iMac G4 800

[beachycove]

Got one of these, battered pretty badly, for tinkering for $20 at the weekend, as I had a partial machine here on a rack, plus an extra logic board, and I decided it was time I had a shot at putting together a working unit. The two made one good machine cosmetically, but I had video artifacts on two of the three logic boards. The third logic board had a different heat sink and did not fit the case as shipped, so after much trial and error, I swapped the heat sink (not much in it) to try the third board, and finally got a good, working unit.

The upshot is that I have the logic board from the 17" model in a 15” case, meaning I have the Nvidia4mx in the thing rather the the 15"'s stock 2mx. Cool.

But I wanted 9.2.2 on the machine. WHAT A PITA! Could I find a working installation disk or image. Nothing worked. In the end, I had to manually copy a system folder from a Quicksilver that I found "out there" to get it to boot natively in 9.2.2. Classic worked fine, but why run a slow iMac in OSX when you can run a fast machine in 9.2.2?

Now to find a spare spot for the wee beauty!

 

[james_w]

It took me a long time to figure out how to get 9.2.2 booting on there but it's great!

 

[EvilCapitalist]

I thought the Garden had the restore disc set for the iMac G4 but just checked and saw they don't.  I've got an iMac G4 (also 800MHz) and it came with the restore disc set, which I'll image and upload (9.2.2/10.1.2) sometime this week.

 

[beachycove]

You are a gentleman. That would not only make installation easier, but would also mean that disk repair, etc., became possible for us Luddites!

Out there somewhere I saw a German language installer, as I recall, but that would only in a State of Confusion put me whenever Something I wanted through the Menus to do.

 

[trag]

I think there was a link on Macintosh Garden that linked to an archive on the big file sharing site that was taken down a few years ago. Mega-something or other, IIRC.

I went through this process by hand some time ago and wrote about it somewhere, maybe on a LEM List. The parts I remember are you need the proper ROM file, updated sound software (CP and/or extensions), proper video driver of course, and I think one other thing that just slipped my mind.

If anyone goes hunting for my old posting, it was tied up with getting 9.2.2 configured on an MDD. They have very similar, if not identical, requirements.

Nice work resurrecting that machine, BTW. I wish I had kept the box for mine. I had it (the box) until a couple years ago.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

I've got the discs imaged and I'll upload them to the Garden this evening, just have to get pictures of the discs themselves and write down the part numbers from each.  Total of 10 discs:

- Restore Discs (6)

- Hardware test CD

- Applications CD

- OS 9.2.2 Install

- OS 10.1.2 Install

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Finally got all ten discs uploaded, http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/restore-disc-set-imac-g4

 

[beachycove]

All present and accounted for!