The iMac is back!

On the other hand, while a machine went missing in the jungle, another was brought back to life. Yup, the iMac lives! Yeeha.. I went to the Curve Apple Store a day before I went to Bukit Tinggi and voila, it was ready by the time I got home. Here's a short story of the iMac (Warning, everything below this line is geekery).

Since I was replacing the analog board in that thing, I thought it would be nice to replace the aging stock 13GB hard disk with a slightly newer 20GB hard disk so I told them to do that too along with taking out a stuck CD inside the slot. It's actually very simple to do all that; I was just not confident with the analog board since it sits under the monitor. Did you know that the current from the monitor is enough to stop the heart? Now you know. So now that all the scary part is done for me, all I got to do is pop in the OS install disk and I should be fine right?.. Nope.

I opted to go with the older, more outdated Mac OS 9 since I don't have enough RAM for Mac OS X. Not only that, I need to use OS 9 anyway to install the updates that'll enable the Mac to boot OS X. So then I pop in the Mac OS 9 install CD into the slot and waited for it to load.. and waited and waited and waited. What the? Guess what, the CD stuck again! Haha.. That's a major problem actually since not only it's stuck inside, the drive won't even read the CD leaving me to conclude that the drive is dead. Oh bugger. I have a computer with an empty hard disk and a dead CD drive. How the hell am I going to install anything?

Here's where oldies stuff came into handy. I pried open the case and replaced the new 20GB hard disk with the old one since it's installed with Mac OS 9 already which wasn't too hard a thing to do. Hurm.. Maybe the next time I want to upgrade this thing I should do it myself and save some cash. My trip inside the Mac also revealed more defect on this 8 year old machine. The speaker diaphragm (the piece of papery like thing on the speaker) has decayed on both sides, probably due to fungus. What? No sound too?! What more could go wrong?

Well, for the time being none.. and i would be very happy if it stays that way. The old hard disk boots up just fine and I've been doing some spring cleaning, trashing out old stuffs and installing some of my files. I can still hear songs, provided I plug in an earphone. I have yet figure out how to connect this baby to the Internet.. should be working on that soon. So, where do I go from here? Next, I think I would go and grab RAM sticks.. this old computer uses an old one, should get it cheap at those second hand shops at Low Yat and only then will I try to install Mac OS X. As for the speakers and optical drive, both have to wait since I am very broke right now. Tisk..

I guess there are a lot more hobbies out there that is as fun yet costs less than this but I guess this is my little oasis. The satisfaction is.. well, satisfactory.I should be doing more of this.. Haha!