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ingenious

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 13, 2004
1,509
4
Alexandria, VA
Someone offered me a presently non-working 20" iMac for a really great price. I'm not sure if it's a white Intel iMac, or if it's an Alu iMac. She said it was a Core Duo, but I get the feeling she's not super computer-savvy. If it actually is a Core Duo, that would make it the January 2006 model.

I want to jump on it, but I don't have $1000 to spend to fix it up.

I thought maybe someone could give me a general idea of the things that might be wrong with it, and I could make my decision from there.

This is what she said happened when it stopped working:

I was loading software from the disk drive and the screen went black. The disk drive does appear to still be running but I can't see any images on the screen. The computer still starts up and the drive still makes noise like it's loading something.
I hope this helps.
Thanks.

She says now the screen won't work, although perhaps the computer is still functioning.

My worst fear is that it's the logic board, in which case it isn't much use to me, given my smaller budget. My other thought is that it could be the connection between the screen and the graphics card on the logic board.

Thoughts?
 
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Any ideas?
 
Define "really great".

No clue what could be wrong. Total video failure? New drive? Maybe she just turned the brightness all the way down?
 
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