These have mobile CPUs, not desktop chips like the E4400. This iMac has a T7300, which makes it the slowest aluminium iMac. You can upgrade these to a "Penryn" CPU like the T9300 and have it run MacOS 12 with opencore legacy. They also have the HDD temperature sensor externally, so you can upgrade these just fine with an SSD. As this is basically a PC and includes a BIOS compatibility mode which let's it install almost all Linux distros and Windows 10 via USB. They don't work too well, but they will install. That fixes ALL of your software incompatibility issues.
The newer OS might work with Open Core, but the software you want may not. I found that Monterey worked fine on a 2010 Mac Pro, but software that expected AVX crashed hard, That vintage Xeon doesn't have AVX.
A few things to note: - You can update the OS to macOS 10.11, but old PowerPC apps will not work with macOS 10.7 or later, due to the removal of Rosetta, the PowerPC-to-Intel compatibility layer. I recommend to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6) for that. It's a great and fast OS (one of my favorite operating systems!). - This computer, just like most Intel iMacs with dedicated graphics, has a laptop GPU (so it's a Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT on an MXM card). - Maybe I'm wrong, but this model of iMac could have some leaky capacitors, especially on the power supply...
The old Mac rabbit-hole! I've been PC since time immemorial, so checking out old Macs and finding how they're different is a ton of fun. They're weird, have open source hacks, specific IFKYK command line fixes, and a lot of archived community posts. Sometimes they work smooth as glass, sometimes they gaslight you. Thanks for the video!
I inherited one of these - so it cost me nothing. I upgraded it from 1Gb to 4Gb RAM; replaced the hard drive with an SSD; and replaced the T7300 processor with a T9300. The processor upgrade means it’ll work with Catalina on Opencore. However, I just replaced MacOS with Ubuntu 24.04, and it works really well for basic computing use.
Mac always had a tendency to do indexing when they power on older systems. That’s why they generally feel slower in the beginning and speed up as you continue using them.
@@Techlevel1534. They're slow. You can upgrade everything but whatever CPU you give it, it'll be slow. But if you have a little patience, they're a good way to mess with Apple stuff for pennies. Mine runs the latest OS off an SSD and with a 4GB RAM upgrade. It got a great deal of use before I upgraded my main PC.
I use g5 2008 using Tiger, $60.00 and $70.00 for shipping. The seller on eBay(years ago) emailed me so I could set it up. I may want to add 9 but am uncertain how to do that. Tiger OS, for the Widgets! I might upgrade to Leopard, instead.
As an ex-CeX worker, it always amuses me seeing how other shops would handle computers like this. We had a strict no Apple keyboard/mouse = no buy policy with iMacs but the account being left on there is a common mistake in so many poorly run branches. The staff usually couldn't give half a shit and I had my fair share of email communications with other stores trying to clean up their messes such as store accounts! Even at their worst grade it amazes me that they bought this in, hardly worth the buy in for the store. There's an operations manual that all branches have to abide by but you know yourself, the average CeX worker probably doesn't know it exists lol
I owned a Mac . The one that was a CRT and PC built into the case one of the first all in one systems. Was a blue see through case. Made the very best door stop I ever had for the shed out back. And yes it did work just fine. Wished now I had kept it, but the neighbors boy wanted it so I gave it to him with the Keyboard and mouse that came with it.
There are two options you can do for an older mac like this, either use a open source modern coded browser or use open core to update to an unsupported operating systems with hacked drivers
For something like this it might be worth downgrading to OS 10.6 so that you can then get PowerPC apps working on it, such as old retro games this thing was designed to run. I doubt it would be very fast trying to run 10.15 (the last supported OS for any modern software) very well at all even if using Opencore Legacy Patcher.
@@TheSpotify95 The gaming experience on these is hot garbage. Not worth it at all. Call of Duty 2 ran at like 10 fps on my early 2006 rig. 2008 iMac is better enough to warrant something more, those can run OS X Sonoma no problem. Speaking from experience. SSD upgrade and 4GB RAM, runs it quite well aside from the CPU being a wee bit slow.
i'm running linux mint on a 2009 imac with c2d. works fine for watching movies, either via streaming or by downloaded mp4 files or DVD. it can handle basic web browsing and email tasks, although mine is maxed out with 16gb ram and an SSD which improves the usability GREATLY.
Chuck in an SSD and install more ram, then use OpenCore Legacy Patcher and you can run the current and latest version of Mac OS on it! (Albeit a bit slow)
Apple says maximum support of 4GB but users have tested it with 6Gb of ram, which thinking of it, 3Gb ddr2 modules sound so odd. But even then, 4GB can run Mac OS, I ran Sonoma on a first gen 2008 MacBook Air with 2GB of ram for giggles, it was hilariously slow, but still faster than using an old mechanical hard drive
@@TheSpotify95 the maximum amount of RAM this iMac can take is 6gb using one 4gb and one 2gb RAM module. This is a firmeware limitation. It can run Open Core Legacy patcher, and I have found actually that a modern OS with modern software runs faster than an older outdated OS in my experience albeit with a late 2013 iMac that has 4 RAM slots and the native built in SSD option it even supports 4K without dropping frames and plays Minecraft on low settings at a reasonable 40fps. That said I spent about $500 all up, which is a lot more than 30 quid. But, on the other hand, bringing it up to the latest OS version it can run stably would prolong its life.
I ran an Early 2008 24" iMac for 14 years as my DD right up until late 2022 when it finally died (the PSU failed). It worked beautifully. TBF I did replace/upgrade the parts multiple times over the years just to keep it going. Specs: 3.06GHz, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD, ATI HD 2600 Pro 256MB, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The only problem was most browsers weren't updated except for Opera (at the time) therfore limiting me to said browser. Almost all apps I downloaded from the Mac App Store weren't up-to-date either due to the outdated OS. Other than that, it just worked. It was still a modern PC. I still have it sitting on the floor waiting for the day I get a replacement PSU. I miss using a Mac now that I'm on PC. That's a whole other story for another time.
And with OpenCore Legacy Patcher you can probably even get something like Monterey running on it. I have Monterey running on a 2010 Mac Pro Server and it works wonderfully.
@@cleanycloth I investigated that shortly before my Mac died but decided against it because the process looked complicated and I didn't want to stuff it up given it was the only computer I had. Now that I have a PC I might tinker with the old Mac. How's performance of Monterey on a C2D?
@@mcrazza Not so well, I had Big Sur on my Early 2008 17" MacBook Pro (the last non-Unibody) and it ran but not very good (despite SSD and 4 Gigs of RAM, the maximum), I then returned to 10.9 Mavericks (last with Skeumorphism) and now to 10.15 Catalina, it still runs decent. Also the temperatures (I use Macs Fan Control) are better with Catalina, while it was almost constantly running rather hot with Big Sur. They say you should at least have a quadcore CPU for newer than Catalina, so late 2009 iMac with i5/i7 (or upgrade the i3).
@@mcrazza Monterey was a little slow on my Core 2 Duo 2010 Mac Mini, but it was definitely usable. It was probably more down to my BX500 SSD that I've heard sometimes can be a bit weird with macOS. OCLP works with Big Sur onwards, below that you have DosDude1's patchers (and Catalina ran great on my 2010 Mini)
OCLP's gotten really good in the last year. They can easily be daily drivers on the latest macOS for the next 5 or so years so long as the hardware doesn't die.
