[piot]

My iMac G5 has gone from annoying to busted in 3 days.

I am not accustomed to swapping out hardware, so can someone let me know if this solution ( to keep me working) is feasable?

Take out the iMac's HD (is that tricky?) and swap it with the HD in an external Firewire enclosure.

Use the swapped out Firewire disc to boot up an iBook G3 700 (not sure exactly how you do that either!), and be able to keep working, albeit rather more slowly.

Alo, anyone know if Apple will take back the iMac for repair without the hard drive?

The iMac's problem seems to be pretty common if you read the Apple support forums. Starts off with a juddering and blurred and frozen desktop (only for a few seconds). Finally results in a black screen with some white pixels scattered around. Folks on the forum are reporting swollen and indeed oozing capacitors, when they inspect the innards.

Thanks for any advice.

[tooki]

Well, the iMac's hard drive is SATA, while almost all FireWire enclosures are ATA. SATA FireWire enclosures do exist, but you have to search far and wide for them. (Googling "SATA firewire enclosure" brings up several vendors, none of which I have any experience with.)

As for ease of removal, if you're remotely "handy" with gagdetry, it's easy in an iMac.

tooki