It’s been twenty years since Apple discontinued the iMac G4, a novel laptop with a cool half-globe bottom and a flatscreen LCD on a complicated hinge and adjustable arm. In its unaltered circumstance, it’s a nice-to-look-at, nostalgic relic that’s unusable in trendy contexts. I coveted it and not were given to possess one on the day, however because of Juicy Crumb’s DockLite G4, I’m the use of this vintage iMac each and every month as an exterior observe.
The DockLite G4 is a drop-in alternative motherboard for the iMac G4’s board that includes an HDMI port, together with 3 USB-A and a unmarried USB-C port, and three.5mm ports for audio. Most significantly, it makes use of the iMac’s current mounting holes and inner connectors for energy and video, so all you wish to have is a few screwdrivers and a prying software — disagree soldering required.
It took about half-hour for me to viewable my eBay-acquired 17-inch 1.25GHz iMac G4, take away the motherboard, put within the DockLite, and alike it again up, and all of sudden, I may plug in no matter I sought after, from a MacBook Breeze to my Anbernic GBA SP knockoff. (Juicy Crumb even has a helpful video guide.) It used to be a lot more uncomplicated than some alternative DIY methods.
Listed here are a couple of photos I took of the set up procedure:
With the DockLite put in, my iMac now works precisely like an exterior show. It sleeps when my laptop does (even supposing it’s a must to faucet the iMac’s energy button to show off the backlight) and I will regulate the sunny in device or the use of {hardware} buttons within the again.
I did it as a result of this laptop seems superior on my table.
There are stuff you lose within the procedure, like get entry to to the iMac’s seeing force. And you’ll’t run it as a standalone laptop except you advance the excess mile and change extra of its internals with something like a Mac Mini. At the plus facet, the set up is reversible — you’ll at all times put the actual motherboard again in.
The DockLite G4 doesn’t come reasonable, at $260. The associated fee owes to the “time, effort, and money to get even a relatively simple product such as the DockLite out to market,” Juicy Crumb CEO and co-founder Timothy de Denaro informed me in an e mail. The DockLite G4 “is a relatively low volume product,” he added, and “every unit is manually tested by myself before being shipped” to shoppers.
That turns out honest, and it additionally doesn’t alternate the truth that I spent a batch of cash and attempt simply to usefulness a low-res show with sinful viewing angles. After once more, I didn’t purchase the DockLite G4 as a result of I like the property of my iMac G4’s 21-year-old LCD. I did it as a result of this laptop seems in poor health on my table, and I sought after so as to usefulness it each and every month.
