Reconstructing Frankenstein

Posted on February 11, 2005 at 12:13 AM

Since my attempt at getting a free Mac mini has mostly failed, I have been forced to take matters into my own hands. Back in December a co-worker of mine who is an avid Mac enthusiast (Macs in his house outnumber people at least 2:1. Actual functioning Macs brings that ratio down a tad) purchased a motherboard sled for an iMac G3 off of eBay. He solely bought this sled for the RAM that it contained (about 512MB if I remember correctly). He generously gave me the rest of the sled in the hopes I would "do something with it". So as time went by, he would tell me about more parts he found for my iMac. Then one day out of the blue, an actual iMac shell including the Monitor appeared at my desk. "Great!" I thought, "I'll just take my sled and plug it into the iMac and of we'll go."

Not exactly.

Further inspection of the iMac shell revealed that it was missing some major organs. It didn't have a power supply board or an audio/video board (major components to be missing). Again I turned to eBay and found someone selling a power supply. I buy it, it arrives, I installed it. Cool, now I need an A/V board and I will be set.

Christmas is fast approaching.

My whole intent was to get this thing running before Christmas so I could give it to my son as he loves 'puters (read: computers). He uses them at school and thinks they're great. "This would be perfect for him" I thought. It is compact and everything is built in to it so we wouldn't have to get another monitor to run it. One problem though is I am still missing that damn A/V board. A search of eBay reveals a few sources for A/V boards, but Christmas day is only a few days away. Too much of risk to try and get it here in time, let alone rebuild and troubleshoot it. I left messages with local mac dealers to see if they have any parts they would be willing to sell me, but no one returned my calls.

Christmas comes and goes, iMac still no worky.

With Christmas out of the way I figure I have plenty of time to get this thing running in time for his birthday, which is months away. Plus I'll have time to play around with it and see what all the hubbub is about. No big loss and no hurt feelings because I was wise enough not to even mention the fact that Santa might be bringing a computer for Christmas.

(Ed. note: For those of you who don't know me, I'm not blowing the surprise. I can safely write about this all on my blog because my son cannot read yet.)

Fast forward a month.

Just two days ago, the A/V board arrives. Brad found it on eBay for $5. Quite a steal as I could only find them in $30-$40 range. Now that I have all the parts I need for assembly, I figured I would lay them all out on the desk so they could get acquainted with one another. You know create a vibe and all. I thought since all the parts were from a few different iMacs I wanted to make sure they were in "harmony" before I slapped this thing together. I am willing to try anything to make sure this thing works on the first try.

Now, without further rambling, I give you the frankenstein that is/will be my sons future Mac:

(Click on the links to open the pictures) Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3

Major props and shout-outs to Brad for helping me get all the parts.

P.S.- I will not switch to the dark side.

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