Mike I applaud the time and effort you put into these videos - 1 hour of entertainment takes considerable time to produce. The total edits per minute are amazing. Also your style of voiceover makes it a joy to watch and learn, not to mention your dry humor. Thank you :)
I think your repair/restore videos make me feel the same way car enthusiasts do when they watch similar videos of classics. "Oh yeah, he's busting out the soldering iron again and doing some board/power supply-level repairs!" Thanks again.
The multilingual error message saying you need to restart is what OS X does when there's a kernel panic. I used to have a 2006 MacBook that gave that screen occasionally, and after running memtest, it seemed like the RAM was the issue.
Thats what i was about to say lol one of my RAM modules was slowly dying so i would be flashed this Kernel panic time to time and also same Kernel panic when my HD was starting to fail.
You should always reset the PRAM data anytime a Mac is acting funky. While powered down (and plugged in), press the power button and then hold these four keys at the same time: ⌘ + option + P + R. Continue holding the keys until your Mac restarts for the second time. On older Macs, the chime will sound upon restart.
The PRAM reset is like the noob advice for every Mac issue. It's completely useless to solve generic issues. It's only helpful in the following cases: - a blinking question mark icon appears briefly before your Mac - display freezes or becomes unresponsive (without showing the spinning wheel icon - speakers intermittently stop playing sound, even though the volume is turned up - difficulty connecting to an external display Note: it has been removed in Apple Silicon models
My favorite Mac form factor. I still have my OG iMac G4 from 2002. The plastic mount on the iMac's screen was for Apple's iSight Firewire camera, which came sold separately and debuted about a year after the iMac G4. They actually wrapped all the hard drives in white paper so you wouldn't see a silver hard drive when looking down in the fan holes.
The reason you would use IE on a mac at the time this thing was made was because a lot of web pages were specifically written for IE and would look janky on Safari, or not work properly especially bank web sites.
This, and also IE still commanded a large market share back then along with people being used to using it from being the default browser in macOS from 98-03
they covered the HDD in paper so you couldn't see the hard drive through the holes on the top. this era apple put so much attention to detail it's incredible.
Taking these apart is the most fun you will have fixing a computer, and they are the most reliable and compatible PowerPC models. The smaller one should be able to dual boot OS 9. They could have just shipped eMacs from the start and made more money, but instead they decided to make this masterpiece.
23:55 there was partition tab right beside the erase tab 😂 Have had same issues before and they mostly caused by MBR partition table. PPC Macs does use Apple partition map and Intel versions does GUID.
I have a Griffin made product that plugs into the 2.5mm jack on this imac g4 and has a breakout to left and right speakers with 2 red and black crimp style connectors each for left and right speaker, respectively. It works both in the case of the apple branded speakers and this adapter where the powered amplification comes from the port. I bought some old Apple Powered Speakers which worked well for sometime, but stated having power issues and heat issues with some components inside. No problem I just took the powered components out of the powered one in the pair and made them both passive. I had them connected to a minisystem by Sony, but it wasn't meant to be; now they pump connected to the iMac G4 as a crazy CD/DVD player combo... :)
I got a lot of use out of my Griffin PowerWave + Apple Pro Speakers.. Still works last I checked, though I honestly do kinda want to just modify one of my spare pairs of Pro Speakers for use on a normal small amp (if I can find a decent one) (Edit, misread. Different Griffin product. Would have also been kinda handy to have that breakout adapter back in the day though!)
Your tenacity is really inspiring. I've worked on computer hardware since the S100 personal computers. I have to admit I would have given up far sooner than you have! Today I take care of PC computers by day, I'm building a liquid cooled behemoth for a client as we speak, and my personal/business computing system of choice is pure Apple ecosystem. We have all benefitted not only from competition, but from two very different approaches, Linux notwithstanding (which I get to play with on my personal TrueNAS Scale boxes, and a client's Synology box.). So much fun seeing Apple innovate and fail forward along the way. Thanks man! You're the best!
Yeah, I agree, this guy really loves restoring older tech. I grew up around this age of PC and Mac like he did, assuming he's about my age... I worked for a PC repair shop as a teen around the 2002 or 2003 time-frame. I wish I still had all those older PCs I obtained back then.
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates We you able to get in there and replace capacitors and hunt for bad components and follow the circuit diagrams? That's something I tried to avoid, ha ha. Hats off to people who have the patience to do that.
@MarkieMarkie92103 The owner of the business handled all the low level component replacements, but usually when he explained to the customer that, for example, the motherboard had a fault, 9 times out of 10, the customer would just pay us to totally replace the part or would even pay us to build them an entirely new system. We dealt with mainly upper middle class customers, lol. I did whole part replacements, low level formatting (to remove personal data from a drive), virus removal, upgrades, and the like. I loved that job. At the age of 16, I was making $16 per hour, back when minimum wage was $5.15 per hour.