I got a similar one of these for free back in college from a previous job I worked. I just had to replace the cracked screen cover. It worked fine as a League of Legends machine and it would play the then current version of War Thunder on low settings around 45-60 FPS. I was also able to get an extra 500Mhz by swapping in a used mobile Core 2 Extreme chip which helped minimum frame rates a bit. Luckily it was one that had a Radeon HD 2600 Pro instead of the Intel GMA graphics like some of them had around that time.
I've got a 2008 24inch running el capitan and that is a sweet spot with plenty of modern apps and browsers and you can dual boot leopard for power pc support. Love these things
I was kind of hoping you would throw an SSD in there and clone the old disk drive onto it. I'd love to see a supplemental video and see what it runs like that way....same software just a better drive. I would also like to see what it is like running Windows, and Lenox....
I remember having a 2006 Imac with snow leopard installed and that thing was a beast, ran steam (until it was unsupported so I had to use Wine instead), Ran pretty much anything I put on it, it was fantastic. When it died (Either a cap burst or something because I remember it making a loud pop with some smoke bellowing out the top) and that was the biggest loss I've had to deal with.
Found a 2019 iMac for around €90. Still opted for a Linux OS. Dealing with unsupported systems is just not worth the effort for average use. The day the latest possible version will not be compatible with a recent program update is always closing in fast. Especially on Macs sadly.
@@berkant_k No, definitely not that old. :) It has DDR4. But maybe it was 2017 though come to think of it. It didn't say the year on the "about" thing for some reason. It's 3.4quad, RP5604G 4K so I could probably find the year in one of those model spec charts. But yes, apart from some annoyance with sound support and sleep mode being weird Linux plays very nice with it. But that Cirrus sound thing is the only real meddling needed. The reason I got it that cheap was it seemed to have fallen out of a car or something. While moving. So there was quite some work to get the glass off the screen. As compared to no effort really on those older models of the video. It also make an even louder squeaky sound from the hinge. So that is probably also due to the traffic incident. ;D
Bluetooth tethering is a great thing when using older tech. Used it myself, connecting an Asus pda to internet by tethering it to my android device. Worked like a charm, sadly the browser on that pda is completely useless nowadays
I got a pair of these for 40 quid a while back, one was in *sore* shape (snapped off parts, held together with blu-tac), so I stripped its for spares (I might have a good hinge, if you want one, but be warned it's a NIGHTMARE to get to).But the other was decent enough to shape to do something with. The real hot sauce is these are, for an AIO, and a non-Pro Apple product, pretty easy to work on and upgrade. The whole thing can be accessed by getting a pair of decent suction cups and popping the glass off the front (carefully) - it's held in with strong neodymium magnets. Then undo 8 Torx screws and remove the screen (again carefully) and then you have access to all the internals. It's a doddle! The CPU is a laptop-style 'Socket P' ZIF, the GPU is on a removable MXM card and the Hard drive is a full-blooded 3.5" desktop drive. I have thrown a cheap 128GB SATA SSD, a faster 2.4GHz 'Penryn' C2D CPU and a GeForce 9600M 512MB MXM GPU card and it absolutely sings.
These things a beasts. I have the larger model, installed Manjaro, replaced the thermal paste, substituted the drive with an SSD and gave it a ram upgrade. Probably good for another few years.
I picked up a mid 2011 iMac 21.5 with 1tb Hdd, 8gb ram i5 2.7 with Apple keyboard for £30 !! Upgraded to 1gb SSD, 32gb Ram and works a treat !! Nice video !! Henry is great 😂
8:08 I still use Data over BT PAN for my phones. Consumes less power than a wifi hotspot. Basically sharing data to other phones via BT. For Windows its still supported as well.
This is the kind of hardware I like seeing. The thing can still punch way above its weight, or could. I wish I could watch a part two in which you would test it with other OSs, Same hardware and all. just to see how useable it could get just from an OS swap.
I got a whole lot of these from a school. I recycled/sold most but I kept all the 24 inch c2d imacs with 8800m gts graphics. Ive got them dualbooting xp/vista. With the 8800 graphics they make for awesome mid 2000s xp/vista gaming machines. since its an all in one unit its super easy to whip them out on an afternoon and play some older games.
I bought the 26 inch white model from the same year and the 20 inch aluminium version. Suffered with them until loading them full of emulators and dual booting them to Linux for internet and UA-cam. The screens were by far the best thing about them
For those with an older password locked Mac, OSX up to I think El Capitan have a password reset tool on their installers. Create a USB installer for your OS, boot in, go to tools, password reset utility. Easy peasy, you can set a new password for any account on that Mac.
I’m watching this video on the same exact iMac lol. it’s been my daily driver since 2009. In fact, I think mine might be one year older than yours. I didn’t pay for the crazy expensive for gigabyte memory stick so I just have four gigs of memory in it, but I put linux mint after Catalina was no longer supported, and it still has given me no reason to replace it. In fact, I use it as a I use it as a computer. I Disney+ and all my movies and videos right on this. I have it next to my bed. It’s literally the best computer I’ve ever had. I’ve had a problem with it. The original hard drive about a year ago so I replaced it with SsD, but I took it out. The original hard drive started to work again so I might not have even needed to change the hard drive. discount computer still makes a great daily driver. It plays video flawlessly with no buffering.
last time i picked up a cheap mac was at the start of the pandemic. had some fun playing with it and tearing it apart. upgraded it to an ssd and flipped it. made $20 profit and got to have fun. win win.
I have a 27 inch 2010 iMac that I still use as a monitor. Screen is still gorgeous (yes I know it's not efficient, burns more power than a normal monitor).
around 2015 I upgraded the company I worked for from these imacs to the new i5 macbooks of the time. No one wanted these imacs but i just thought they were cool and convenient. They ran Adobe cs5 just fine. Its got a webcam, speakers, and monitor all in one package you can throw around. The screen was held on by magnets so easy to work on. I took them all home and they've been wonderful to randomly have. I have one running Ableton 8 I still mess around with beats and recording on. I have 1 running adobe cs5 which has been super convenient to just have. I have 1 connected to my ancient printer acting as a print server. I have a couple of them running arch linux and windows 7 for my kids to play old games, browse the web in their rooms, and parsec into the gaming PCs we have in the basement because they take up such little space and its all in one. Definitely don't sleep on these.
Would be interesting to see how any modern version of macOS runs using the OpenCore patcher. According to Everymac, those Core2 iMacs go up to El Capitan officially(!) with a RAM upgrade. In my experience, a lot of the issues these older Macs have software-wise can be fixed by reinstalling or upgrading the OS. I'd love to see it struggling to run Sonoma or Ventura^^ I also love these more improvised videos, reminds me of old Druaga1
The thing you have to remember with cex, as long as it turns on and they can do basic things they don't care what state it's in. The one thing I won't buy are hard drives as I bought drives years ago and took them back because they were practically dead. Their excuse with them is as long as they can format it, partition it, copy a file to and from it then it works. When I took one back they tested it and put it back out to sell.
