Hi everyone!
I'm from Switzerland and I'm 27 years old. My main workstation is a good working MacBook Pro late 2013 with 2 30'' Cinema Displays. Back in the days I used to collect old iPods so now my collection is over 30 iPods from several generations (iPod classic, mini, nano, shuffle). My favorites which are still in use are the first classic with 5GB, the 5th generation with 30GB and the last with 160GB. Overall I own several storage options of the iPod classics from 1G-5G.
Why I'm here?
I purchased this iMac G4 20'' 7 years ago as for me it was the most beautiful computer design ever made. My plan was to bring this old machine back to life as it didn't work properly. So 7 years ago I started this project, dismantled everything and then... lost interest and time.
This winter I went back to my parents home and rediscovered this old piece of art. So I told myself over winter holidays I will finish what I began 7 years ago. Luckily I ordered all parts I needed back then.
List of parts needed:
My plan:
Convert this machine to an old jukebox for my living room with side effect of an eyecatcher. I wanted old design with new hardware, so my plan was to convert the TMDS to DVI so it acts as external screen. Later I'm going to put the motherboard of a modern Mac Mini inside the dome of the iMac. In 2015 I bought a Mac Mini late 2012 quad i7 and upgraded to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I know this piece of hardware isn't up to date anymore and doesn't support Mac OS higher than 10.15 but it's still pretty modern and useable nowadays.
My process:
I did the whole connecting together with my father and we oriented ourself to the guide of Dremeljunkie and found also a very useful from Pendleton115 who posted a video on Youtube (How To Turn a 20'' iMac Into An External Monitor). In the end we wanted to use as much from the original iMac hardware as possible, so luckily both guides also used the factory power supply. Big help was the schematics from that Youtube guy as sometimes it wasn't very clear what happened in his video next.
Here are a few pictures of the process. It's not the best quality, but still shows little bit inside the process as we sat there for almost 7 hours until it was assembled back and run proper pictures.
All wires and resistors on that female DVI plug and professionally isolated with hot glue.
All wires now connected and ready for the first check if everything works now fine!
It works! Big progress and success after 6hrs work (excuse my messy desktop, on my 30'' cinemas it doesn't look that messy lol).
Mac OS also recognize it as Apple iMac Display:
Final picture in it's now natural habitat as living room jukebox, also with the only matching wallpaper from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger:
The iMac is now running connected to the Mac Mini late 2012, which I connected those iMac speakers with an old Griffin iFire I found back then. Beautiful eye catcher even if it's not finished yet.
My To-do:
Many thanks for reading and I'm looking to finish this project as soon as possible with your help!
Cheers!
gagigu
I'm from Switzerland and I'm 27 years old. My main workstation is a good working MacBook Pro late 2013 with 2 30'' Cinema Displays. Back in the days I used to collect old iPods so now my collection is over 30 iPods from several generations (iPod classic, mini, nano, shuffle). My favorites which are still in use are the first classic with 5GB, the 5th generation with 30GB and the last with 160GB. Overall I own several storage options of the iPod classics from 1G-5G.
Why I'm here?
I purchased this iMac G4 20'' 7 years ago as for me it was the most beautiful computer design ever made. My plan was to bring this old machine back to life as it didn't work properly. So 7 years ago I started this project, dismantled everything and then... lost interest and time.
This winter I went back to my parents home and rediscovered this old piece of art. So I told myself over winter holidays I will finish what I began 7 years ago. Luckily I ordered all parts I needed back then.
List of parts needed:
- iMac G4
- Motec plugs (or similars as I didn't had any)
- Resistors (1k Ohm)
- Female DVI-Plug
- Different colored thin wires
- Heat shrink tubes
- Thin zip-ties
My plan:
Convert this machine to an old jukebox for my living room with side effect of an eyecatcher. I wanted old design with new hardware, so my plan was to convert the TMDS to DVI so it acts as external screen. Later I'm going to put the motherboard of a modern Mac Mini inside the dome of the iMac. In 2015 I bought a Mac Mini late 2012 quad i7 and upgraded to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I know this piece of hardware isn't up to date anymore and doesn't support Mac OS higher than 10.15 but it's still pretty modern and useable nowadays.
My process:
I did the whole connecting together with my father and we oriented ourself to the guide of Dremeljunkie and found also a very useful from Pendleton115 who posted a video on Youtube (How To Turn a 20'' iMac Into An External Monitor). In the end we wanted to use as much from the original iMac hardware as possible, so luckily both guides also used the factory power supply. Big help was the schematics from that Youtube guy as sometimes it wasn't very clear what happened in his video next.
Here are a few pictures of the process. It's not the best quality, but still shows little bit inside the process as we sat there for almost 7 hours until it was assembled back and run proper pictures.
All wires and resistors on that female DVI plug and professionally isolated with hot glue.
All wires now connected and ready for the first check if everything works now fine!
It works! Big progress and success after 6hrs work (excuse my messy desktop, on my 30'' cinemas it doesn't look that messy lol).
Mac OS also recognize it as Apple iMac Display:
Final picture in it's now natural habitat as living room jukebox, also with the only matching wallpaper from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger:
The iMac is now running connected to the Mac Mini late 2012, which I connected those iMac speakers with an old Griffin iFire I found back then. Beautiful eye catcher even if it's not finished yet.
My To-do:
- Fixing those signal interference: I changed the 20cm HDMI cable to a longer, now I have a buggy picture (you see it in the darker areas of the screen and also only appears on dark places on the screen like boot screen, screensaver, video etc.).
- Figure how to adjust background lights to lighter and darker. There are a few wires left of the 4 big wire bundles. Would be nice if I could run it from my keyboard, but a simple potentiometer at the back would do it too. Saw from MacTester57 also this nice solution with that touch panels under the dome. Probably you can help me figure out how to add this.
- I want to reuse the sleep LED, if somehow I can connect this to the one of the Mac Mini that would be great!
- Maybe exchange the display panel with one form a iMac G5 20'' as I read in ersterhernd's thread "Esterhernds iMac G5 (iSight 20 A1145) Project" that those panels are quite the same. Luckily I have an old G5 here to use.
- Put in the mainboard of the Mac Mini inside the iMac G4. I also want to reuse the original audio ports (also the 2.5mm for the iMac speakers) and the I/O power button. On Macrumors I found a thread where someone put a Mac Mini M1 inside his iMac G4 and there commented few people. The guy "PML7554" showed a picture where he used parts of the old mainboard of the G4 and soldered cables for ethernet, sound ports and I/O power button so he can connect it to the mainboard of his Mac Mini late 2014. If someone is able to solder small wires to those ports etc. so I can use it for my project that would be great!
- (picture attached as sample):
Many thanks for reading and I'm looking to finish this project as soon as possible with your help!
Cheers!
gagigu
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