Great to see some Apple love on the channel. Those kernel panic crashes are often caused by bad RAM. I have two of those machines and agree that they are works of art.
IE was the long-standing default browser on Macs since the 90's. Safari was only introduced starting with Panther, and took some years to fully catch on.
System 1 supported the original AirPort card, which was PCMCIA based (802.11b). System 2 is a newer design, so it has that AirPort Extreme 802.11g card, which is PCI-Express based, IIRC.
System 1 has a TMDS display cable while System 2 has an LVDS display cable. There are a lot of other differences as you noted throughout the video. Apple changed much of the architecture on the 1 GHz and later models as you noted; the late 2003 and later revisions added USB 2.0 as well.
@@succulent951 having used both, the later ones worked much better. I had nothing but issues with the 700 MHz model when I supported one for a client around 2006/2007 timeframe, many of those issues being due to the hardware itself.
On the second system, I’d definitely replace the existing RAM. It’s throwing a kernel panic and memory would be at the top of easy things to try. The lampshade Mac’s aren’t particular about memory. I’ve used anything and everything in them including recycled memory from PC’s.
To bypass the registration screens on fresh OS X installs, just press Command+Q on your keyboard. If you're using a PC keyboard, do Win+Q. You don't have to fill that stuff out.
Small tip, at that Mac OS X Registration screen where it asks for your address and stuff, just press Cmd+Q, then the exit pop-up will have an option to skip registration.
The black "dust" inside, looks like coal/wood soot like the owners had a combustion type heat source. I grew up in a home with coal heat, and my school had coal heat the computers both had similar type "dust" inside.
Very interesting video, taught me things I didn’t know about this system. The only macs I ever worked on were the Apple 2 and the first version of iMac it was a blue one. I remember I wanted it. I’ve seen this version of iMac but my mind told me it was only a monitor not a whole system. I learned something today. It’s so cool the way the monitor can shifted. This is why I love your videos.
Ive never been a fan of mac os, but i must admit those are really cool computers. Older macs have such cool designs. Thank you for the informative video, this looks like it took a lot of time and troubleshooting
I've never liked Macs either, due to their locked down proprietary system. But I agree, back then I was inexplicably drawn to this model and the iMac "all-in-one." I always wanted an orange one, but it was way too expensive back then.
I meant to watch this for a few minutes, but ended up watching it for the entire hour! iMac G4 is my favorite Apple design of all time and the only Mac I want to get my hands on these days. Great video as always!
22 tears ago I. Ought this for my young son. As much as we loved this machine, we had constant kernel panics. This may be a wide issue. I don’t know what the problem was, we sold it for parts and I got him one of the first aluminum iMacs. About 2 weeks ago I picked up the same computer for 30$ at a garage sale knowing it won’t power on. I thought it will be fun play with and restore. Let’s hope I don’t run into the kernel panic issue again. I’m thinking it’s a heat issue causing micro de doddering.
@MikeTech The way that widescreen Mac is behaving suggests strongly that the system RAM is faulty. I would suggest changing out that stick for a 1GB or 512MB DDR stick and trying again.
@@EastAngliaUK Sadly, no. The first system has SDRAM and the second has DDR1. Mike would need to replace it with like. Happily, DDR1 can in 1GB sticks that were compatible with that mac, so he could replace that stick with a big upgrade!
Very cool to see the necks still working perfectly after all this time. I repaired Macs professionally back then & a very common warranty issue was the neck going all floppy! Never worked out if that was due to excessive fondling or something else though (it is of course very hard to focus on just using one of these without constantly wiggling the screen around for fun).
I love your persistence with this iconic Apple computer! I have one that I originally purchased for my dad back in 2006, and reclaimed when he upgraded to an iMac. I considered the idea of refurbishing it for use in the kitchen - could use it for reading recipes, maybe making shopping lists, and just simply watching some RUclips/Plex when cooking/doing dishes... But ultimately it's just not very feasible. It doesn't have much by way of voice-control options, and the lack of a touch screen doesn't help either when you consider you'd need to be using a mouse/keyboard to do anything. I really want to find a purpose for it other than looking pretty. :)
I have a feeling the reason it didn’t like the drive at first was it was partitioned with a Master Boot Record and Mac requires a GUID at least for Intel Macs i can’t remember if Power PC was a different one. Might have been Apple Partition Map if I’m remembering correctly. When you erased the main drive it reformatted the boot record type. You can remove a partition its under the Partition option in Disk Utility and still exists in modern Mac OS. That is where it will tell you the partition type. At least it might be in a drop down menu I need to go check I can’t exactly remember. I have installed many Mac OS’s from the early days but its been years now. Anyway always wanted to try out a G4 lamp lol. I do have a G4 iBook with an SSD in it for when I’m feeling nostalgic for Tiger the first Mac OS I used. Nice to see one on your channel. That Welcome video was very Nostalgic. You can skip registration by pressing its either esc or it might have been command q. I’ve never done that but I’ve seen others do it.
