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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
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Apple iMac G4 Teardown -- The EIectronics Inside 14

 

 

If you thought the G3 was iconic, then the G4 should be a legend. What suprises have Apple left hiding for us inside the notorious white dome.

  • in reply to seanminty

    Did you ever finish the project Sean? What did it look like in the end? Do you have any photos / videos you can share?

  • in reply to a531016

    Yeah it would all fit these days right? mITX. It's bigger than I expected/remembered.

     

    I got lucky with a 1.25GHz model so I'm sticking with that but maxing out the RAM to 2GB and swapping out the spin drive with an SSD using an PATA to SATA adapter. Hopefully that works.

    Extra capacity will be handy in retrieving my mp3 archives and restoring my 1st and 3rd gen iPods. I'm not expecting much of a speed boost though, I think it'll still be limited to 100MB transfer speeds? on the plus I'll save a lot of weight and heat.

     

    Also swapping out the fan for a quiet 92mm (think the bearing is gone on this one). I don't suppose you remember how the stock fan is wired in?

     

    I'll probably remove the 'SuperDrive' for air circulation and decrease even more weight, but I'll keep in case I ever sell the Mac on. (I do like it poking it's tongue out though.)

     

    A monitor upgrade would be amazing, like you say in the vid these were early days for LCD but I think I'm too lazy to try anything.

    I did laugh at the video out port at the back, which I read is capable of 1024x768 and only capable of mirroring. I do have an LG Cinebeam projector that I'll try that out with, might be fun for retro mac gaming.

     

    I might do a quick before and after vid image. Cheers,

     

    Sean.

  • in reply to seanminty

    What hardare are you going with? I considered a NUC type hardware for the PC, and a recreation of the Monitor in something larger / higher resolution?

    Be sure to post updates on how it goes, I'd love to see the finished result!


  • Really interesting, in particular the custom power supply, heatpipes coming off the g4 cpu and that crazy heavy dome. Methods to their madness.

    I'm currently upgrading one of these so this was a nice preview to the guts i'll be digging through.

    Cheers.