My Mac find of the day (of the year?)

[volcs0]

I was leaving work today and saw an iMac (white plastic, either G5 or early Intel...couldn't tell at that point) sitting in the hall by the trash. It looked to be in mint condition but had a sign on it that said, "Trash/Junk" and "No sound" and "Resale value $0." I picked it up and poked my head into the room - it was one of the IT support rooms - filled with equipment in various stages of repair / disrepair. There was one guy there, and I held up the machine and said, "This says 'trash.' Is it OK if I take it?" He said, "Sure. But it doesn't work." I said, "Well, if I don't take it, it is going in the trash tonight?" He said, "Right."

So, I take it home and plug it in - it boots right up to a fresh SL install. Sure enough, no sound. And no sound from the speaker jack or the head phone jack. So I plugged in my Griffin iMic USB interface - that works fine. The rest of the machine appears to run like a dream. It is a 1.83 Intel Core Duo. I just got finished setting it up for my wife for her home office.

So, not a bad find.

[gabester]

Now if it's stable then that really is a find... however I'd suspect with no sound it's got a logic board problem that they deemed not worth repairing.

Nevertheless even an unstable Mac could be useful around the house for many purposes. Does it have the built-in camera on a 1.83Ghz Core Duo iMac?
g=

[M>B>]

I am sure someone has checked the Sound control panel in the System Prefs?

[volcs0]

Yes - built-in camera.

Right - I checked out all the options - no sound.

So far, stable for the last six hours... can't complain yet.

It only has 1 GB RAM (667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM) - will have to see how much I can up this.

Edit: found a 1gb stick for about $20. The machine currently has 1gb in there and one slot open

[haikuman]

Cool Find *(:>*

[Wailer]

I have the same machine. I paid $180 for it a month ago and I thought I got a steal. I did need to replace the stock 160gb hard drive in it.

2gb max for the ram.

It's still a great machine that has a lot of life left. Remember, it has gigabit, so you can unplug the LCD (or sell it) and use it as a fairly low-power server with a full size sata drive and fw400.

I still looking for a way to logically shut off the display with software so that it doesn't wake up everytime I vnc into mine.

[threeprong]

Well done.

[Black]

Excellent, congratulations!
17" or 20"?

There are tips on various boards to look inside the audio port-- the red light should not be on if there's nothing plugged in-- supposedly tickling it with a toothpick can unjam the switch that tells it something is plugged in.

But if you've got external speakers, who cares . . .

[Jimmypoo]

that's a great find! Wish I could find stuff like that. Instead I have 10 yr old iFruits everywhere!

[DavidS]

Nice find! I bought one of these for my wife off Craigslist a few months ago for $400. It was a bit pricey, but I sold her G5 iMac for about the same amount, so I came out even.