Wow, thanks so much for that!!! I've already asked you for Macs about 3 weeks ago or so, I really appreciate your efforts and the time it takes to edit and upload a single video as it takes ages, (but then the results can be quiet disappointing) but hey, it's still good work!
Great video! I had to service one of these and it was great to go back in time. To me this looks like corrupt video memory or chip, but typically an authorized service tech would just replace the logic board (aka motherboard).
I have a non-working iMac G4 17" (800 MHz). I had it working once, but It won't start at all now - no power. I pulled the old power supply which had some white putty-looking junk all over it. So I tried to replace it with one from one of these old mac parts vendors. Alas, it's still not powering up. Either I try for another PS or a new motherboard? Not sure how to proceed. I don't have the electronics knowledge to test each part. It's nice to see someone getting these working again.
I've never been a big Apple fan, only had a 1st gen mac mini in my life, but watching them disassemble is pretty interesting, they had amazing design (back then.)
Don't know about Mac but in Win you just make a new admin account and delete all the others, that way you keep all the orig installed programs. For security you can just fill the rest of the drive with media files and secure erase them.
That second machine seems to have a very high hour count, especially judging by the dim display and the yellowing by the backlight inverter. Also likely why the optical drive isn't functional either. If it was used all the way up to 2016, then that corroborates. Judging by the video artifacting at random, it's likely that the GPU chip needs to be reflowed. Possibly some faulty RAM chips too. The machine is acting like it's been repeatedly overheated. This machine was also manufactured during the height of the capacitor plague era, so it probably needs a recapping too. Would take a lot of work to resurrect this one. Might just be cheaper, easier and less time consuming to replace the logic board outright.
This is the computer that replaced my Silicon Graphics, the same model SGI that you got in that big haul of computers a while back. I am not as nostalgic of it as I am the SGI but it was a very very good computer for its day.
One thing I like about Macs... no need to install drivers after OS installation. The OS installs them all for you automatically, unless you're using third-party hardware.
They were pretty much included because of the (at the time, and I take it Apple is back at this given their current machines and how they are configured) very limited amount of hardware combinations they were built with. Not only made these limited amounts of combinations make it easier to thoroughly test them for stability and how well they would work together, it would also reduce overhead: in some Apple's (we had some old ones at a company where I did an internship in my IT education) they explicitly went with pieces of hardware already conforming to base-class support at the time, for either the drivers/support already going back a couple of years, or having proven themselves in testing. That's typically also why they were capable of being fast and powerful with much older hardware compared to what the same price of a system would buy you in Windows/IBM-land.
I still Love to play music on the Old G4 sometime on Apple Pro speakers . The 1 gig 17 inch , whith Jaguar , 10.2 os G4 , was my First computer ever . Now i Have All Versions . From one broke G4 , i Made An Arcade machine whith nvidia shield Pro inside now , Micro amplifier inside for the Apple Pro speakers and a 18 inch hannspree Apple shaped monitor , i paintsprayed the Same White Color as the dome . I use the original Power connector so i can use the original Powercord also and i use the original Apple Glass Mouse and White ps4 controler for the shield . Greetings from the netherlands
I have several Macs left to go through, so there’s a few chances left to convert me yet. I would indeed lavish over both a Performa 575 and 5200. The computer lab in school was full of them.
Man I enjoyed this video so much from beginning to end. I do hope you got to fix that annoying issue. I always loved the design on these iMacs and wish I can find one in decent shape that I can restore. Loved your video.
6:21 actually they can explode if the system if left plugged in for a long time unused and can cause lots of damage, it happens a lot on old Beige Mac's not sure on the newer ones.
Most common with the Maxell 1/3 AA 3.6V Lithium batteries, other machines of that era like the IIgs had Tadiran batteries which did not leak nearly as much.
Great looking devices, not seen these before, in 2001 these were futuristic, at work we were using Windows 2000/XP with a cathode ray tube monitor, a fax machine and laser printer, if I streamed and listened to a radio broadcast on headphones the IT man would frown on it,
You can skip those macos registration pages (on any macos version that "requires" these) by pressing cmd-q at the same time, it will give you the option to skip it
that strange dust is from the metal foam rotting and then the static inside the computer making it stick 2 everything! that foam is the most silly thing ive ever seen in a pc!
From what i understand, the white friction fit connectors you found for the modem card are some proprietary pci/usb connector. In the system profile you should be able to see which bus type it's using. Pretty sure they use this connector using pcie/tghunderbolt/usb 3 in later machines. It may be a connector that works no matter what protocol they end up using (chipset/lanes). Hardware profiler should have that info, though!