I just recently busted out my old a1176 mac mini. Whoever had it before me actually upgraded the thing to a t5600 c2d and the 3gbs of ram and even a bigger hard drive. I have linux installed and use it as a basic plex server for my movie collection. Probably only one person outside of my house will use it and so far its been great for in home use. I removed everything non essential, the wifi and bluetooth, the super drive, etc. I plan to attempt to install a bigger fan where the disk drive was to hopefully help with the cooling (also because the old fan bearings sound like they are about to go out anytime, but the fan still works.) Had to repaste the poor thing as when I took the heatsink off the cpu came with it.
Those optical drives can be a crap-shoot. I've had a couple of iMacs that arrived with borked drives. They're not too terribly difficult to change out. I mean, I've opened up these enough times that I can almost do it in my sleep. Congrats on the fun find!
i used to be extremely anti-apple... all the way up until around January this year. for some reason I have had a very, very strong interest develop in absolutely everything they have ever done, especially the older hardware from when Jobs was the man. this video has inspired me to find something similar instead of buying another single board computer!
I have one of these (late 2008) iMacs. It was actually gifted to me by a friend. I mainly use it as a secondary audio device/recorder with old copies of Logic Pro, EzDrummer, BiasFX ect... Upgraded the OS to El Capitan, maxed the ram (6gb) and installed an internal 500gb SATA SSD, which dramatically improved performance BTW. I also highly recommend the ArticFox mozilla variant browser as it seems to run way smoother IMO. There is also a way to get iMovie 9 on these, which has way more features than the current iMovie version. I know that with OCLP these can run many newer unsupported OS versions, although personally I wouldn't push it too far without upgrading the CPU. It also runs Mario and Zelda N64 emulation roms like a champ. My current daily driver is actually a late 2013 21.5" iMac that I picked up local for just $50. Did a complete DIY tear down and refurbish/upgrade. Final specs: Intel Quad-Core i7 4770S Nvidia GTX 750M 1gb GPU 16gb of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM 256gb NVME internal drive 1tb HDD internal drive 1tb Sandisk external SSD Not too shabby. I mean, for what it is anyway. Right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've also paired it with an additional 20" Cinema Display that I got with an old G5 dual cpu Power PC rig I had laying around. I'm pretty much exclusively an audio recording enthusiast, so this old iMac (after quite a LOT of elbow grease) suits me just fine. Great vid mate! Cheers!
I had an iMac from that era, maybe not as low-end as this but close, that my brother bought during his short-lived Apple fansciation era. As a certified Apple hater I run Windows on it for a few years and used it as my secondary computer, for office work and such. Wasn't too bad, could even play Eve Online pretty well, but the Windows driver situation was sketchy at best, you had to basically research the parts and finds stuff online piece by piece. Got it fully funtional, you could say, although I never managed to force the monitor to scale properly. I think the streched image would drive me insane nowadays, but I somehow didn't care back then. Fun memories. ^^
I put windows 10 on mine - and have a dual boot system.. I got mine for £30....is great! I also use it as a DVD player - awesome!! Can't believe what u get for the money and love the screen! £30 won't get u a screen like that for a pc option!
I recently helped my mom with an x86 iMac which Apple'd dropped support for. Put a user-friendly Linux distro on there, and now it's got supported browsers, Steam, etc. Runs faster, too.
This reminds me a bit of my brother's old 2011 Mac mini. It ran like absolute dogsh** with a mechanical HDD with High Sierra, but was snappy and fine with Lion. With an SSD It could handle High Sierra well enough, but in the end even that got too "old" for modern enough software and after he upgraded his sound interface to something that didn't need Firewire he got rid of it. There seems to be a weird trend that macOS/OSX and Windows share - Windows 7/8 (and even early versions of 10) and old OS X versions could run really well on HDDs, but then something got updated and using HDDs as the system drive became unbearably slow somewhat suddenly.
The optimum disk reading strategy for a spinning platter is very different from that for an SSD. An SSD has no penalty for random reads, there is no head to move, nor any rotational latency.
I have a late 09 MacBook Pro. Opencore legacy and going to a more modern OS fixed a lot of compatibility issues. Running 12.7 on an Ssd. Its great for a garage computer. Much better than my dell of the era
I just fixed Ivy Bridge era Macbook Pro. Still somewhat useful today if you will turn the blind eye on on Intel HD 4000. Plays Full HD 60fps and together with 16GB does the job.
My 12,1 Mid 2011 27’ iMac thanks to OCLP, a GTX 880M 8GB GPU for Full Metal Support (custom Apple Firmware flashed), 32GB DDR3 RAM, Core i7 CPU upgrade and 2TB Samsung EVO 860 SSD (with OWC HDD Thermal Sensor to restore fan speed control). I can run the latest version of macOS when OCLP has patches available. Love it ❤
I had a 2013 iMac and used it until 2021. It really was amazing, what Apple made of that hardware. Unfortunately the support for newer updates was dropped and then it ended up becoming a brick, which is a shame.
The combination of Adobe CS5.5 and MacOs SnowLeopard is surprisingly usable. In all my years of experience, I think SnowLeopard has been the most stable OS I've used. Sonoma on an M2 Pro is far more volatile by comparison. My 8,1 2.8 C2D Extreme with 6GB RAM and 1TB HDD is just too good to throw away.
I still have a 2006 iMac 17" which i got for 20€ in 2017, with a failing harddrive. Replacing that turned it into a nice machine. Installed windows 7 on it and it could barely run GTA 4 with its Radeon X1600.
I still have a G4 PowerMac which runs 10.4 and has both the full adobe suite and Macromedia. I've had it since 2000, only problem I ever had was the cmos battery died and I had to replace it.
I have a slightly newer iMac like this and it is stupid fast. It has High Sierra and I can run a normal version of Chromium from around 2023. Zero slowdowns, insanely fast boot times with the harddrive. It is crazy whatever dark magic these things perform to work this well
Getting serious SC3K vibes. I rescued a similar spec MacBook Pro off a skip, threw in a drive with XP on it and it ran with it. It’s one heck of a retro gaming rig apart from finding drivers for the sound.
I recently bought one of these for $50(£40). Mine is the higher end one with the 2.66ghz cpu, and 2600 XT graphics. I have it running Mojave currently, though I plan to try Sonoma. Also your iPhine hotspot should connect if you enable "Maximize Compatibility" in the settings.
To get Halo to work you'll need a modern launcher, the launcher is broken on newer versions of MacOS. The new launcher I use is called HaloMD. I have used it on my 2009 MacBook Pro running Mavericks, but it'll work on mountain lion.
I’ve got several old iMacs I use for photo editing. One is running High Sierra and the other runs Sonoma with open core legacy patcher. They work just fine. You’re missing Rosetta for the older power pc software. OSX Lion I believe was the last OS with the Rosetta install option.
Watching the video on a 2010 iMac - Mac OS Ventura via Opencore with the OS on an SSD that replaced the DVD drive. It's as fast as you would wish. The local landfill must be feeling quite frustrated.
