iMac G4 (flat panel) logic board - what to do with it

I'd vote for shoving it into a pizza box/feets Mac. If you can find a nice slim power supply, ad could hack the floppy slot for an optical it might make a nice hack.

Do you have any decorative round tins that such as candies or cookies came in? That would make an interesting housing if a compatable size. or the bottom of an inverted mesh trash can.....

Get one of thos lage popcorn tins, get 4 of those logic boards, and hook up an X-Grid in it using FireWire. If one of the 4 or 5 logic boards has a good ethernet, just bridge the network.

an intereting media center box. Slap that thing into the back of your tv, and run the video out to svideo or something along those lines.

In 2001, someone asked me what I thought the flat panel iMac rumored out would look like. Back then I still had a Mac LC on my desk, and I drew a picture. It was the size of an LC on the bottom (the base), and had a display that was integrated and swiveled (not on a big rod like the iMac has but instead on a tilt/swivel stand like most regular monitors). Today an iMac sits where that LC once was.

Use the MIni VGA out to connect any monitor you want to it, although I personally love the iMac's display.

I was asking around about a dead slot-load iMac at my usual salvage locale, thinking some of the cables might be useful for my previously mentioned iMac to ATX conversion, and I was directed instead to a 15" LCD iMac with unknown problems. In many pieces. Free.

So, after a couple days of piecing together what I vote to be Most Tightly Packed Macintosh Ever, I now have a headless 800MHz G4 iMac in my desk.

Aside from putting it back together, I had to put a different power connector on the back, as no one I know had an iMac power cord. Only issue it's show so far is the 256 MB Kingston SODIMM only shows up as 128 MB.

iantm, let me know if you need pinouts for the PSU connector. I've also got the speaker and fan power/sense line from the LCD ribbon connector.

Replying to my own post...that's just wrong.

I've got another 15" iMac G4, and it's got serious crashing issues. The motherboard has apparently been replaced once or more, so I'm guessing PSU.
What I want to do is connect it to an external PSU.
The pinouts on the power connector are very simple: There's a row of 12V lines, a row of grounds, a single 3.3V line, then four wires that go to the HD/CD connectors.

The weird thing is the PSU seems to be in an always on state. Excluding the HD/CD lines, the 12V and 3.3V lines are always on. When the power button is pressed, power is then directed to the HD/CD lines and the rest of the motherboard, LCD, etc.

I'm at a loss to how I should handle connecting an external power supply, since the motherboard replaces the soft-on portion of an ATX PSU.

Best solution I can see so far is to use an AT PSU, but that would require a two-step power on and off.

Still in preliminary planning, but I'd appreciate input.

i'm off to pick up a dead g4 imac.
i'm buying it for the airport card , ram, hard drive and....
some kind of hack for the display.

this is pretty much "minute number one" in terms of how much i've looked into it.
i'll be back i'm sure. research. searches. you guys know the drill.
wish me luck.
pea

make sure you have the switch that came with the imac.
that's pretty much rule of thumb.
in many cases the switch are very specific.
by switch i mean the "power" or "on" button.
extend the wires if you must but make sure you've got all the ducks
where they go.

p

Just to note, AT power supplies don't have a 3.3v output. That's strange that the motherboard takes 12v and 3.3v, but no 5 volt. (Or maybe it isn't, come to think about it. Technology marches on.)

--Peace