I really need to have another go at replacing the thermal paste inside my 20" G4. Not actually too bad to take apart, even going all the way to the top vents, but that final paste for the vertical heat piping connections during reassembly is the hardest part of the entire maintenance process.. If you don't lower things in place just right and that thermal paste application slips and gets mucked up, gotta do it again.. ^^'
That is an amazing find- such a pristine machine. G4 was always my favorite iMac. Inspired by the Pixar lamp, iirc. Would love to refit one with a Pi or something on the inside or something. That poor second one though, that was abused.
I used to be an Apple Authorized Repair Tech over 20 years ago. We used to have a special cradle (made of packing foam material) you placed your iMac G4 into while being serviced on the bench. The display connection on the logic board for these machines were the most notorious for being a weak point during disassembly; one wrong move and the connector could get ripped right off the board. Just a poor design, imho. The other techs in our shop used to call these the LSR (short for 'Lump Stick Rectangle').
Regarding the IE on Mac, in the very late 90's into the 2000's Apple Inc. was struggling financially and to get through the rough patch Apple was going through Bill Gates invested in the company under the condition that IE would be supported on MacOS X systems for a period of time. Also with those Kernal Panics and the PRAM battery I would try to source a good PRAM and also perform a PRAM Reset, this is a fairly easy thing to do and plenty of articles on how to perform it, if there is still artifacting after this is performed then you know you have a failing GPU or GPU VRAM which basically means it's a dead logic board.
The white wrap around the hard drive was so that if you looked down through the fan you wouldn't see an "ugly" hard drive in there.
Also to make sure that the technical specifications and manufacturer brand on the hard drive wouldn't be visible
Mummification
You neglected to mention that both machines were packing an astounding 256 MotherBoards.
25:45 You can skip the registration info with Command+Q.
Mike I applaud the time and effort you put into these videos - 1 hour of entertainment takes considerable time to produce. The total edits per minute are amazing. Also your style of voiceover makes it a joy to watch and learn, not to mention your dry humor. Thank you :)
Same here! These videos always brighten my day.
Yeah, for a RUclipsr who still has a full-time day job, he really puts an incredible amount of effort and, no doubt, time into his videos. Love it.
Absolutely. These videos are a joy to watch and lift my mood like few others. The honest enthusiasm and light touch are remarkable.
Here here!
That transparent plastic stand thing on the second iMac sure looks like the stand for the Apple iSight webcam, which, btw, is a FireWire webcam.
Definitely is
Yep. Still have one
The real work of art is you my friend. Those arms … 🔥🔥🔥
🥵🥵🥵
I think your repair/restore videos make me feel the same way car enthusiasts do when they watch similar videos of classics. "Oh yeah, he's busting out the soldering iron again and doing some board/power supply-level repairs!" Thanks again.
The plastic stand attached to the back of the LCD is for an iSight webcam. Love the videos!
Still have one.
The multilingual error message saying you need to restart is what OS X does when there's a kernel panic. I used to have a 2006 MacBook that gave that screen occasionally, and after running memtest, it seemed like the RAM was the issue.
Thats what i was about to say lol one of my RAM modules was slowly dying so i would be flashed this Kernel panic time to time and also same Kernel panic when my HD was starting to fail.
i too have a 2006 white macbook that KP's often. It started after I dropped it... I recall seeing some error messages regarding ACPI years ago.
Ah the memories! This model was my first computer! I learned to edit video and audio. Too bad the newer macs aren’t built to this quality.
I love that you literally cut away and don't show your thermal paste amounts. Well done keeping the trolls quite. Good job on the videos.
You should always reset the PRAM data anytime a Mac is acting funky. While powered down (and plugged in), press the power button and then hold these four keys at the same time: ⌘ + option + P + R. Continue holding the keys until your Mac restarts for the second time. On older Macs, the chime will sound upon restart.
I have mid-2012 Macbook Pro that I have to reset the PRAM (or BIOS for PC only folks), on from time to time.
Thanks. I still have a lot of ground to cover in order to gain Mike-Mac compatibility.
The PRAM reset is like the noob advice for every Mac issue. It's completely useless to solve generic issues.
It's only helpful in the following cases:
- a blinking question mark icon appears briefly before your Mac
- display freezes or becomes unresponsive (without showing the spinning wheel icon
- speakers intermittently stop playing sound, even though the volume is turned up
- difficulty connecting to an external display
Note: it has been removed in Apple Silicon models
I really hate narrated videos a lot. Mike's are the only ones that I can comfortably and calmly watch until the end.