I used to have this exact model. It didn’t play games great especially when the final supported version of osx slowed it down something fierce but man those speakers were something else especially for built in speakers
I still have a 2010 Mac Mini with a core2duo and 8GB RAM. I might try and replace the 320GB HDD with an SSD and see how it performs. Your video has inspired me to have a go!
I am certainly not a Mac guy (had to use one for work for a while and have no desire to go back), but I found a machine similar to this while walking around my neighbourhood - where I live, if you have stuff you want to make disappear, you just leave it on the kerb - I once even found a working NES. I haven't figured out what I am ultimately going to do with it - the main reason I picked it up was to use as a teaching tool for computer repair. It is missing the bezel around the display but it boots and I was able to get into the OS after finding that one of the accounts had a blank password. It might make a decent Linux machine
i've got a G5 model, and it lasted just long enough to clean install whatever the last version of osx was that will run on it plus whatever apps came preloaded before the panel crapped out, and it has been sitting in the shop ever since. last week, i was gifted a dead 17" laptop, so a panel transplant is in order (i'm assuming the display connector will be the standard deal, but i never went that deep in to it). for whatever brief period i had to play w/ it, i liked using it more than i thought i would. last i checked, someone was still managing a modern linux distro that would run on powerpc, so maybe i just go that route. hope it will recognize the iphone 8 plus i was also gifted last week and now using as my daily
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I would recommend redoing the thermal paste on the CPU and definitely the GPU - the 2007 - 2009 era of imac (a1225) do not have enough thermal paste on the GPUs, so they are a common point of failure. Additionally I would suggest upgrading the CPU to a penrhyn T9300 or T9500, so you can install a version of Mac OS above El Cap. Theoretically (GPU drivers not withstanding) you could run Ventura via opencore legacy.
I´ve tried twice to buy used old Macs for daily use, and both times the experience with the software was much worse than this. So now I just stick to old Windows computers. Still got a nice Windows 7 machine for daily use, which has a virtual machine for windows 11 when I need it lol.
I have one with a perin C2D 2.4 ghz running linux mint from a internal sata SSD and it runs great. Its my kitchen pc i use it a lot. Under linux mint you get any modern browser, security, wifi connections, the sound is good youtube runs minecraft runs. Its easy to put away to the side i find these to be a bargen. You will need to clean the inside of most are just one big dust ball inside.
Grat vid, and nice find for so cheap. There is a simple fix for most Apple products, 1. Have a Angry Aussie yell at it, 2. Beat it with a 1 Grit slab of concrete, 3. Throw it in the trash XD
Crazy i was at work listening to a WAN show live stream the other night and thlught about this channel and how i hadnt seen a video in a while. Glad to have you back!
Opening and cleaning it would help, new thermal paste and an ssd., and a Linux distro such as Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 / LMDE 6 all of that would really improve it's performance.
Lol. I was actually watching this video on an old 27 inch IMac (mid 2011) but it's a 2.7 GHz Intel core i5, 8 gigs of memory 1333 mhz ddr3 with an AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 mb. MacOS Sierra (10.12.6) Bought it off of Craigslist for $120 (USD) Had no trouble installing Chrome for a Browser and it runs UA-cam videos well. No problems with videos at 1080p. Buffers a bit running one in 4K but that could be either the system or the internet connection.....
i got one of these for about $100 back in early 2020, it was an early 2009 20” model with 2GB of RAM and GeForce 9400M it was quite slow on 10.11 due to the lack of RAM but i upgraded it to 8GB as it’s quite easy on those older iMacs and it was actually quite usable as most modern browsers and apps still supported it at the time. i remember being able to play some old version of Minecraft (likely 1.8.9) and getting an average of like 32 fps. at some point i even upgraded it to 10.13 with a patcher and it worked fine, i used it for a good while until i needed the RAM for some other project and now it lives in my trash heap with all of the other machines i’ve had to pull parts from. edit: my bad, forgot it was a 2009 model-
The iMac with the 9400M is the early 2009 model which has DDR3. The 2008 ones had DDR2 and can only take 4GB. It seems like they could take 6GB with a 4GB module and a 2GB one, but 4GB DDR2 modules are expensive...
Nice Video Sir, I couldn’t help but notice that you put the Disk in the wrong way round at: 13:52 and not sure if you realized your mistake? I picked an identical iMac up a few years ago which had been upgraded to a 250Gb SSD & it’s running OS X EL CAPITAN, I still use it even now from time to time and it’s not a bad little machine! Anthony - Birmingham
i just got one of these for free and several others got 2 2015 27 5k retina imacs one i5 one i7, a 2011 imac 21.5 and one 27 similar, with a core 2 duo e8235
I think these devices are perfect for people who are not tech-savvy or don't need to do complex tasks on their computers. For example, older people might find them very useful. They are affordable and easy to use. Of course, this works only if all the programs that people use are working properly.
These have mobile CPUs, not desktop chips like the E4400. This iMac has a T7300, which makes it the slowest aluminium iMac. You can upgrade these to a "Penryn" CPU like the T9300 and have it run MacOS 12 with opencore legacy. They also have the HDD temperature sensor externally, so you can upgrade these just fine with an SSD. As this is basically a PC and includes a BIOS compatibility mode which let's it install almost all Linux distros and Windows 10 via USB. They don't work too well, but they will install. That fixes ALL of your software incompatibility issues.
The newer OS might work with Open Core, but the software you want may not.
I found that Monterey worked fine on a 2010 Mac Pro, but software that expected AVX crashed hard, That vintage Xeon doesn't have AVX.
A few things to note:
- You can update the OS to macOS 10.11, but old PowerPC apps will not work with macOS 10.7 or later, due to the removal of Rosetta, the PowerPC-to-Intel compatibility layer. I recommend to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6) for that. It's a great and fast OS (one of my favorite operating systems!).
- This computer, just like most Intel iMacs with dedicated graphics, has a laptop GPU (so it's a Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT on an MXM card).
- Maybe I'm wrong, but this model of iMac could have some leaky capacitors, especially on the power supply...
Yes and then you can play Simtown!!!
Can these run XP?
@@Fahrenheit38 I think so!
@@Fahrenheit38yea. 10.6 has windows xp drivers
@@Fahrenheit38 it can and even up to windows 11! writing this from a 2008 imac c2d on tiny 11 with an ssd and it runs silky smooth!
The old Mac rabbit-hole! I've been PC since time immemorial, so checking out old Macs and finding how they're different is a ton of fun. They're weird, have open source hacks, specific IFKYK command line fixes, and a lot of archived community posts. Sometimes they work smooth as glass, sometimes they gaslight you. Thanks for the video!
I inherited one of these - so it cost me nothing. I upgraded it from 1Gb to 4Gb RAM; replaced the hard drive with an SSD; and replaced the T7300 processor with a T9300. The processor upgrade means it’ll work with Catalina on Opencore. However, I just replaced MacOS with Ubuntu 24.04, and it works really well for basic computing use.
Mac always had a tendency to do indexing when they power on older systems. That’s why they generally feel slower in the beginning and speed up as you continue using them.
Im actually watching this from a 2008 imac with mac os catalina and an ssd. It only costed me 50$usd in mint condition!
I’m planning to buy one for 30 bucks. How is it for you ?
