90's iMac

[nevermind1534]

What? To get a full CRT based iMac from the US to the UK?

If the CRT is still in it, it would cost more. The gutted mac very well could only cost $20 to ship (First class).

[slaveofconvention]

Never thought about that - all I'd really want is the shell and maybe the speaker system

[nevermind1534]

Never thought about that - all I'd really want is the shell and maybe the speaker system

With that, it might be $25-$30.

If you have an idea of what it might weigh, you could look up how much it will cost to ship at http://postcalc.usps.com

[sloppyc]

They're fairly light when they're gutted (screen and hardware pulled out). $20 doesn't seem that far out of the question. I have to ship a heavy box to Scotland soon; will keep you posted if you like.

Pun intended?

[sloppyc]

I'm trying to find finished mods online, and they seem to be few and far between. As it stands I only see a couple of problems off the bat:

1) Getting the LCD to fit (bezel's curved a bit to accommodate the CRT).

2) Getting the power button to switch on the LCD and the PC (shouldn't be too hard?).

3) Slot-loading CD-ROM. It has a funny 50-pin connector, so re-using it doesn't look plausible... then the space occupied by the drive... USB ports?

[slaveofconvention]

From what I read when I was considering doing something similar, it's a "standard" atapi drive so you may be able to get/make a cable converter to get it to work

[sloppyc]

Hmm. I think I found something:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=180419594452
I am pretty sure it's an IDE drive on the inside, as you say, just a funny adapter.

The LCD appears to be the main obstacle. I want to do it on the cheap (have all the other hardware ready: a small P4 board, GeForce 4 (or maybe 5), wireless card, etc.

One more thing - does there exist a power cord splitter for the type of cord that fits into ATX power supplies? It would be nice to get this thing to work using only one power cord.

[slaveofconvention]

I wasn't aware it was a laptop drive in the iMac - if that's the case, then yup, that'll be what you need. As for the power cable, you have two options I can think of. The first is your idea - yes you can get a Y power cable where it splits but the only time I've seen them, the split tends to be a lot closer to the wall end than the PC end so you'll still end up with two cables most of the way. The other option, depending on your confidence with power wiring, is to make your own internal adapter - you can buy the 3 pin sockets from all over the place, then inside wire up the connectors on the socket to two cut off cables - course this'll take up space inside, but it'll be tidier.

[sloppyc]

I think it is.. the drive is connected by a similar adapter - small black connector on the device itself to a 50-pin IDE/SCSI ribbon cable. 40 of the pins are regular IDE as 10 of them are terminated while the rest continue to the hard drive that has a standard Molex power connector.

Well, there is a lot of room inside. I was planning on routing wires in the bottom portion of the machine anyway, and keeping the motherboard and LCD as the only visible objects in the top, transparent portion.

[slaveofconvention]

Dammit I want to do one of these lol - I'm going ebaying *grin*

Probably end up with a blue one - they're the most common - really wish I'd pushed a little harder on the Red one I missed out on