My favorite Mac form factor. I still have my OG iMac G4 from 2002. The plastic mount on the iMac's screen was for Apple's iSight Firewire camera, which came sold separately and debuted about a year after the iMac G4. They actually wrapped all the hard drives in white paper so you wouldn't see a silver hard drive when looking down in the fan holes.
The reason you would use IE on a mac at the time this thing was made was because a lot of web pages were specifically written for IE and would look janky on Safari, or not work properly especially bank web sites.
This, and also IE still commanded a large market share back then along with people being used to using it from being the default browser in macOS from 98-03
I designed websites around that time, and IE 5 on Mac was actually quite good.
Even when I'm not so familiar with older Macs I still enjoy Mike taking us through his usual processes!
Maybe someone already said it, change the RAM in the 1GHz model (and upgrade it too). TY for the video!
LOL @ "you seasoned MAC people may want to prepare your faces for palming"
haha, thats humour at its best.
they covered the HDD in paper so you couldn't see the hard drive through the holes on the top. this era apple put so much attention to detail it's incredible.
I love when he edits down adding the thermal paste because no matter how you apply thermal paste, if you do it on youtube youll get screamed at.
Taking these apart is the most fun you will have fixing a computer, and they are the most reliable and compatible PowerPC models. The smaller one should be able to dual boot OS 9. They could have just shipped eMacs from the start and made more money, but instead they decided to make this masterpiece.
"Those are beautiful arms for yours...I mean of iMac's!"
23:55 there was partition tab right beside the erase tab 😂 Have had same issues before and they mostly caused by MBR partition table. PPC Macs does use Apple partition map and Intel versions does GUID.
I have a Griffin made product that plugs into the 2.5mm jack on this imac g4 and has a breakout to left and right speakers with 2 red and black crimp style connectors each for left and right speaker, respectively. It works both in the case of the apple branded speakers and this adapter where the powered amplification comes from the port. I bought some old Apple Powered Speakers which worked well for sometime, but stated having power issues and heat issues with some components inside. No problem I just took the powered components out of the powered one in the pair and made them both passive. I had them connected to a minisystem by Sony, but it wasn't meant to be; now they pump connected to the iMac G4 as a crazy CD/DVD player combo... :)
I got a lot of use out of my Griffin PowerWave + Apple Pro Speakers.. Still works last I checked, though I honestly do kinda want to just modify one of my spare pairs of Pro Speakers for use on a normal small amp (if I can find a decent one)
(Edit, misread. Different Griffin product. Would have also been kinda handy to have that breakout adapter back in the day though!)
Your tenacity is really inspiring. I've worked on computer hardware since the S100 personal computers. I have to admit I would have given up far sooner than you have! Today I take care of PC computers by day, I'm building a liquid cooled behemoth for a client as we speak, and my personal/business computing system of choice is pure Apple ecosystem. We have all benefitted not only from competition, but from two very different approaches, Linux notwithstanding (which I get to play with on my personal TrueNAS Scale boxes, and a client's Synology box.). So much fun seeing Apple innovate and fail forward along the way. Thanks man! You're the best!
Yeah, I agree, this guy really loves restoring older tech. I grew up around this age of PC and Mac like he did, assuming he's about my age... I worked for a PC repair shop as a teen around the 2002 or 2003 time-frame. I wish I still had all those older PCs I obtained back then.
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates We you able to get in there and replace capacitors and hunt for bad components and follow the circuit diagrams? That's something I tried to avoid, ha ha. Hats off to people who have the patience to do that.
@MarkieMarkie92103 The owner of the business handled all the low level component replacements, but usually when he explained to the customer that, for example, the motherboard had a fault, 9 times out of 10, the customer would just pay us to totally replace the part or would even pay us to build them an entirely new system. We dealt with mainly upper middle class customers, lol. I did whole part replacements, low level formatting (to remove personal data from a drive), virus removal, upgrades, and the like. I loved that job. At the age of 16, I was making $16 per hour, back when minimum wage was $5.15 per hour.
Great to see some Apple love on the channel. Those kernel panic crashes are often caused by bad RAM. I have two of those machines and agree that they are works of art.
Totally second this being a ram problem
IE was the long-standing default browser on Macs since the 90's. Safari was only introduced starting with Panther, and took some years to fully catch on.
System 1 supported the original AirPort card, which was PCMCIA based (802.11b). System 2 is a newer design, so it has that AirPort Extreme 802.11g card, which is PCI-Express based, IIRC.
System 1 has a TMDS display cable while System 2 has an LVDS display cable. There are a lot of other differences as you noted throughout the video. Apple changed much of the architecture on the 1 GHz and later models as you noted; the late 2003 and later revisions added USB 2.0 as well.
the early ones seem a lot nicer and better thought out
@@succulent951 having used both, the later ones worked much better. I had nothing but issues with the 700 MHz model when I supported one for a client around 2006/2007 timeframe, many of those issues being due to the hardware itself.