@@Techlevel1534. They're slow. You can upgrade everything but whatever CPU you give it, it'll be slow.
But if you have a little patience, they're a good way to mess with Apple stuff for pennies. Mine runs the latest OS off an SSD and with a 4GB RAM upgrade. It got a great deal of use before I upgraded my main PC.
I use g5 2008 using Tiger, $60.00 and $70.00 for shipping. The seller on eBay(years ago) emailed me so I could set it up. I may want to add 9 but am uncertain how to do that. Tiger OS, for the Widgets! I might upgrade to Leopard, instead.
As an ex-CeX worker, it always amuses me seeing how other shops would handle computers like this. We had a strict no Apple keyboard/mouse = no buy policy with iMacs but the account being left on there is a common mistake in so many poorly run branches. The staff usually couldn't give half a shit and I had my fair share of email communications with other stores trying to clean up their messes such as store accounts! Even at their worst grade it amazes me that they bought this in, hardly worth the buy in for the store.
There's an operations manual that all branches have to abide by but you know yourself, the average CeX worker probably doesn't know it exists lol
I owned a Mac . The one that was a CRT and PC built into the case one of the first all in one systems. Was a blue see through case. Made the very best door stop I ever had for the shed out back. And yes it did work just fine. Wished now I had kept it, but the neighbors boy wanted it so I gave it to him with the Keyboard and mouse that came with it.
I've always wanted to turn one of those into an aquarium for tropical fish
@@HaonProductionsI will do the same
Ah yes, the Henry cleaner helping the Mac work
Henry did look happy having a PC 😂
"please sir, this is my emotional support henry hoover"
I want someone to look at me the way Henry looks at that Mac.
@@some-repliesyour not alone 😂
There are two options you can do for an older mac like this, either use a open source modern coded browser or use open core to update to an unsupported operating systems with hacked drivers
For something like this it might be worth downgrading to OS 10.6 so that you can then get PowerPC apps working on it, such as old retro games this thing was designed to run. I doubt it would be very fast trying to run 10.15 (the last supported OS for any modern software) very well at all even if using Opencore Legacy Patcher.
Or a third option: use it as a mini family entertainment center. Fill it with some retro games, movies and music
@@TheSpotify95 The gaming experience on these is hot garbage. Not worth it at all. Call of Duty 2 ran at like 10 fps on my early 2006 rig. 2008 iMac is better enough to warrant something more, those can run OS X Sonoma no problem. Speaking from experience. SSD upgrade and 4GB RAM, runs it quite well aside from the CPU being a wee bit slow.
i'm running linux mint on a 2009 imac with c2d. works fine for watching movies, either via streaming or by downloaded mp4 files or DVD. it can handle basic web browsing and email tasks, although mine is maxed out with 16gb ram and an SSD which improves the usability GREATLY.
Doom might be in the dark ages but Budget-Builds Official is ETERNAL
Chuck in an SSD and install more ram, then use OpenCore Legacy Patcher and you can run the current and latest version of Mac OS on it! (Albeit a bit slow)
except getting more than 4GB DDR2 is going to be a nightmare unless the imac has 4 RAM slots.
Apple says maximum support of 4GB but users have tested it with 6Gb of ram, which thinking of it, 3Gb ddr2 modules sound so odd. But even then, 4GB can run Mac OS, I ran Sonoma on a first gen 2008 MacBook Air with 2GB of ram for giggles, it was hilariously slow, but still faster than using an old mechanical hard drive
@@thorium9190It's 4GB + 2GB
@@TheSpotify95 the maximum amount of RAM this iMac can take is 6gb using one 4gb and one 2gb RAM module. This is a firmeware limitation. It can run Open Core Legacy patcher, and I have found actually that a modern OS with modern software runs faster than an older outdated OS in my experience albeit with a late 2013 iMac that has 4 RAM slots and the native built in SSD option it even supports 4K without dropping frames and plays Minecraft on low settings at a reasonable 40fps.
That said I spent about $500 all up, which is a lot more than 30 quid. But, on the other hand, bringing it up to the latest OS version it can run stably would prolong its life.
I ran an Early 2008 24" iMac for 14 years as my DD right up until late 2022 when it finally died (the PSU failed). It worked beautifully. TBF I did replace/upgrade the parts multiple times over the years just to keep it going. Specs: 3.06GHz, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD, ATI HD 2600 Pro 256MB, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The only problem was most browsers weren't updated except for Opera (at the time) therfore limiting me to said browser. Almost all apps I downloaded from the Mac App Store weren't up-to-date either due to the outdated OS. Other than that, it just worked. It was still a modern PC. I still have it sitting on the floor waiting for the day I get a replacement PSU. I miss using a Mac now that I'm on PC. That's a whole other story for another time.
And with OpenCore Legacy Patcher you can probably even get something like Monterey running on it. I have Monterey running on a 2010 Mac Pro Server and it works wonderfully.
@@cleanycloth I investigated that shortly before my Mac died but decided against it because the process looked complicated and I didn't want to stuff it up given it was the only computer I had.
Now that I have a PC I might tinker with the old Mac. How's performance of Monterey on a C2D?
@@mcrazza Not so well, I had Big Sur on my Early 2008 17" MacBook Pro (the last non-Unibody) and it ran but not very good (despite SSD and 4 Gigs of RAM, the maximum), I then returned to 10.9 Mavericks (last with Skeumorphism) and now to 10.15 Catalina, it still runs decent.
Also the temperatures (I use Macs Fan Control) are better with Catalina, while it was almost constantly running rather hot with Big Sur.
They say you should at least have a quadcore CPU for newer than Catalina, so late 2009 iMac with i5/i7 (or upgrade the i3).
@@mcrazza Monterey was a little slow on my Core 2 Duo 2010 Mac Mini, but it was definitely usable. It was probably more down to my BX500 SSD that I've heard sometimes can be a bit weird with macOS.
OCLP works with Big Sur onwards, below that you have DosDude1's patchers (and Catalina ran great on my 2010 Mini)
OCLP's gotten really good in the last year. They can easily be daily drivers on the latest macOS for the next 5 or so years so long as the hardware doesn't die.
I got a similar one of these for free back in college from a previous job I worked. I just had to replace the cracked screen cover. It worked fine as a League of Legends machine and it would play the then current version of War Thunder on low settings around 45-60 FPS. I was also able to get an extra 500Mhz by swapping in a used mobile Core 2 Extreme chip which helped minimum frame rates a bit. Luckily it was one that had a Radeon HD 2600 Pro instead of the Intel GMA graphics like some of them had around that time.
I've got a 2008 24inch running el capitan and that is a sweet spot with plenty of modern apps and browsers and you can dual boot leopard for power pc support.
Love these things
An older mac, running the intended OS, can surprise a lot of people in how well it does.
I was kind of hoping you would throw an SSD in there and clone the old disk drive onto it. I'd love to see a supplemental video and see what it runs like that way....same software just a better drive.
I would also like to see what it is like running Windows, and Lenox....
These are trash PCs. Best use case is to give you the Mac experience on the ultra cheap. They do that job well.
