Has anyone ever used the CRT from a dead iMac as a monitor? I have a dead iMac; fried mother board, that I would love to use as a monitor for one of my other older Macs. I've stripped out the mother board unit and have found the video conector but getting power to the CRT is the trick.

If anyone has any ideas or has actually done this I sure would love to hear from ya.

Thanks
--

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
THAT'S relativity."
- Albert Einstein
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Are you sure its even worth using as a monitor anyway. They are small and probably wont last
too much longer. Sell it for parts and buy a new monitor maybe?
-maestro

Post edited by: maestro, at: 2005/02/04 17:00

It's only worth it because I have it here and it's doing nothing and I thought it migt be fun to try. I'm not all that interested in spending any large sum of money on something like this. I just figured it would be cool if it could be done.

Hey, it is worth a try, especially if no one has done it before. I say go for it. Sorry I dont
have any info for you on it. Just remember, monitors need a ton of juice and they can be
very dangerous to work with. Good luck.
-maestro

It should not be too hard. First off, make sure you discharge the display. After it has been discharged, you can get to the analog board and start to rewire. Oh, wait, not too much. The Rev. A-D iMac's all had 15-pin video cables already, so with an extension cable and a VGA adaptor, you will have your monitor. Just start scupliting the case if you want to use it for anything else, like a micro-ATX style board. Or a Mac mini...

All the power for the CRT is routed through the other boards in the machine, and is not dependant on the logic board. Modyourmac would correct me if I was wrong (which I'm sure I'm not).

i have exactly the opposite dilemma on my hands. a guy i know gave me his Dalmation iMac after he dropped it down a flight of stairs. i am assuming it will still boot (keeping fingers crossed). i'd like to rip it apart and put the guts in a new, smaller case. anybody know what i need to keep and what i can get rid of? can i yank the analog video board off the logic board or will that entail a ton of extra work? i want to save as little as possible and hopefully use the power supply in the new case.


thanks.

Well, your new mac should have a VGA out on it, and if it does, you can ditch half of it and use an ATX P/S on it and mount it into whatever you want. I've seen a conversion kit into a U1 Rackmount case, or you can even mount it into an old VCR case (and put the CD behind the door).

As for the video itself, like the analog board, it's useless w/o a CRT. Well, pretty much useless.

It's up to you on it, and it will hopefully boot. Keep us informed!



Why I Edited :: Obv. Spelling error and wanted to add extra info

Post edited by: whitlock, at: 2005/02/07 21:36

the video boards in iMacs are not removeable

It might be a bit more complicated than you think, whitlock. The internal video cable has 15 pins, but they carry more than a standard VGA video signal to the CRT. Notably, CRT power goes through here too. I know because I once tried the extension cable/VGA adaptor idea on my bondi iMac, and the monitor was dark.

I don't think this will work without knowing the full pinout for that 15-pin video cable and doing some fancy rewiring.

I found some pinout info here. Maybe someone can make sense of it.

I see your dilemma. Read it over and look at your parts and try and match what the author is
talking about. Have you tried contacting him? If you can, maybe he can explain it better.
-maestro