"2003 and later revisions added USB 2.0 as well"
And they still using it 20 yrs later. Crazy!
I found a 15" in the trash several years ago. This vid inspires me to start a restoration. Thanks!
Prepare for dust. Lots of dust…
I still have mine and it boots up just fine (though lost the speakers sometime long ago).
I have a G4 imac that had the same random crashing issue. Re-thermal-pasting the gpu seemed to work for mine.
On the second system, I’d definitely replace the existing RAM. It’s throwing a kernel panic and memory would be at the top of easy things to try. The lampshade Mac’s aren’t particular about memory. I’ve used anything and everything in them including recycled memory from PC’s.
To bypass the registration screens on fresh OS X installs, just press Command+Q on your keyboard. If you're using a PC keyboard, do Win+Q. You don't have to fill that stuff out.
Did you check staples or office Depot? Sometimes Walgreens of all places has them.
IE was the default browser on the Mac before Safari 1.0 happened. IE2 and IE3 were a download, and IE4, IE5 were default from 1998 to 2003.
Small tip, at that Mac OS X Registration screen where it asks for your address and stuff, just press Cmd+Q, then the exit pop-up will have an option to skip registration.
Today is translation. I watch the video again. Regards, Mike.😁
"Erase and Install" is EXACTLY the right way to install MacOS from scratch .-)
Missed the opportunity for SSD, RAM, and disc drive upgrades. Love these machines.
I had G4 imac osx jaguar as my first computer
Internet explorer was included in those years on a imac
This is me, requesting a shirtless video. Purely for science, of course. 🥵😜
Why is it so hard for you to find porn on the internet?
Yes please. 🥵
Early versions of OS X came with IE preinstalled.
The black "dust" inside, looks like coal/wood soot like the owners had a combustion type heat source. I grew up in a home with coal heat, and my school had coal heat the computers both had similar type "dust" inside.
Very interesting video, taught me things I didn’t know about this system. The only macs I ever worked on were the Apple 2 and the first version of iMac it was a blue one. I remember I wanted it. I’ve seen this version of iMac but my mind told me it was only a monitor not a whole system. I learned something today. It’s so cool the way the monitor can shifted. This is why I love your videos.
Ive never been a fan of mac os, but i must admit those are really cool computers. Older macs have such cool designs. Thank you for the informative video, this looks like it took a lot of time and troubleshooting
I've never liked Macs either, due to their locked down proprietary system. But I agree, back then I was inexplicably drawn to this model and the iMac "all-in-one." I always wanted an orange one, but it was way too expensive back then.
Not sure if anyone has pointed it out yet, but that plastic stuck to the back of the screen is a holder for the Apple FireWire iSight camera!
Another awesome video. Cheers Mike
Omg that’s a super slick AOL disk! Hella precious
I meant to watch this for a few minutes, but ended up watching it for the entire hour! iMac G4 is my favorite Apple design of all time and the only Mac I want to get my hands on these days. Great video as always!
22 tears ago I. Ought this for my young son. As much as we loved this machine, we had constant kernel panics. This may be a wide issue. I don’t know what the problem was, we sold it for parts and I got him one of the first aluminum iMacs. About 2 weeks ago I picked up the same computer for 30$ at a garage sale knowing it won’t power on. I thought it will be fun play with and restore. Let’s hope I don’t run into the kernel panic issue again. I’m thinking it’s a heat issue causing micro de doddering.
Always look forward to your retro finds and strip downs. Nice to see these Mac's still working, such a great design too. Keep up the great work :)
@MikeTech
The way that widescreen Mac is behaving suggests strongly that the system RAM is faulty. I would suggest changing out that stick for a 1GB or 512MB DDR stick and trying again.
would the ram from the other mac fit?
@@EastAngliaUK
Sadly, no. The first system has SDRAM and the second has DDR1. Mike would need to replace it with like. Happily, DDR1 can in 1GB sticks that were compatible with that mac, so he could replace that stick with a big upgrade!
Very cool to see the necks still working perfectly after all this time. I repaired Macs professionally back then & a very common warranty issue was the neck going all floppy! Never worked out if that was due to excessive fondling or something else though (it is of course very hard to focus on just using one of these without constantly wiggling the screen around for fun).
Love your videos Mike. Im learning a lot evertime I watch ❤.
I love your persistence with this iconic Apple computer!
I have one that I originally purchased for my dad back in 2006, and reclaimed when he upgraded to an iMac. I considered the idea of refurbishing it for use in the kitchen - could use it for reading recipes, maybe making shopping lists, and just simply watching some RUclips/Plex when cooking/doing dishes... But ultimately it's just not very feasible. It doesn't have much by way of voice-control options, and the lack of a touch screen doesn't help either when you consider you'd need to be using a mouse/keyboard to do anything. I really want to find a purpose for it other than looking pretty. :)
As others have said, kernel panic points to bad ram. I’d swap out ram and give the slots a good cleaning. Worth a shot over gpu issues!
you did a great job on these Mike!