I remember having a 2006 Imac with snow leopard installed and that thing was a beast, ran steam (until it was unsupported so I had to use Wine instead), Ran pretty much anything I put on it, it was fantastic. When it died (Either a cap burst or something because I remember it making a loud pop with some smoke bellowing out the top) and that was the biggest loss I've had to deal with.
Dankpods is still using his 07 iMac and that is still going strong
pankDods
You should probably update it to Mac OS X El Capitan, because it will be way more useful instead of the older OS versions.
Not really. MacOS 12 via opencore (only with CPU upgrade), Linux or Windows are the way to go on these.
@@Txm_Dxr_Bxss I meant like officially, also the old Radeon GPU would probably struggle on the unsupported OS versions because of it age.
Found a 2019 iMac for around €90. Still opted for a Linux OS. Dealing with unsupported systems is just not worth the effort for average use.
The day the latest possible version will not be compatible with a recent program update is always closing in fast. Especially on Macs sadly.
@@AltCutTV I would guess you meant a 2009 iMac, and yeah running a modern Linux distro on it sounds like a great idea.
@@berkant_k No, definitely not that old. :) It has DDR4. But maybe it was 2017 though come to think of it. It didn't say the year on the "about" thing for some reason. It's 3.4quad, RP5604G 4K so I could probably find the year in one of those model spec charts.
But yes, apart from some annoyance with sound support and sleep mode being weird Linux plays very nice with it. But that Cirrus sound thing is the only real meddling needed.
The reason I got it that cheap was it seemed to have fallen out of a car or something. While moving. So there was quite some work to get the glass off the screen. As compared to no effort really on those older models of the video.
It also make an even louder squeaky sound from the hinge. So that is probably also due to the traffic incident. ;D
Use it as a nice-looking extra monitor for a windows laptop. Best possible use for it.
Bluetooth tethering is a great thing when using older tech. Used it myself, connecting an Asus pda to internet by tethering it to my android device. Worked like a charm, sadly the browser on that pda is completely useless nowadays
I got a pair of these for 40 quid a while back, one was in *sore* shape (snapped off parts, held together with blu-tac), so I stripped its for spares (I might have a good hinge, if you want one, but be warned it's a NIGHTMARE to get to).But the other was decent enough to shape to do something with. The real hot sauce is these are, for an AIO, and a non-Pro Apple product, pretty easy to work on and upgrade. The whole thing can be accessed by getting a pair of decent suction cups and popping the glass off the front (carefully) - it's held in with strong neodymium magnets. Then undo 8 Torx screws and remove the screen (again carefully) and then you have access to all the internals. It's a doddle! The CPU is a laptop-style 'Socket P' ZIF, the GPU is on a removable MXM card and the Hard drive is a full-blooded 3.5" desktop drive.
I have thrown a cheap 128GB SATA SSD, a faster 2.4GHz 'Penryn' C2D CPU and a GeForce 9600M 512MB MXM GPU card and it absolutely sings.
These things a beasts. I have the larger model, installed Manjaro, replaced the thermal paste, substituted the drive with an SSD and gave it a ram upgrade. Probably good for another few years.
I picked up a mid 2011 iMac 21.5 with 1tb Hdd, 8gb ram i5 2.7 with Apple keyboard for £30 !! Upgraded to 1gb SSD, 32gb Ram and works a treat !! Nice video !! Henry is great 😂
8:08 I still use Data over BT PAN for my phones. Consumes less power than a wifi hotspot. Basically sharing data to other phones via BT. For Windows its still supported as well.
This is the kind of hardware I like seeing. The thing can still punch way above its weight, or could.
I wish I could watch a part two in which you would test it with other OSs, Same hardware and all. just to see how useable it could get just from an OS swap.
I got a whole lot of these from a school. I recycled/sold most but I kept all the 24 inch c2d imacs with 8800m gts graphics. Ive got them dualbooting xp/vista. With the 8800 graphics they make for awesome mid 2000s xp/vista gaming machines. since its an all in one unit its super easy to whip them out on an afternoon and play some older games.
I bought the 26 inch white model from the same year and the 20 inch aluminium version. Suffered with them until loading them full of emulators and dual booting them to Linux for internet and UA-cam. The screens were by far the best thing about them
For those with an older password locked Mac, OSX up to I think El Capitan have a password reset tool on their installers. Create a USB installer for your OS, boot in, go to tools, password reset utility. Easy peasy, you can set a new password for any account on that Mac.
I’m watching this video on the same exact iMac lol. it’s been my daily driver since 2009. In fact, I think mine might be one year older than yours. I didn’t pay for the crazy expensive for gigabyte memory stick so I just have four gigs of memory in it, but I put linux mint after Catalina was no longer supported, and it still has given me no reason to replace it. In fact, I use it as a I use it as a computer. I Disney+ and all my movies and videos right on this. I have it next to my bed. It’s literally the best computer I’ve ever had. I’ve had a problem with it. The original hard drive about a year ago so I replaced it with SsD, but I took it out. The original hard drive started to work again so I might not have even needed to change the hard drive. discount computer still makes a great daily driver. It plays video flawlessly with no buffering.
theres no way youre uploading more regularly. much thanks and god bless you mate ❤🙏
last time i picked up a cheap mac was at the start of the pandemic. had some fun playing with it and tearing it apart. upgraded it to an ssd and flipped it. made $20 profit and got to have fun. win win.
I have a 27 inch 2010 iMac that I still use as a monitor. Screen is still gorgeous (yes I know it's not efficient, burns more power than a normal monitor).
around 2015 I upgraded the company I worked for from these imacs to the new i5 macbooks of the time. No one wanted these imacs but i just thought they were cool and convenient. They ran Adobe cs5 just fine. Its got a webcam, speakers, and monitor all in one package you can throw around. The screen was held on by magnets so easy to work on. I took them all home and they've been wonderful to randomly have. I have one running Ableton 8 I still mess around with beats and recording on. I have 1 running adobe cs5 which has been super convenient to just have. I have 1 connected to my ancient printer acting as a print server. I have a couple of them running arch linux and windows 7 for my kids to play old games, browse the web in their rooms, and parsec into the gaming PCs we have in the basement because they take up such little space and its all in one. Definitely don't sleep on these.
Love that you’re back uploading dude!
Would be interesting to see how any modern version of macOS runs using the OpenCore patcher. According to Everymac, those Core2 iMacs go up to El Capitan officially(!) with a RAM upgrade. In my experience, a lot of the issues these older Macs have software-wise can be fixed by reinstalling or upgrading the OS.
I'd love to see it struggling to run Sonoma or Ventura^^ I also love these more improvised videos, reminds me of old Druaga1
The thing you have to remember with cex, as long as it turns on and they can do basic things they don't care what state it's in. The one thing I won't buy are hard drives as I bought drives years ago and took them back because they were practically dead. Their excuse with them is as long as they can format it, partition it, copy a file to and from it then it works. When I took one back they tested it and put it back out to sell.
Really depends on the store, some are definitely like that. Others are far better.
