Someone trashed this Bondi Blue iMac G3... can I fix it?
I found a Bondi Blue iMac G3 lying in the street!
In today's Mac-tastic episode of Veronica Explains, I try and get this trashed roadside iMac G3 from 1998 working again. I'll go through all of the steps I took, and we'll see if we can get this classic 90s computer working again.
Huge shout-out to Bryce (@MidnightNotion) for helping me find this beast!
Also, credit is owed to @ActionRetro and @MacintoshLibrarian for having awesome 90s-friendly websites.
And special thanks to Javier Rivera @ARCJavMaster, designer of the #MARCHintosh logo!
Oh, and if you want to help support the channel, please check out / veronicaexplains . I'm not sponsored, so every bit does help. Thank you!
Chapters:
0:00 Let's go #MARCHintosh with this iMac G3 I found in the street!
0:34 Why does the iMac G3 matter?
1:50 How'd I find a Bondi Blue iMac lying in the street?
3:55 Getting the iMac cleaned up and checked
5:00 Inspecting and cleaning the iMac G3 logic board, removing the battery
7:10 Installing an SSD and reassembling the CD-ROM drive in the iMac G3
9:22 Final reassembly and initial testing of the iMac G3
10:25 Moment of truth- does the trashed iMac G3 actually boot up?
11:00 Partitioning and installing Mac OS 8.5.1 on the iMac G3
12:40 Getting the Bondi Blue iMac G3 on the modern internet!
15:02 Cleaning the crud out of the iMac I found in the street
#MARCHintosh #vintagecomputing #Apple
Addendum comment! 1. Pronunciation of "Bondi Blue" (bond-eye vs bond-ee): this falls under "tomato tomato potato potato"- please call your comments off! Language is fluid and if you understand what I mean, that's probably good enough. I pronounce lots of words "wrong" since I'm USian/Minnesotan/whatever. I've heard Apple staff say either one, so I'm confident my meaning is clear here. Besides, if I said it the other way, you all would tell me in the comments how wrong I am! Can't win! ;) 2. See above about pronunciation of GIF. :P 3. I've added a "donation inquiry" section to my contact form at vkc.sh. I probably won't respond in the comments about hardware donations, but you can try the contact form if you have something interesting for this or any other vintage computer I've mentioned on the channel.
Pffft. . . .Americans! Is that eeeither or is it eyether? 🙂 Now all you need to find is a mint-condition Apple Lisa, and then brace ourselves for some more comedy gold with how to pronounce the aforementioned name.
@@cdl0 Wait, there are multiple ways to pronounce Lisa?! (I'm not a native speaker)
@@jacquelineliu2641 Yes! Veronica will surely explain when she finally gets an Apple Lisa and does a video about it.
literally named after australia's best known beach - "bond-eye" :)
@theducks.org but Apple employees literally say it both ways, so maybe we don't need to comment about it, especially when I asked folks not to. Like, there's no way to say it without inviting critical comments from someone. Language is fluid and maybe don't get bothered by folks pronouncing things different than you?
They certainly don’t make them like that any more. What a lovely machine brought back to life. Thanks.
I love how accessible your videos are. Your explanations are always ever so clear and understandable. Please keep making more awesome videos like this Veronica 🤘
The G3 iMac is my most favorite computer of all time. It pretty much DEFINED my childhood in school. I still have mine. Thanks for sharing this.
I remember when I was a kid and these started showing up in my friends' bedrooms. It was a lot of people's first computer that was really theirs -- not the "family's" computer. Good memories!
Woo! Great to see this up and running, with all its screws :) I love these iMacs - my parents bought me a tangerine model as my very first gaming computer way back in the mid 2000s when they were starting to get super cheap. Absolutely loved that thing! Still have it, but it's got a bad flyback, which is a non-trivial part to track down a replacement for, so that's a repair for another day.
I love repair and you did a good job! In the modern era, I love to show people how I’m still rocking a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro I got from a dumpster. Amazing how usable dumpster finds are! Glad you restored this one and didnt let it go to waste!
This is so cool. Even cooler that you did a full restore and not a restomod (aside from the SSD). Happy Marchintosh!
I'm not a fan of restomods in the sense of doing a total replacement of the innards with something modern, but I'll agree making allowances for some modern practicalities like this is necessary.
