Let's make an Apple bPod. It's either a big frigging music player or a small iMac.

Take one free basket case Biondi Blue iMac found on Craigslist, discover it has a dead analog board (that powers the CRT monitor) and ravage its remaining parts - logic board, RAM, keyboard & mouse and speakers. Out with the trash and recycling goes the monitor, the mentioned analog board, that other board next to it (HV??), the case, the CDROM, the power filter, etc.

Found a small case from Action Computers & Surplus that once housed an external HP optical drive.

There is a great how-to guide to adapt a 150 watt ATX power supply out of an old HP Pavilion to power the logic board over at www.radiomods.co.nz/imactoatxconversion. I clipped the ATX plug off and soldered the power supply's leads to the also clipped power plug that stuck out of the power filter on long leads. The long leads made for easier soldering.

iMac resurrection sites show using a plain old IDE CDROM by adapting the iMac's socket with a 'laptop drive to 40 pin IDE adaptor' I chose a neater solution that is used in the Carputer 6100 - A 40-Pin to 44-Pin Laptop IDE Hard Drive Cable Adapter was bought at www.mini-box.com for $9.95. Plug the laptop end into the logic board and the other end into a standard CD Burner. Sell the iMac CDROM on eBay for $10.

The hard drive is a 10gig drive from the Orange iMac (now in another happy home), it will be replaced with something bigger.

The junk box donated a VGA to Apple monitor adaptor.

Weird Stuff was the source for a 4" VGA extension for $2 when I found two IBM 8573 'luggables' for $25 each.

A few other things picked up, $8 for 4 MB of VRAM (more video resolutions) and a 333 CPU ($21!!) to make it more iTunes tolerant. I've hooked all this stuff up, installed OSX and let it run for day. Working good.

Random Pictures

 

 

Footnote 2009. Never did finish the project. Still needed that front panel finished and the power switch adapted. Disassembled and sold for parts.