I just recently busted out my old a1176 mac mini. Whoever had it before me actually upgraded the thing to a t5600 c2d and the 3gbs of ram and even a bigger hard drive. I have linux installed and use it as a basic plex server for my movie collection. Probably only one person outside of my house will use it and so far its been great for in home use. I removed everything non essential, the wifi and bluetooth, the super drive, etc. I plan to attempt to install a bigger fan where the disk drive was to hopefully help with the cooling (also because the old fan bearings sound like they are about to go out anytime, but the fan still works.) Had to repaste the poor thing as when I took the heatsink off the cpu came with it.
Those optical drives can be a crap-shoot. I've had a couple of iMacs that arrived with borked drives. They're not too terribly difficult to change out. I mean, I've opened up these enough times that I can almost do it in my sleep. Congrats on the fun find!
WE EATIN' GOOD WITH THESE NEW UPLOADS 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥
Yessir
i used to be extremely anti-apple... all the way up until around January this year. for some reason I have had a very, very strong interest develop in absolutely everything they have ever done, especially the older hardware from when Jobs was the man.
this video has inspired me to find something similar instead of buying another single board computer!
I have one of these (late 2008) iMacs. It was actually gifted to me by a friend. I mainly use it as a secondary audio device/recorder with old copies of Logic Pro, EzDrummer, BiasFX ect...
Upgraded the OS to El Capitan, maxed the ram (6gb) and installed an internal 500gb SATA SSD, which dramatically improved performance BTW.
I also highly recommend the ArticFox mozilla variant browser as it seems to run way smoother IMO. There is also a way to get iMovie 9 on these, which has way more features than the current iMovie version.
I know that with OCLP these can run many newer unsupported OS versions, although personally I wouldn't push it too far without upgrading the CPU.
It also runs Mario and Zelda N64 emulation roms like a champ.
My current daily driver is actually a late 2013 21.5" iMac that I picked up local for just $50.
Did a complete DIY tear down and refurbish/upgrade.
Final specs:
Intel Quad-Core i7 4770S
Nvidia GTX 750M 1gb GPU
16gb of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
256gb NVME internal drive
1tb HDD internal drive
1tb Sandisk external SSD
Not too shabby. I mean, for what it is anyway. Right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've also paired it with an additional 20" Cinema Display that I got with an old G5 dual cpu Power PC rig I had laying around.
I'm pretty much exclusively an audio recording enthusiast, so this old iMac (after quite a LOT of elbow grease) suits me just fine.
Great vid mate!
Cheers!
I have an iMac from 2009 installed Mac Os Monterey with OpenCore Leagcy Patcher and put new Ram inside and a ssd its very fast and nice now
I had an iMac from that era, maybe not as low-end as this but close, that my brother bought during his short-lived Apple fansciation era. As a certified Apple hater I run Windows on it for a few years and used it as my secondary computer, for office work and such. Wasn't too bad, could even play Eve Online pretty well, but the Windows driver situation was sketchy at best, you had to basically research the parts and finds stuff online piece by piece. Got it fully funtional, you could say, although I never managed to force the monitor to scale properly. I think the streched image would drive me insane nowadays, but I somehow didn't care back then. Fun memories. ^^
I put windows 10 on mine - and have a dual boot system.. I got mine for £30....is great! I also use it as a DVD player - awesome!! Can't believe what u get for the money and love the screen! £30 won't get u a screen like that for a pc option!
I recently helped my mom with an x86 iMac which Apple'd dropped support for. Put a user-friendly Linux distro on there, and now it's got supported browsers, Steam, etc. Runs faster, too.
This reminds me a bit of my brother's old 2011 Mac mini. It ran like absolute dogsh** with a mechanical HDD with High Sierra, but was snappy and fine with Lion. With an SSD It could handle High Sierra well enough, but in the end even that got too "old" for modern enough software and after he upgraded his sound interface to something that didn't need Firewire he got rid of it.
There seems to be a weird trend that macOS/OSX and Windows share - Windows 7/8 (and even early versions of 10) and old OS X versions could run really well on HDDs, but then something got updated and using HDDs as the system drive became unbearably slow somewhat suddenly.
The optimum disk reading strategy for a spinning platter is very different from that for an SSD. An SSD has no penalty for random reads, there is no head to move, nor any rotational latency.
I have a late 09 MacBook Pro. Opencore legacy and going to a more modern OS fixed a lot of compatibility issues. Running 12.7 on an Ssd. Its great for a garage computer. Much better than my dell of the era
Oh boy, I had the first mac mini and used to play very expensive games on it, similar vintage to this imac 😎👍
Honestly, perfect computer for a high school kid to do homework on. I did mine on a 10 year old G4 iMac.
I just fixed Ivy Bridge era Macbook Pro. Still somewhat useful today if you will turn the blind eye on on Intel HD 4000. Plays Full HD 60fps and together with 16GB does the job.
My 12,1 Mid 2011 27’ iMac thanks to OCLP, a GTX 880M 8GB GPU for Full Metal Support (custom Apple Firmware flashed), 32GB DDR3 RAM, Core i7 CPU upgrade and 2TB Samsung EVO 860 SSD (with OWC HDD Thermal Sensor to restore fan speed control). I can run the latest version of macOS when OCLP has patches available. Love it ❤
I had a 2013 iMac and used it until 2021. It really was amazing, what Apple made of that hardware. Unfortunately the support for newer updates was dropped and then it ended up becoming a brick, which is a shame.
The combination of Adobe CS5.5 and MacOs SnowLeopard is surprisingly usable. In all my years of experience, I think SnowLeopard has been the most stable OS I've used. Sonoma on an M2 Pro is far more volatile by comparison. My 8,1 2.8 C2D Extreme with 6GB RAM and 1TB HDD is just too good to throw away.
Everything in your house is gloriously kitsch I love it
I think it's not Kitsch a la pink lawn flamingo. It's rustic.
I still have a 2006 iMac 17" which i got for 20€ in 2017, with a failing harddrive. Replacing that turned it into a nice machine. Installed windows 7 on it and it could barely run GTA 4 with its Radeon X1600.
just as what many folks pointed out you should probably install snow leopard and make sure to install rosetta for powerpc compatibility
I still have a G4 PowerMac which runs 10.4 and has both the full adobe suite and Macromedia. I've had it since 2000, only problem I ever had was the cmos battery died and I had to replace it.
I have a slightly newer iMac like this and it is stupid fast. It has High Sierra and I can run a normal version of Chromium from around 2023. Zero slowdowns, insanely fast boot times with the harddrive. It is crazy whatever dark magic these things perform to work this well
Completely off topic, that's some really nice wallpaper you have at your place.
Getting serious SC3K vibes. I rescued a similar spec MacBook Pro off a skip, threw in a drive with XP on it and it ran with it. It’s one heck of a retro gaming rig apart from finding drivers for the sound.
I recently bought one of these for $50(£40). Mine is the higher end one with the 2.66ghz cpu, and 2600 XT graphics. I have it running Mojave currently, though I plan to try Sonoma. Also your iPhine hotspot should connect if you enable "Maximize Compatibility" in the settings.
To get Halo to work you'll need a modern launcher, the launcher is broken on newer versions of MacOS. The new launcher I use is called HaloMD. I have used it on my 2009 MacBook Pro running Mavericks, but it'll work on mountain lion.
