[Luca]

It's an oldie, but a goodie. A neighbor and family friend called today asking if my brother could help fix their Dell. He gets a lot of calls like this, as it's somewhat of a business for him (even at age 16). Anyway, he mentions that he's going to take in their old iMac to get recycled. Obviously, I can't have this (it's a working computer for chrissakes, and an iMac at that!) so I offered to take it for free. Booyashaka, I got myself a free Bondi iMac.

Not just an iMac though. He dropped off a huge box in our garage, and inside it was not just the iMac, but a cornucopia of peripherals. There's a printer, a scanner, an Imation SuperDisk drive, an Iomega USB CD-RW drive, a USB hub, keyboard and mouse, and - get this - a little plastic cat with a PS/2 port on it. Don't ask, I don't know. Oh, and most of this stuff is in the clear white/blue style of the old iMacs, before that became unpopular.

Anyway, I saw it briefly as I was leaving for work this morning, so I'll get some pics up tonight when I get home. Then I can figure out what to do with the thing - I'll probably keep the scanner and sell or give away most of the other stuff. Just so long as it doesn't get thrown out.

EDIT: My brother, who is at home and obviously playing with all my new stuff, just figured out what the cat thing is.

http://www.cedmagic.com/cuecat/cuecat.html

It's a barcode scanner. When you plug it in, a little red light shines from the front. So I'm now the proud owner of a cat-shaped barcode scanner. Hooray!

[Moogs]

That's pretty fortuitous I'd say. Looking forward to the pics.

[trailmaster308]

Quick run out and buy yourself a lotto ticket!

Oh and post the specs too.

[MacUsers]

That's awesome Luca... post them pics soon.

[Paul]

that cue-cat thing was a promotion done by Wired... they gave them away so that users could scan the barcodes on the advertising pages in their magazine... didn't really work well and they didn't have a macintosh version so I didn't really pay too much attention to it...

[Ebby]

Airlines like American still use that. I saw a bunch on a magazine when I went on vacation last week. Southwest also uses it too I think.

[DMBand0026]

All I have to say about this is...you lucky sack of crap

No one ever gives me free stuff. Haha, enjoy it! You've got yourself a piece of computer history there.

[SilentEchoes]

I used to have a bondi iMac. It wasnt all that bad of a machine, The only thing that got me was the small screen. Thats awesome you got all that crap with it too. I mean the USB hub alone. I need one of those pretty bad.

[Luca]

Well, I set it up and took some pics! Here's the cat thing that came with it:



And the printer and scanner:



I sure hope the scanner works in OS X, though I won't get my hopes up. If it does... score!

Now the setup on my extra desk:



You can see the SuperDisk drive and the Iomega CD burner. I have to fix it, because it won't boot. It gets partway through and then freezes on the boot screen. Booting from a CD doesn't seem to work either. Guess I have to boot without extensions...

Oh look, I think I found the problem!



HOLY. LIVING. MOTHER. OF. FUCK.

No wonder they complained of frequent crashes. I knew it was PEBKAC before I even saw the computer, but I had no idea it was this bad.

This supposed "broken Dell" is going to be twice as bad, at the very least.

[MacUsers]

Wow... eh... ya.

[SilentEchoes]

Heh this kid I used to work with would just keep all of his files on his desktop and leave sherlock open all the time. It used to annoy the hell right out of me. He was a really bright kid too and was far more computer oriented that I was at the time. For some reason, though, He insisted on keeping his files on his desktop.

Hey Luca, you going to throw OS X on that beast? I remember having DP 4 - public beta on mine back in the day.

[Luca]

Well damn. Of the three Bondi iMacs I've used, two of them (this one included) have had non-working CD drives. The OS installation is messed up of course, which is why it won't boot without turning off the extensions. But I can't reinstall the OS or even just wipe the hard drive without the CD-ROM.

Looks like the iMac's gonna have to go bye-bye for a lot less than I had hoped for. Well, at least there's the other stuff. And maybe I can do a network installation, though I'm not really sure how that works. I can of course read CDs from the external CD burner, but I can't boot from that thing.

Now it's time to test out the printer and scanner. And I don't really need the CD burner or the SuperDisk drive, but I can't really get anything for them anyway, so why not keep them?

[FFL]

bummer about the CD drive. I could probably fix it for cheap, with a drive from eBay or even a burner from here:

http://www.mcetech.com/imacrw.html

Heck, I just got a nice grab bag like that myself from a client who recently upgraded. PowerBook G4/500 with 512 MB RAM and AirPort (it's going on eBay unless someone makes an offer here), a ZIP 250 (which I'm keeping, cause I need a USB zip occasionally), a pair of Harm-Kar Soundsticks (which you better *believe* I'm keeping), and a few other nice goodies, some of which will need to find their way to eBay.

I think we need a new forum or sub-forum for buying and selling... we should call it "The Murbot Fourm".

