one of my friends just aquired a dead intel imac with isight and would like to hack it. the motherboard fried do to a USB short (also a piss poor solder job done by apple). Im just woundering what we can do with this, he wants to put a laptop mobo from a pc into it but we dont know how we would get the LCD to work. any ideas let me know.
That LCD isn't going to work with a PC laptop mobo. Your best bet might be to use the screen from the laptop and mount it in the iMac.
I wouldn't say quite so flatly it's "hopeless", but... it'll be nontrivial. Laptop LCD signaling levels and protocols are fairly standardized at this point so there's a reasonable chance that electrically you could connect the Intel iMac's display to a similar-vintage laptop motherboard. (Or something like those LVDS-equipped Mini-ITX motherboards) The problem is mostly cabling. Internal LVDS cable harnesses and plugs are pretty completely non-standardized even within the same manufacturer.
--Peace
actually, the display may not be not be 'powered' through an LVDS connection. It [i]may[/i] be 'standard' DVI-D signals.
I hate to encourage a near impossible hack so if I'm wrong I apologize in advance, but . . . I seem to remember reading that the Intel iMac's display wasn't the usual LVDS dealy, but instead something rather more standard. I cannot recall the details at the moment, but I'll try to look it up if I get a spare moment or two.
dan k