I love how you always bring something new to your friends and fans.
Have a great weekend :)
I have a feeling the reason it didn’t like the drive at first was it was partitioned with a Master Boot Record and Mac requires a GUID at least for Intel Macs i can’t remember if Power PC was a different one. Might have been Apple Partition Map if I’m remembering correctly. When you erased the main drive it reformatted the boot record type. You can remove a partition its under the Partition option in Disk Utility and still exists in modern Mac OS. That is where it will tell you the partition type. At least it might be in a drop down menu I need to go check I can’t exactly remember. I have installed many Mac OS’s from the early days but its been years now. Anyway always wanted to try out a G4 lamp lol. I do have a G4 iBook with an SSD in it for when I’m feeling nostalgic for Tiger the first Mac OS I used. Nice to see one on your channel. That Welcome video was very Nostalgic. You can skip registration by pressing its either esc or it might have been command q. I’ve never done that but I’ve seen others do it.
It was probably in a Art/Design Studio and dust might be Graphite / Charcoal from drawing as the dust seems familiar with such.
The mount on the back of system 2 was for an Apple iSight FireWire webcam.
Thanks!
@@miketech1024 you are most welcome, sir Mike!
Back when I had Mac OS7.5 and 8.1 I had Windows Media Player installed. I think it was the only thing that would playback wmv and wma files.
46:00 The hard drive sits under the fan, so the text on the hard drive would be visible without the white plastic.
indeed
That is funny. An aesthetic reason never occurred to me to me. It’s like they don’t want you to know there’s computer parts in there. 😂
Wow, thanks so much for that!!! I've already asked you for Macs about 3 weeks ago or so, I really appreciate your efforts and the time it takes to edit and upload a single video as it takes ages, (but then the results can be quiet disappointing) but hey, it's still good work!
Great video! I had to service one of these and it was great to go back in time.
To me this looks like corrupt video memory or chip, but typically an authorized service tech would just replace the logic board (aka motherboard).
I agree about the paintbrush.
I have a non-working iMac G4 17" (800 MHz). I had it working once, but It won't start at all now - no power. I pulled the old power supply which had some white putty-looking junk all over it. So I tried to replace it with one from one of these old mac parts vendors. Alas, it's still not powering up. Either I try for another PS or a new motherboard? Not sure how to proceed. I don't have the electronics knowledge to test each part. It's nice to see someone getting these working again.
I've never been a big Apple fan, only had a 1st gen mac mini in my life, but watching them disassemble is pretty interesting, they had amazing design (back then.)
Don't know about Mac but in Win you just make a new admin account and delete all the others, that way you keep all the orig installed programs. For security you can just fill the rest of the drive with media files and secure erase them.
Sims 2 Apartment Life is one of the best EPs of all time
That second machine seems to have a very high hour count, especially judging by the dim display and the yellowing by the backlight inverter. Also likely why the optical drive isn't functional either. If it was used all the way up to 2016, then that corroborates.
Judging by the video artifacting at random, it's likely that the GPU chip needs to be reflowed. Possibly some faulty RAM chips too. The machine is acting like it's been repeatedly overheated. This machine was also manufactured during the height of the capacitor plague era, so it probably needs a recapping too. Would take a lot of work to resurrect this one. Might just be cheaper, easier and less time consuming to replace the logic board outright.
@MikeTech I know of a few Mac Gurus. I'll post this video on their Discord and see what they have to say.
IE was default web browser on Mac till OS X Puma (10.3) it was a part of contract between Apple and Microsoft
and it was fine. it got worse as time went on and eventually I switched to iCab... which was fine
This is the computer that replaced my Silicon Graphics, the same model SGI that you got in that big haul of computers a while back. I am not as nostalgic of it as I am the SGI but it was a very very good computer for its day.
Man I want one of those old Macs
One thing I like about Macs... no need to install drivers after OS installation. The OS installs them all for you automatically, unless you're using third-party hardware.
They were pretty much included because of the (at the time, and I take it Apple is back at this given their current machines and how they are configured) very limited amount of hardware combinations they were built with.
Not only made these limited amounts of combinations make it easier to thoroughly test them for stability and how well they would work together, it would also reduce overhead: in some Apple's (we had some old ones at a company where I did an internship in my IT education) they explicitly went with pieces of hardware already conforming to base-class support at the time, for either the drivers/support already going back a couple of years, or having proven themselves in testing.
That's typically also why they were capable of being fast and powerful with much older hardware compared to what the same price of a system would buy you in Windows/IBM-land.