Love to see your videos and really happy to see you getting that old iMac back up and running. Keep up the good work. It's always a happier day when there's a new Veronica Explains video.
You just took me back to my middle school days Veronica! Thank you. I really enjoyed this video, back to a part of my childhood I hadn't thought about in a very long time and put a huge smile on my face. Hope this machine serves you well into the future. Definitely a cool conversation piece at the very least.
this kind of content is sooo up my alley! you rock veronica, pls keep making awesome videos :D
What an absolute beauty of a machine. Thank you for the video Veronica!
Killer video! I feel like I really missed an opportunity to pick one of these up when every college and high school was dumping these for cheap, so now I'm relegated to getting a fixer-upper, and I'm going to absolutely reference this when I eventually find the imac g3 of my dreams
Excellent video. This gave a great synopsis of your quest without falling too far into the weeds. These old machines are wonderful; I'm happy you saved this one from a landfill. Great job!
Great recovery on the iMac! The iMac colour was named after an Australian beach, and it's pronounce Boni-eye, not Bond-ee - there is a big debate on the Apple KZhead community on this one. Apple marks the caps as part of a checklist post production. This was common in a lot of manufacturers at the time. If the CD-ROM drive is not flush up against the front of the iMac, then it is not mounted correctly. I think you pointed out about the tabby thing, just make sure it hooks into the wire 'U' or Omega shaped spring. BTW, I saw your subnet mask... :)
I have two of these awaiting exactly what you have done to that one. I hope you've prodded my motivation into gear! Great video, thank you.
Seeing that puck mouse brought back high school memories of sitting in the library "surfing the web" and the carpal tunnel that came from using the wretched things!
Great video! So just last week, one of my best friends and I *just* got his orange iMac back up and running again. Great find, and looking forward to your Linux video with this!
Great find. My first computer was an Apple IIGS and years later my first iMac was a well loved iMac G4. Loved that machine. Later I owned the Quicksilver and Mirror Drive Doors PowerMacs which were just beautiful.
Brilliant as always Veronica
Excellent and helpful. I have a Bondi iMac of my own, acquired last year, that I need to open up and inspect. Videos like yours help me prepare for all of the components that will need attention. Thank you for this. Subscribed.
Love the references to Action Retro and Macintosh Librarian! Those channels are awesome, and so are you!!!
You are really fun to watch Veronica, these videos have a certain charm
I really love how you explain stuff. Greeteings from Norway:)
Return of the mac! Good idea getting an expert on the CRT you might only get to make mistakes with the coils once
That's exactly what I was thinking!
Really if you discharge the tube, it's all safe for the most part. but still need to be careful.
@@eupher2 Even after discharge, though, there's still some damage that can be done even beyond the electrical concerns. Between vacuums and sensitive components, I feel good recommending to my viewers that they reach out to experienced technicians when it comes to the finer points of CRT repair.
@@VeronicaExplains That's true it can happen. I respect you for being safe and asking experienced people for help. I wasn't trying to be a wise guy or anything.
I love the vibe of your channel. ❤
Great work👏👏👏
Nice. I had a second hand original iMac in the early 2000's. It was the first machine I ran Linux (Yellow Dog Linux), and OS X on. :)
Thank you for your patience. Great to see it run again :-)
Just subbed - great stuff Veronica!
As someone else with an old G3 iMac (mine's Strawberry Pink!) I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this project someday. Great video!
Wow what a great video Veronica! I know because I've seen it :)
Since you did mention image format pronunciation and obligate me to comment, I guess I must do so: I love your channel and am happy to have found it, thanks for the videos!
Hey, what a find and how great you got it working!! Have fun with it !
Great that this old machine could be and was revived! Congratulations!
I love your use of alteration!
Great find! I have two of these in my basement - one I think has a G4 upgrade. Maybe it's time to dust them off!
A previous employer had a *lot* of iMacs. The pucks never even got to the users’ desks; they were all replaced with Logitech mice. We had a big box full of the unloved and unused things. They’re probably in a landfill.
Wow I loved this video!!!! Your so lucky you were able to find this comptuer like that! How nice it must be to escape the disgusting high prices of these units on online resellers! (your ebay meme about budget breaking made me laugh, its so true!!!) Also, appreciated you message on vintage electronics, always urks me to think of vintage comptuers that could be repurposed for other uses being recycled, or worse, thrown away incorrectly...
