Ok, I have found out some things. I was wrong about the tray-load CD-ROM IDE was part of the hard drive IDE connections. They're diffrent. Also I found out my hard drive I had in it had a bad sector so I replaced it with the 40GB drive I had in the other iMac.

I took out the tray-load and DVD and placed in the slot-load 24x CD-ROM. I got it to boot from CD.The CD-ROM is set to master and the harddrive is set on cable-select For some reason my MacOS 9 CD isn't bootable. I think it's because of a massive scrach on it. Right now i'm using my iMac system restore CD to put Mac OS 8.6 on then i'll install Mac OS 9 over it.

After I finaly get Mac OS 9 installed I will put the DVD back on and test it. I think the DVD Drive might be bad. If it is and since it will be external I will try out my internal Iomega ZIP-CD 650 drive that from I was told is Apple compatable. It can play DVDs aswell. I have started on the fabrcation for a small case to hold the AT power supply and the drives im going to use. Maybe in the furture i'll do the iMac ATX case mod or even build my own small like case like I have done in the past with a ITX system.

I'm going to do as much modding to this iMac as I can. I've been looking at the Floppy drive mod. Not sure if my iMac can hold one or not. If not then i';; just get a USB Floppy or something.

I ordered two sticks of 128MBs for the iMac. I heard a rumor that it can hold infact 384MBs of ram, at the time there was only 128MB simms out when the iMac came out. Never know. Anyway i've seen a few CPU upgrades for this iMac also so when the prices go down i'll order one.

http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=99

Can you do something like that? They also have a $149 slot load combo drive if you didn't need the burning capability.

Your machine can hold a lot more than you think. I've stuck the max ammount in a customers machine and it flew. It's worth maxing it out.

iMac Maximum RAM Guide:

Original G3 iMacs = 512mb
iMac DV's & SE's = 1gb
Flatpanel G4iMac = 1gb
G4 1ghz+ Flatpanel iMac = 2gb
G5 iMac = 2gb


/Figured I would stick this here if anyone needed a reference guide for later, especially people who search the forums for info

I think you should stop and take a breath for a second. Is this computer worth all the potetnial
expense. I dont want to be the one saying dont mod it, but make sure you take cost/use/time
into consideration. Do you need an all in one? What do you want to do with it? What is it
actuallly capable of? You never know, you may decide that you need a dfiferent starting point.
Ive had some macs fall into my lap before and came up with some great ideas. BUT, after much
thought it just wasnt worth it. I still have one of them, but each day it becomes less and less
useful. Just some thoughts.
-maestro

I'm modding this because im a modder, I mod anything I can get a hold of lol. Thing is I can always turn this iMac into a tower/desktop based system instead of a all-in-one. I've only spent in all 50 bucks on this project. All of the other parts i've had from other systems have been eather tossed out or given to me. If I can give this more ram and a faster CPU then I don;t need to go out and spend a arm and a leg for a brandnew mac that I will end up ingoreing after some time.

After I complete this mod and share to you all the guide im making for it I will probly gut the other iMac and build a iPC or something.

I would buy another Apple but people want way too much for a classed out system. If it's under 500MHz it's not worth 100 bucks. Ofcorse this is comming from someone that deals with PCs then with Macs.

Heres a quick draft I made for the guide. The pictures are curde but gives better detail at the moment. I found a way to make it internal but havn't tryed it yet.

[url=FTP://mod@68.209.133.69:21]FTP://mod@68.209.133.69:21[/url]

If it asks for a password leave it blank.

it timed out.

Yea, sorry about that. I turned off my server lastnight due to it heating up my office. my A/C went out again. but it's all sorted out again.

.bmp? hmmmm..... :huh:

Yea, I used my PC and didn't feel like playing with gimp or paintshop. Like I said it's only a short draft. When I re do it i'll convert the pictures to PNG or something.