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Pimp my iMac G4 700

AlexCL

Member
Greetings All!

I wanted to post my saga for the benefit of anyone trying to upgrade a 2002 G4 iMac 700 iLamp!

I purchased a first gen G4 iMac from Shopgoodwill for $31 dollars...

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/viewItem.asp?ItemID=33992394

The computer arrived in functional order...the internal speaker is damaged...and the DVD drive was busted...

I took the easy way out with the speaker by using external speakers which work fine...

The Mac came with 10.4.11...I download a set of the recovery disks which installed Mac OS9 and OSX 10.1.

The PRAM battery was also of course dead...

So the revival project began...

I already had a 60GB SSD on hand...so I ordered a replacement DVD drive:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251973062317?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Thermal Grease:
 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/172341959065?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

New PRAM batteries:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XBVGVZI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

IDE to SATA Adapter:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400465

2.5in drive to 3.5in drive adapter:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994162

I used the HDD replacement guide teardown guide here:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+G4+15-Inch+700+MHz+EMC+1873+Hard+Drive+Replacement/6670

Once I had all the parts together I took apart the computer...blew out 16 years of dust and replaced the battery, dvd drive and hdd and replaced the thermal grease on the pad in the guide.

I partitioned the drive 15gb free space...15gb Extended Journaled...30gb Mac (non-journaled).

I installed OSX 10.4 on the 2nd Partition...

I then attached a USB to IDE adapter to the iMac to copy the MacOS 9 Application and System folders over to the third Partition.

After a reboot I was able to boot MacOS 9 from OSX system startup preferences panel.

So at this point I copied the .iso for Lubuntu PPC 16.04 alternate install to a flashdrive and was able to install it to the free space on the first partition...

It wouldn't boot properly...I was able to boot in to the desktop using this guide...

https://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/2016/07/getting-linux-on-ilamp-imac-with-nvidia.html

I got the desktop up and running and was able to log in...

This process broke MacOS 9's ability to boot...OSX 10.4 boots fine...

Still in progress but finally up and running!

 

SlateBlue

Well-known member
I have a speaker pulled from an iMac G4. I took one apart to make a lamp and kept some of the parts. If you want it, let me know.

 
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