Well done!
Congratulations with your free iMac, this restoration video was very satisfying to watch. :)
Your rescued iMac is in WAY better shape than the one I restored. Mine had severe damage to the housing; I buffed it with a headlight buffing kit. It distorts the plastic texture unfortunately, but it looked way better afterwards since it was so bad. Your plastic housing looks amazing still, no yellowing and no deep scuffing. Great find!
Love the Jeff Goldblum ad Easter Egg! I have a non-functioning slot-load G3 that I brought home about 12 years (and two house moves) ago, with the intention making an aquarium. This gives me hope that reviving it is a more realistic project, and it will fit in well with my G3 Powerbook and G3 iBook! Thank you for "finally getting around to this!"
It's magic, when the computer turned on it's pure magic! Congratulations for such excellent channel content.
Each and every one of my personal projects are always seen through to completion, and I'm going to keep telling myself that to avoid my deep shame and embarrassment.
I have a tendency, once the hard parts are doe to lose interest. The end result isn't the goal, it's the problem solving for me.
Mine too. I always finish what
That’s awesome!! ❤
Woot! Great job!
I have an iMac from 2011 that works well with Linux. Expanded its lifespan since Apple dropped support for it past High Sierra and works well with newer distros. I did have to do something to enable brightness control with editing a text file though. Sound would also only work with no further configuration needed after immediate installation if i chose a distro with Pipewire. Otherwise i’d have to go deeper into the system again to enable it.
A friend of mine found a dozen iMacs in a dumpster behind a school. She asked for my help and I was able to get six of them running by exchanging parts between them. She let me have one of those we gotten to work for my time and trouble. This was back in 2003 when a G3 was still quite useful. Not long after that, a church gave me two newer IMac DVs, so I had three of them for awhile before selling them off. I sold the best one to a friend.
The person on KZhead whom, IMO has the most experience with CRTs is Adrian Black, he honestly has a bit of an obsession with them. I literally seen him stitch a broken CRT board back together, flyback and all, composite mods, he even got hold of a CRT rejuvenator and tested it on a few old CRTs once. He is imo probably the best person to ask about CRTs. Also worth noting, you should NEVER EVER open a CRT unless you know how to do it safely, the flyback is usually putting out between 17Kv to 24Kv, if you touch the wrong thing it means almost certain death. Stay safe 😀
Nice job! I too am someone who can heat up a soldering iron as well as a keyboard. I have done a lot with old tube radios (I am old enough to say I cut my tech teeth on tube stuff), and that includes CRT's. For the most part you have a heater circuit with low voltage for the cathode filaments, three electron guns (fancy word for cathode) for red, green, and blue colors, a shadow mask for color convergence and an internal metallic "aquadag' coating. That's the internal anatomy of the CRT. The deflection yoke is three (usually) flat wound coils around the neck that control the electron beams with magnetic fields for the vertical/horizontal sync and picture scan interlace, and you have a "Flyback" transformer that provides the 15-20,000 volts to accelerate the electron beams from the guns into shadow mask/phosphor screen in the front of the tube. The flyback also provides the horizontal beam scan and helps with horizontal sync. Most of this stuff works together with some pretty tight tolerances. Usually if the high voltage flyback circuit craps out, it drags nearly everything else down with it. The best policy for a working crt system is cautiously clean it up with a low suction vacuum cleaner and judicious use of canned air. This is a great idea because high voltage has a big static field that attracts dust. Not only that, the dust will form structures that will eventually form defacto electrodes that can cause high voltage arcing. That will kill everything in short order! So, clean it up and "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies to the rest of everything in there. A word of caution: Please allow the unit to sit for at least half an hour before you open it up and start poking around in the CRT enclosure. There are caps in the flyback circut that can hold very high voltage for a period of time and that can hurt you or damage the equipment if they get shorted to ground with an errant hand tool or finger. Get all of the dust out, make it look pretty (no liquid cleaners please!) and it should work fine and last a long time... Thank you for the videos you post here. One of them inspired me to breathe life into a 2011 Macbook Pro with a nice Linux Mint install. Now it works better than it did on OS-X!
So glad you gave Ms Fox a shout out!! I adore her channel
I love Ms. Fox too. Great job with this old Mac.
ah that old start up sound! Beautiful
Although I wasn't alive at that time, it's still very interesting seeing these older systems Great video!
