Tech Surgery Gone Wild (Part 4)
When last we left my friend’s ancient iMac, it had OS 9, but was still not much more than a glorified paperweight. This past Friday, we finished the job. First, the 128 MB RAM module was pulled from the broken iMac, as well as its bottom plastic plate to replace the broken one on the new machine. Then, we installed the RAM into the new iMac, for a total of 192 MB, more than enough for Panther. Next, I installed the iMac firmware update, which was a painless procedure. Finally, we were ready to install OS X…
…And, it went off without any major hitches. We got his machine online, and began to install the copious amount of software updates that it needed: 10.3.9 update, security update, Daylight Savings Time update, iTunes update, Safari update, etc. It took longer to update the damn thing than it did to install OS X.[1] We had enough time to go back out into the elements for dinner at Wendy’s, and got back to find it still installing updates.
Now, though, my friend is finally online and able to read the harrowing struggle of getting his ancient machine functioning with the world. Of course, the question now remains about what to do with the busted 500Mhz iMac DV sitting in the corner of my room in a box, and with no bottom plastic base.
- Seriously. OS X installed in about 30 minutes from startup to welcome screen. ↩
