eMac Project

Performa

Member
Thanks to an extremely generous donor, the club checked another machine off the wish list- this time in the form of an eMac. To the uninitiated, the eMac is the pseudo-successor to the iMac G3. While the iMac G4 was an excellent machine that was well received, they were prohibitively expensive and insufficiently rugged for the educational sector who still wanted to upgrade to the Power Macintosh G4 ecosystem. As such, the eMac was created- in essence an iMac G4 stuffed inside of an iMac G3-styled enclosure with previous generation CRT technology for the screen- the last time Apple would sell a CRT product. The eMac was sold all but exclusively to the educational sector from 2002 until about 2006 when new flat screen iMacs finally bridged the gap. After they were deemed obsolete, these things were hastily recycled, so while not "rare" exactly, they are getting harder to find these days.

The interest I have in them is in their value as a display unit for our events. I expect quite a few people used these back in their heyday (I know I sure did) and would likely enjoy being reunited with a machine they haven't seen in a decade or more. Likewise, it's a good opportunity to share a somewhat more obscure machine with the Mac nerds and collectors who might not have the space or means to harbor one of these things. I think it'll make a great addition to our lineup!

 

Performa

Member
As of this writing, the machine does not power on, but it needs a good cleaning anyway. I'm hoping to get a moment this weekend to fully disassemble and clean everything out. I may replace the spinning disk hard drive with a solid state CF device while I'm at it; looking over the disassembly guide it looks like the hard disk is buried deep inside the belly of the beast, and it might be wisest to not have to take it all apart again later when/if the spinning disk from the early 2000's finally gives up... if that's not the problem already.

Cosmetically the machine is dusty, and has a fair number of little dings and scratches- but that's pretty typical of any machine that was in an education setting, and I'm confident it'll clean up really nicely. It looks pretty good already, but I feel it'll be a real showstopper once it's got a good shine on it. 😁

 

Performa

Member
Over the last weekend, I managed to get it started!



It does not boot (I'm confident the hard drive is dead) but this is proof positive that the "guts" of this machine are okay. It still needs a complete tear down, clean up, and the hard drive replaced- and only then can the overly-complicated process of reinstalling the OS be started. All that said, I think this machine will be working and cleaned up as best as it can be in the next two weeks or so.
 
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