So just a guess but I have seen capacitors marked like that on RF boards before so I'd be willing to bet it's a certification/QA mark from the factory not someone refurbishing.
This video made me nostalgic and I wasn't even born when these computers were in production
My sister had a 300MHz G3 iMac, I think it was one of the second gen models. I acquired it from her in 2004 after she was about to throw it out. This was back when my Linux skills were....so so; I knew of it, I remembered a few commands from my days of shell accounts, but that was about it. My primary issue back then was trying to install an OS you didn't know on your sole computer. There was this new distro people were talking about, Ubuntu. Since they had PPC support I decided to give it a try. Well that did the trick. I installed that early version of Ubuntu and did all my initial hardcore Linuxing on that iMac. Not an Apple fan, but it made a nice little Linux machine.
They are fairy bulletproof in the metaphorical sense. I still own my Rev B Bondi Blue and I have added a few others since then. One of them had a CRT problem - suspect a crack in the neck. I was working through the HV stuff to remove the scary stuff that drives the CRT with the view to replace it with a 15” 4:3 LCD panel. Alas, that project has been on hold due to ill health. Thank you for the video!
Awesome!!
I worked for an air freight courier when the original iMac came out. I delivered tons of them.
Nice work! I learned a lot by watching your video. I regret giving away my mom's old G3 imac (green colored one), I should've kept it. I still have my old quicksilver G4 with the Iomega drive lol and also the mirrored drive doors G4.
Love it! More vintage Apple stuff, please!
How Bondi blue cool is that. Nicely done. It was too early for them, but I always thought the iMac would benefit from some tasteful LEDs under the back translucent cover. Not sure if it could be done on such a machine natively though.
That battery is what we use in our building automation controllers, since 1998! Amazing.
Awww, great to see a machine rescued, and it looks like it could be an early Rev A iMac too! I just got one of my own tahat's gonna need a little TLC, but this video made me smile! :)
I think it might be a revision B based on the board, but I need to finish reading the service manual. I'm excited to get cracking on some upgrades for it at some point, too. That'll be fun!
About 10 years ago I bought a slot-loader G3 DV out of a pile at an electronics recycler for $3, on the condition that I removed the hard drive onsite. That was one of my most challenging surgeries to date, only possible because I'd just done a combo drive swap on another G3 and it was fresh in my memory. The lone screw wedged somewhere in the case brought back some late nights spent trying to get those two G3s back together; I think it's a rite of passage for working on these machines.
In my area (lower edge of Connecticut) we have "bulk trash pickup" twice a year where the city will haul away almost anything you put on the curb for free. People clean out their basements, attics, closets, etc, and pile it all up on the curb. 80% of it is trash, but about 20% is stuff that's still usable. I've seen 3-4 of these iMacs over the years. I know nothing about the Mac and dont' really have a desire for one. I did bring one home for my friend once. I think he got it working. I also gave him some kind of Mac that looked like a big, white CRT monitor (not one of the 4" thick flat ones), but he said that one didn't work. Of course I see a lot of old Dell and such systems. They usually fall into one of two categories: Complete, but older with weak specs, or newer with good specs, but missing components. Oh and laptops that are missing the power supplies about 98% of the time. The last one I found is a Dell i5 that doesn't boot. According to Google, it needs a new CMOS battery, which is super easy to install. You just remove the hard drive, remove the memory, remove the keyboard, open the case, take out the power switch, disconnect all the cables, remove the motherboard, flip it over and pop in the battery. Simple!
Old is GOLD ❤
I attended a large, northeastern US university from 1999 to 2003. I remember campus computer labs filled with these machines as a freshman but by the time I was a junior, and a full fledged computer geek working for the university's residential network management arm, they were all gone. It's easy to forget just how quickly technology, the companies associated with it, and the pubic attitude towards it changed during that time period. I didn't see it happen but I'm sure my school filled dumpsters with iMacs over some summer break and brought in truck loads of Dell towers to replace them.
15:37 Thank God! My brain couldn't handle knowing there were missing screws.
I love that you included the Cherry and Spoon on your map animation.
Pretty damn cool!
great vid
the grounded wrist strap reveal was the best .... the ssd and adapter was really cool too :)
Nice find. I recall that time, here in Brazil appeared a lot of "G3 look alike clones" but they were ordinary PCs from several other brands.
