Old iMac is crapping out

[Rolando]

My son uses it mainly as a music server now. Its a first Gen intel iMac (white plastic , ID 5,1)

The regular disk looks horrible, junk, static, colored lines everywhere, etc.
It boots into the recovery disk fine; the screen looks pristine, which I understand used the integrated graphics rather than the accelerated graphics, so this would probably be ok.

Booted into Firewire Disk Mode and copied all the data to an external drive. Screen looked fine for hours this way.

Reboot back into regular mode, junk, then black.

Anyone know a way to disable the Accelerated graphics in regular mode?

[Article Accelerator]

A ten year old system—impressive!

[Onamuji]

You could try safe-booting.

(Hold down shift key during the boot-process from the chime to the appearance of the Apple logo.)

It disables many drivers.

But I wouldn't bet on it being the GPU at fault with a Mac that old. Time to drop it on the curb.

[Rolando]

Onamuji wrote:
You could try safe-booting.

(Hold down shift key during the boot-process from the chime to the appearance of the Apple logo.)

It disables many drivers.

But I wouldn't bet on it being the GPU at fault with a Mac that old. Time to drop it on the curb.

It boots into the recovery disk fine; the screen looks pristine, which I understand used the integrated graphics rather than the accelerated graphics, so this would probably be ok.

Safe Mode did not work, unfortunately

[Onamuji]

Rolando wrote:
It boots into the recovery disk fine; the screen looks pristine, which I understand used the integrated graphics rather than the accelerated graphics, so this would probably be ok.

No. That's not a valid conclusion from the evidence.

Safe booting loads only required kernel extensions. Advanced graphics drivers would be disabled while safe-booted.

[Forrest]

I would not use a flakey machine as a music server. I would check out a simple, low power solutions such as a raspberry pi or an Intel Computer stick attached to an external drive as a music server.