I just acquired a Blueberry iMac G3 from a friend for my sister. It's pretty much stock... CD-ROM, 6 GB HD, but it does have a little extra RAM. I want to upgrade the CD to a CD-RW, up the RAM and replace the hard drive. The one that I'm least confident about is the CD-ROM. How difficult is it to replace one in the old iMacs? I've opened one before and feel pretty confident about replacing the HD and adding RAM.

oops. forgot to mention, it's a tray loading CD

Unless you have the parts already, this model is no longer worth bothering with. For the price of parts, you could end up with a much better model that comes stock with the upgrades you want. Or at least they will be far cheaper.

Lowest systems I'd consider investing in: iMac DV 400 or G4 Sawtooth.

I agree with the Ninja. Unless you have all the parts sitting around, I'd save the money, time and effort and get a mini.

Upgrading that system the way you're hoping to is definitely cost prohibitive.

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OWC Larry
Other World Computing
[www.macsales.com]

Internal CDRWs for those iMacs are pretty expensive, unless you really get lucky. Worth than the machine is worth, in fact.

I replaced the dead CD-ROM drive in a Bondi iMac with a working drive. Can't say I enjoyed it, but it's easy enough to do if you go slow, follow the disassembly guide, and don't mind pinching your fingers as you struggle to get the stinkin' thing back together.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2005 03:16PM by ka jowct.

thanks for the updates. I got the machine really cheap and have a 30GB drive, a CD-RW and some RAM lying around. I may have to purchase a bigger stick of RAM, but even with that, the total cost of everything should be under $100 (including the machine I just bought)

> I got the machine really cheap and have a 30GB drive, a
> CD-RW and some RAM lying around.

'Pretty sure there's a proprietary connector on the CDROM drives in the old iMacs. Wasn't it a modified laptop drive?

Get thee one with Firewire and the 120 GB Seagate listed just below.

Grimmy's advice is spot on.

Judging by the specs you listed, it sounds like it doesn't have firewire. That is a very limiting factor.

I bought a 400 mhz Sawtooth off eBay for $105 shipped to my door. Bought a 120 gig Seagate hard drive for $50. Bought an ATI 9000 64 meg video card for $50 and had an older Powerlogix 800 mhz G4 upgrade laying around.

I am putting this together as a Christmas present for my brother in law who has a lime green 266 iMac.

Even going this route, you have to be careful because you can quickly approach the cost of a refurb Mac mini very quickly.

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I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making
him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his
lot by all possible means — except by getting off
his back. - Leo Tolstoy, novelist and Philosopher
(1828-1910)

For those nuts (like me) who might actually consider putting a CD writer or (gasp) Combo drive in this iMac, I might point out to you that you can usually find the Panasonic UJDA-7x0 drives on ebay for the $20-50 range. It's not a difficult replacement, except maybe for the bezel, and I think it will be not too bad for the iMacs. The UJDA-710 drives in particular have come down quite a bit on ebay recently.

But agreed with the other posters, that this isn't really worth doing unless you have the other parts lying around.

Peter, have you ever put one of those Panasonic drives into a tray loader?

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My life goes smoothly and in regular intervals

Damn, MacArtist! You just described my computer!

No, but I've seen the drive inside (e.g., I've replaced the CD-ROM with another CD-ROM) -- and it's the same type of drive, e.g., essentially a laptop drive. Also, it's been posted on xlr8yourmac (I think it was) that people have used the UJDA's to put into their iMacs...

I put a UJDA330 into a 266 tray loader. worked just fine.

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Aloha, Ken


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