I still Love to play music on the Old G4 sometime on Apple Pro speakers .
The 1 gig 17 inch , whith Jaguar , 10.2 os G4 , was my First computer ever .
Now i Have All Versions .
From one broke G4 , i Made An Arcade machine whith nvidia shield Pro inside now , Micro amplifier inside for the Apple Pro speakers and a 18 inch hannspree Apple shaped monitor , i paintsprayed the Same White Color as the dome .
I use the original Power connector so i can use the original Powercord also and i use the original Apple Glass Mouse and White ps4 controler for the shield .
Greetings from the netherlands
Yoooo, are we entering a Macintosh Mike story arc? 😜
I have several Macs left to go through, so there’s a few chances left to convert me yet. I would indeed lavish over both a Performa 575 and 5200. The computer lab in school was full of them.
Man I enjoyed this video so much from beginning to end. I do hope you got to fix that annoying issue. I always loved the design on these iMacs and wish I can find one in decent shape that I can restore. Loved your video.
6:21 actually they can explode if the system if left plugged in for a long time unused and can cause lots of damage, it happens a lot on old Beige Mac's not sure on the newer ones.
Most common with the Maxell 1/3 AA 3.6V Lithium batteries, other machines of that era like the IIgs had Tadiran batteries which did not leak nearly as much.
Great looking devices, not seen these before, in 2001 these were futuristic, at work we were using Windows 2000/XP with a cathode ray tube monitor, a fax machine and laser printer, if I streamed and listened to a radio broadcast on headphones the IT man would frown on it,
You can skip those macos registration pages (on any macos version that "requires" these) by pressing cmd-q at the same time, it will give you the option to skip it
That’s an awesome Mac I have the 17 inch G4 got it for free because nobody wanted I love the design
30:50 idk if anyone said already but this was the way to attach an isight camera to the imac!
That was a fun little adventure! Thanks for making the video there Cutie!
Yessss I Have Been Waiting For A Video And This One Was An Execllent Surprise! Thanks Mike!
Nice imacs. These are great machines for the time. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
that strange dust is from the metal foam rotting and then the static inside the computer making it stick 2 everything! that foam is the most silly thing ive ever seen in a pc!
From what i understand, the white friction fit connectors you found for the modem card are some proprietary pci/usb connector. In the system profile you should be able to see which bus type it's using. Pretty sure they use this connector using pcie/tghunderbolt/usb 3 in later machines. It may be a connector that works no matter what protocol they end up using (chipset/lanes). Hardware profiler should have that info, though!
Yay - another Friday afternoon/evening Mike video! Awesome video as always.
Good stuff! I just got one of these last month.
Mac its very interesting 🤔
I really need to have another go at replacing the thermal paste inside my 20" G4. Not actually too bad to take apart, even going all the way to the top vents, but that final paste for the vertical heat piping connections during reassembly is the hardest part of the entire maintenance process.. If you don't lower things in place just right and that thermal paste application slips and gets mucked up, gotta do it again.. ^^'
That is an amazing find- such a pristine machine. G4 was always my favorite iMac. Inspired by the Pixar lamp, iirc. Would love to refit one with a Pi or something on the inside or something. That poor second one though, that was abused.
FYI yellowing is caused by environmental degradation predominantly UV but also heat, humidity and atmospheric gas composition (oxidation).
Sorry great video as always. Love to see you strolling outside your comfort zone. ❤
I'm on one right now. Screw the new Apple stuff and Apple. This is just fine.
The motherboard of this thing makes a special cameo appearance in the music video for Knights of Cydonia by Muse
Does it?
Found it!
I used to be an Apple Authorized Repair Tech over 20 years ago. We used to have a special cradle (made of packing foam material) you placed your iMac G4 into while being serviced on the bench. The display connection on the logic board for these machines were the most notorious for being a weak point during disassembly; one wrong move and the connector could get ripped right off the board. Just a poor design, imho. The other techs in our shop used to call these the LSR (short for 'Lump Stick Rectangle').
Best Buy and Walmart are starting to stop selling physical media (DVD, CD, Blu Ray). You may not be able to find DVDs at Staples either
Regarding the IE on Mac, in the very late 90's into the 2000's Apple Inc. was struggling financially and to get through the rough patch Apple was going through Bill Gates invested in the company under the condition that IE would be supported on MacOS X systems for a period of time. Also with those Kernal Panics and the PRAM battery I would try to source a good PRAM and also perform a PRAM Reset, this is a fairly easy thing to do and plenty of articles on how to perform it, if there is still artifacting after this is performed then you know you have a failing GPU or GPU VRAM which basically means it's a dead logic board.
We had one of these where I used to work. My co-worker called it “the alien” computer. Great minds think alike?