Best way to kick off a Sunday thank you budget you are a ledgend
I’ve got several old iMacs I use for photo editing. One is running High Sierra and the other runs Sonoma with open core legacy patcher. They work just fine. You’re missing Rosetta for the older power pc software. OSX Lion I believe was the last OS with the Rosetta install option.
Watching the video on a 2010 iMac - Mac OS Ventura via Opencore with the OS on an SSD that replaced the DVD drive. It's as fast as you would wish. The local landfill must be feeling quite frustrated.
I used to have this exact model. It didn’t play games great especially when the final supported version of osx slowed it down something fierce but man those speakers were something else especially for built in speakers
9:00 "Bluetooth WiFi" Wow, I didn't know there was a whole new wireless data transfer protocol. To think they've been hiding it this whole time.
Most of us call this “personal area network”.
I got a 2009 iMac for 60 bucks and it mainly being used for work purposes really like the thing thinking about upgrading soon
When I clicked on this video, I didn't expect to see an iMac with a Henry vacuum cleaner as emotional support
I absolutely love your videos and I'm glad for the new uploads, I had missed my weekly dose of Budget Builds
That hinge, flashback to old school hip-hop "what it is ***, wassup"
I love a polo bread van, just retro cars in general ❤️👌🏻
Wow so many uploads! Thanks!
The reason that some games don’t work is because of OSX 10.8. On OSX 10.6 snow leopard it would run fine because it still supported Rosetta Stone
i love that you used the simcity 5 soundtrack
I still have a 2010 Mac Mini with a core2duo and 8GB RAM. I might try and replace the 320GB HDD with an SSD and see how it performs. Your video has inspired me to have a go!
Get that thing updated!!!
I am certainly not a Mac guy (had to use one for work for a while and have no desire to go back), but I found a machine similar to this while walking around my neighbourhood - where I live, if you have stuff you want to make disappear, you just leave it on the kerb - I once even found a working NES.
I haven't figured out what I am ultimately going to do with it - the main reason I picked it up was to use as a teaching tool for computer repair. It is missing the bezel around the display but it boots and I was able to get into the OS after finding that one of the accounts had a blank password. It might make a decent Linux machine
i've got a G5 model, and it lasted just long enough to clean install whatever the last version of osx was that will run on it plus whatever apps came preloaded before the panel crapped out, and it has been sitting in the shop ever since. last week, i was gifted a dead 17" laptop, so a panel transplant is in order (i'm assuming the display connector will be the standard deal, but i never went that deep in to it). for whatever brief period i had to play w/ it, i liked using it more than i thought i would. last i checked, someone was still managing a modern linux distro that would run on powerpc, so maybe i just go that route. hope it will recognize the iphone 8 plus i was also gifted last week and now using as my daily
I tore up a 27" imac once, put a HP IPS display inside of it, From the outside it looked like a iMac but it was just a monitor for the looks ;-)
I love the aesthetic of macos snow lepoard!
12:37 Are you in a CARAVAN!? Love it.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I would recommend redoing the thermal paste on the CPU and definitely the GPU - the 2007 - 2009 era of imac (a1225) do not have enough thermal paste on the GPUs, so they are a common point of failure. Additionally I would suggest upgrading the CPU to a penrhyn T9300 or T9500, so you can install a version of Mac OS above El Cap. Theoretically (GPU drivers not withstanding) you could run Ventura via opencore legacy.
I´ve tried twice to buy used old Macs for daily use, and both times the experience with the software was much worse than this. So now I just stick to old Windows computers. Still got a nice Windows 7 machine for daily use, which has a virtual machine for windows 11 when I need it lol.
I hail from Western "Massachusetts" (Bee Gees) and also use a g5 2008 running Tiger, 17" for "Widgets"!
Old software doesn’t get slower, just many newer software uses more resources.
I have one with a perin C2D 2.4 ghz running linux mint from a internal sata SSD and it runs great. Its my kitchen pc i use it a lot. Under linux mint you get any modern browser, security, wifi connections, the sound is good youtube runs minecraft runs. Its easy to put away to the side i find these to be a bargen. You will need to clean the inside of most are just one big dust ball inside.
Grat vid, and nice find for so cheap.
There is a simple fix for most Apple products, 1. Have a Angry Aussie yell at it, 2. Beat it with a 1 Grit slab of concrete, 3. Throw it in the trash XD
Crazy i was at work listening to a WAN show live stream the other night and thlught about this channel and how i hadnt seen a video in a while. Glad to have you back!
Wan show is a weekly thing for me, runs at about 11am Saturday morning here
Advice : browser 'Pale Moon' runs perfectly well. To my knowledge, Chromium Legacy was discontinued less than a month ago
Opening and cleaning it would help, new thermal paste and an ssd., and a Linux distro such as Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 / LMDE 6 all of that would really improve it's performance.
Lol. I was actually watching this video on an old 27 inch IMac (mid 2011) but it's a 2.7 GHz Intel core i5, 8 gigs of memory 1333 mhz ddr3 with an AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 mb. MacOS Sierra (10.12.6)
Bought it off of Craigslist for $120 (USD) Had no trouble installing Chrome for a Browser and it runs UA-cam videos well. No problems with videos at 1080p. Buffers a bit running one in 4K but that could be either the system or the internet connection.....
i got one of these for about $100 back in early 2020, it was an early 2009 20” model with 2GB of RAM and GeForce 9400M
it was quite slow on 10.11 due to the lack of RAM but i upgraded it to 8GB as it’s quite easy on those older iMacs and it was actually quite usable as most modern browsers and apps still supported it at the time.
i remember being able to play some old version of Minecraft (likely 1.8.9) and getting an average of like 32 fps.
at some point i even upgraded it to 10.13 with a patcher and it worked fine, i used it for a good while until i needed the RAM for some other project and now it lives in my trash heap with all of the other machines i’ve had to pull parts from.
edit: my bad, forgot it was a 2009 model-
The iMac with the 9400M is the early 2009 model which has DDR3. The 2008 ones had DDR2 and can only take 4GB. It seems like they could take 6GB with a 4GB module and a 2GB one, but 4GB DDR2 modules are expensive...
My college had these kinda Macs in my Media course & I remember using it. I used to enjoy using them. ^~^
The out of box experience of spotlight indexing those spinning drives in this era was brutal
Nice Video Sir, I couldn’t help but notice that you put the Disk in the wrong way round at: 13:52 and not sure if you realized your mistake? I picked an identical iMac up a few years ago which had been upgraded to a 250Gb SSD & it’s running OS X EL CAPITAN, I still use it even now from time to time and it’s not a bad little machine! Anthony - Birmingham
i just got one of these for free and several others
got 2 2015 27 5k retina imacs one i5 one i7, a 2011 imac 21.5 and one 27 similar, with a core 2 duo e8235
Can you get an updated os on with opencore legacy patcher or something of the like?
I think these devices are perfect for people who are not tech-savvy or don't need to do complex tasks on their computers. For example, older people might find them very useful. They are affordable and easy to use. Of course, this works only if all the programs that people use are working properly.
These are only fine for that if someone tech-savvy updates the OS to a more recent version so that all modern web sites work without issue.
@@blaah4490 of course
Yeah, they are great if you want to provide support for them 24/7 pretty much.
@@blaah4490 of course