[Luca]

Dude, someone just GAVE you a PowerBook G4? Now, with this old iMac, it really isn't worth more than about $100 (even if it had a working CD drive), so for the computer illiterate, it's not worth keeping around. But PowerBook G4s... they are very nice, and still worth quite a bit (even for the old ones, you should be able to get probably around $700).

Oh yeah, and MCE's CD-RW drive costs more than just buying an extra used iMac off eBay for parts. I dunno, maybe I could somehow rig up a smallish CD-ROM drive, assuming I'd be able to find one. But it's DEFINITELY not worth the $179 price tag MCE puts on it. As much as they'd like you to believe it, iMacs don't use special "Mac-only" optical drives. They're just smaller versions of the same thing you can get anywhere else for $10-$20.

[Luca]

Wow... the CD drive seems to be working after all. I think it was somehow so messed up that nothing worked at all before. But now I tried putting a CD in, and it saw it.

Man, it took a while to patch it up though. Not only was there crap EVERYWHERE, but the extension set was totally screwed up (AOL junk all over). After trimming down the extensions to very little, it booted up fine. And it started recognizing CDs. Go figure. That wasn't the end though... the fonts all over had been messed with. Menu bar clock was 12 or 14 point Felt Marker. File names were set to Courier New, I think. The system font was set to that godawful Sand, and the control strip was using yet another randomly chosen font at 16-point. Phew, everything back to normal again.

So it's starting from a CD and I'm going to put this poor hard drive out of its misery and erase it. Give it a clean, fresh start. OS 9.2.2 will be installed (instead of 9.0.4). OS X will NOT be installed, as this computer has only 96 MB of RAM. I have booted OS X with as little as 112 MB on a 233 MHz 604e, but it sure wasn't fun.

[FFL]

LOL, no, they expect 90% of the proceeds when I sell it. But they'll end up using the money to pay me, so it all comes back to me one way or another
And, with the upgraded RAM and AirPort card, this puppy is worth $900 easily, based on final selling prices at eBay.

Originally Posted by Luca Dude, someone just GAVE you a PowerBook G4? Now, with this old iMac, it really isn't worth more than about $100 (even if it had a working CD drive), so for the computer illiterate, it's not worth keeping around. But PowerBook G4s... they are very nice, and still worth quite a bit (even for the old ones, you should be able to get probably around $700). Oh yeah, and MCE's CD-RW drive costs more than just buying an extra used iMac off eBay for parts. I dunno, maybe I could somehow rig up a smallish CD-ROM drive, assuming I'd be able to find one. But it's DEFINITELY not worth the $179 price tag MCE puts on it. As much as they'd like you to believe it, iMacs don't use special "Mac-only" optical drives. They're just smaller versions of the same thing you can get anywhere else for $10-$20.

yeah, it would be much more worthwhile to hunt eBay for a old iMac CD drive for cheap.

Acutally the drives are made for laptops. If I had a Bondi nearby, I'd check the System Profiler for the exact make/model of the OEM drive.

[usurp]

cuecats are cool. from what i know u can get them to work with your mac and there are softwares and hacks and stuff. u should also be able to scan your cd and book library and have it retrieve info from amazon.com and stuff...

so did you find any porn or personal files on the imac?

[alcimedes]

luca, if that has firewire, which i believe it does....

i have a few IDE to firewire converters at my office i'm not using. you can have one if you'd like. it was that or toss it. too much of a pain in the ass to ebay anything under $200 for me.

[Luca]

usurp: I didn't look for any personal files. The damn thing wouldn't even boot properly without turning off extensions, at which point I nuked the entire hard drive. There certainly were plenty of files, as shown by the picture of the computer's desktop. But they were mostly things like school reports and the like.

alcimedes: No firewire, this is a Rev. A 233 MHz machine. Rather, it was one. I sold it a couple weeks ago. $105 shipped. Cost about $40 to ship though, what a beast. Those IDE to Firewire converters - by that do you actually mean Firewire to IDE converters? I'm guessing you mean you plug it into a Firewire port and get an IDE port. So like a Firewire case. If you have a spare Firewire case I might take one for my PowerMac, since I'd prefer my two hard drives to be on separate buses rather than having them shared on a single ATA/66 bus. But I'd rather spend a little money for a high quality 3.5" case that supports super-large drives. Post some more details, I'm curious.

The main profit I got from the computer was the OS 9 boxed CD I got. Well, technically it only came with the bare OS 9 CD, but I had an extra OS 9 box I got with a previous purchase. Put 'em together, and bam: $60 for a box and CD. I got $20 from the external CD burner, the SuperDisk didn't work so I trashed it, and the USB hub didn't sell. The printer is worthless and I want to give it away to someone, but I'm keeping the scanner since it works in OS X.

[Wyatt]

OMGWTFBBQ?!?!?!?!?!

Seriously, bump-spam is lame.

[Luca]

Locking my own thread.