Veronica this video made me sub a thumbs up and soon after my fingers wouldn't stop and i hit that subscribe button. Dam girl thank you
I always love to see older equipment getting a second (or third) chance at life.
Another great video! I am embarrassed to say that my ey had one of these machines. I had put all of our music on it I realize now that I should have rescued it. Live and learn!
New favorite youtuber! Especially with those punk outros! So entertaining!
Loved this, the year I started middle school here in NZ they got 4 new G3s for the library, I think old versions of Debian might support PowerPC
I remember those from a tech school I went to, I cant imagine learning web design in a room full of fruity iMacs. Awesome to see one resurrected and fully functional. Look forward to an old school Slackware install on it!
Regarding recycling hardware I just recently donated a HP Z230 workstation to a student along with a fresh copy of Debian 11.
Admittedly, I'm not the biggest Mac fan out there but I do maintain a new M2 Air to keep tabs on the iDevices in the house...but in a corner sits a Graphite iMac DV SE with some upgrades...yes it still runs OS 9 cause I want it that way. Nice classic iMac with that lovely CRT display...so good for a trip back in time.
This was the iMac that they used in the computer lab at my photography school, and it sure brings back memories.
First time viewer here. Great video, love the intro, and the graphic effects. Bondi named after Bondi beach in Sydney.
great job Veronica! you could install on it some linux distro for old computers!
felicitaciones Veronica muy bueno soy admirador de todo lo retro de Apple me encanto😂😂😂
Awesome video, kickstand goes below.
Computer so old even Louis Rossman won't fix. Jokes aside, on one hand it's sad people throw away perfectly functional computers but it's also understandable if it can only run ancient browsers like IE4. Would love to see if it can run a modern Linux distro
Linux distros for 32-bit PPC are starting to be pretty rare, but Adelie exists and might even perform decently for some tasks. Perhaps a bigger issue for super old machines is the hardware requirements of modern browsers, even much newer netbooks can be unbearably slow. Personally I think the best use for these things is installing OS9 to enjoy a wide selection of classic games, or if that doesn't interest you, the combination of a CRT and decent speakers makes for a surprisingly nice little DVD/CD player. It should also be noted that classic MacOS is super fast on these machines, you could totally use it for a variety of other non-online basic tasks too.
Well Done!. I put Yellow Dog Linux on my own Rev A Bondi Blue iMac when it first became available. Fun fun fun!
i assumed this was a macintosh librarian video in my sub feed, was very confused when i saw your face instead of hers 14:15 and then you shouted her out! 😆
She's really great!
@@VeronicaExplains absolutely!
I love old tech. I picked up a IBM Model M today for 10$ and it works.
Of course, it still works. Seen a lot of PCs left for trash, but never in my life a Mac.
I have two (bondi blue and, uh, blueberry? blue, the one with the 128mb Rage Pro card in it) that I need to do all this to. I have a ton of great software but neither drive works. Glad to see a refurb in action before I attempt rebuilds on these.
Now all you need is an original power cable. And regarding dirty electronics, there's a broken old iMac I might take home which was so dirty I didn't realize it had the transparent plug.
Funny that I returned to Slackware after an all-too-long hiatus with a dumpster find Compaq. My home net is strung together with a managed 48 port 1000base-T switch a trash picker friend found lying out for trash. It's sometimes quite comical what people discard.
My first Mac was an iMac G5 with "Panther", back in 2004, so these I only know from the Internet. Luck you! ☺
Thank you for saving this lovely dumpster iMac! Video idea: "I Did My Taxes With Quicken 98" edit: Woohoo, FrogFind!
"I did my taxes with Quicken 98 and only got audited three times: The Veronica Explains story"
@@VeronicaExplains 😂😅
Both T2SDE and Debian 8 work really well on the G3 iMac. Most other distros really struggle with the rage 128 gpu though.
THANK YOU FOR PROMOTING E WASTE DISPOSAL!! Much love from NZ and an retro refurbisher that runs an e waste program!
I actually had one of these at one point. It wasnt very powerful, so I configured it as a thin client and made my home server handle all of the grunt. This was most ironic considering said home server was powered by a 3.2ghz Pentium 4, and so itself wasnt all that, but it was a damn sight faster than that poor old Mac.