Mac OS 9 iMac G4 6,3 1.25 With FX5200 Ultra

macos9lives.com

 

[joeventura]

Try rubbing the spot firmly with your finger, 70% of the time you can eliminate most of the discoloration