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grovberg · May 19, 2005, 04:51 PM

I'd like to take the display from a lampshade style G4 iMac off of the articulated arm it comes attached to. I still want to use the display with the iMac fairly close, so no rewiring should be necessary, I just need to remove the display wiring from within the arm. Obviously I could just cut it off, but if I could get it off without doing that (ie so I could put it back together again if I needed to) it would be a bonus.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

powertrippin · May 19, 2005, 05:34 PM

Sell it, get a powermac, LCD, and adjustable arm.

sine -''-..- · May 22, 2005, 12:08 PM

Yea well theres no simple way of doing that... I've never opened one up but I'd assume it has a special sort of cable running through the neck which would not be easy to make longer.
Plus theres the issue of making a stand for the now loose screen....

Anyhow it would be far too complex to be worth it. Plus it would likely irreversibly damage the iMac...

I'd suggest you get a Mac Mini and run an LCD on it.

cornellra · Jun 15, 2005, 10:35 AM

Hi there,

I would have to agree that this would be a bad idea.

If you go to the following link and besure to download BOTH parts of the documentation, you will find out how difficult this really is, and the resultant parts may not be to your purpose.

http://www.eserviceinfo.com/download...,%201GHz).html

Good Luck!

-Cornell

grovberg · Jun 15, 2005, 10:51 AM

Regardless, thanks for that link. Holy crap will that site be useful for a lot of projects.

Also, all of the other suggestions involve a thing I do not have which is called money. This project has a budget of $0.00, so unless I could sell the iMac for the exact cost of a mini and LCD, then they aren't workable.

But again, thanks for the link.

cornellra · Jun 15, 2005, 11:04 AM

no problem man. I understand the dilemna, the nature of computers and electronics i suppose. You've taken on a difficult challenge.

The documentation available there for most consumer electronics is amazing, i do have to admit.

I agree for your purposes, the mini-LCD option really isn't an option.

GSixZero · Jun 15, 2005, 12:15 PM

I have taken the neck off an iMac before, and I would seriously not recommend it. There are a bunch of wires in there, 3 or 4, and they won't be easily extended. Like the video signal cable and the inverter cable. I almost assure you that the cost of this project will be a broken iMac.

hpence · Jun 15, 2005, 03:57 PM

Ive also cracked open (well, almost literally) an Imacs 'neck'. There are a few wires running through with VERY little slack in them. The only feasible way i see to extend them would be to cut then and resolder them each individually. Like GSixZero said - there are 3 or 4 visible cables, but within each cable there are several lines that would each need to be extended/reconnected (if you've ever cut into a VGA or DVI cable, you know how amazingly difficult this would be).

What might be easier is to extend them at the connection points - either at the motherboard or at the monitor. I never dug deep enough to see how they connect, but I can almost guarantee its still near the realm of humanly impossible.

Come to think of it - you might be able to do this a bit easier if you had a 2nd imac that was totally junk. You could have to literally destroy it and pull its monitor cabling out and use that as the extention... but if you have that kinda money to burn, I like powertrippin's advice better.

My original advice of cutting/brute force extending ill go ahead and throw into the non-possible bend. The 2nd monitor wiring (maybe you could get a dead imac for cheap) is a possibility, but you would need the pinouts of each end of the cable and a LOT of spare time.

(were the pinouts in that file posted earlier? That site is locked from downloading here at work)

Waragainstsleep · Jun 16, 2005, 05:42 AM

Modding an LCD panel to work with a machine it isn't built to work with is NOT easy. Unless you can find a standalone DVI or VGA LCD monitor which uses the exact same panel. Good luck with that. There are alot of different panels.

As for the iMac's neck, be extraordinarily careful if you try to open it. The spring inside is under alot of tension. If you don't watch out it will explode. And hurt. I'm not kidding, Apple warranty repair centres are NOT permitted to open these by Apple. They will only replace the whole neck. And its all down to health and safety.

Waragainstsleep · Jun 16, 2005, 05:43 AM

Modding an LCD panel to work with a machine it isn't built to work with is NOT easy. Unless you can find a standalone DVI or VGA LCD monitor which uses the exact same panel. Good luck with that. There are alot of different panels.

As for the iMac's neck, be extraordinarily careful if you try to open it. The spring inside is under alot of tension. If you don't watch out it will explode. And hurt. I'm not kidding, Apple warranty repair centres are NOT permitted to open these by Apple. They will only replace the whole neck. And its all down to health and safety.

And if you intend to put it back together again, thats a two person job. Its a very stiff spring.

Tenacious Dyl · Jun 21, 2005, 05:23 PM

I think that if you were able to track the video cable down to the motherboard, then this wouldn't be as complex, just more nerve racking / time eating.

My idea would be to connect your own wires, to each contact on the motherboard, shield them together, and run them out a small hole in the case (drilled, probably take some time to pick the perfect spot). Get a male/female pair of connectors that simply have a lot of contacts (equal to or more than the contacts on the motherboard for the video cable). Affix each cable that you extended (all your own cables) to the female connector (maybe ATA? doesn't really matter..)

Next, once you have dissembled the arm, and not killed yourself with the spring, open up the cables from the LCD's side, and splice/connect your own wire to each. Connect these wires to the male connector, making sure (obviously) that when the male and female connectors are joined, that they match up.

Now... you would be able to buy cabling of whatever type of connectors you used to begin with, to extend your length, which you would simply plug each adapter to.

As for power to the monitor, if the thin cabling in the connectors would work, go for it, if not, have a seperate cable.

(i almost wish i could draw this out to make it easier to explain)

The final project, ideally would have a "port" (your female connector) glued / screwed / whatever to the hole or near the whole you drilled in the iMac base. Your monitor would have the male connector coming out the back, which would connect.

However far you needed them apart, you could compensate by making cable to connect your two connectors. If you needed to put the screen back on top of the base, you could simply reconnect your original cables through to the base. (as your base connector is on the motherboard, it is just a clone of the original signal, and the iMac will still send signal up the base).

Rediculous, I know... but possible. And simple in its nature, just hard.

powertrippin · Jun 21, 2005, 06:39 PM

Yeah. Almost as ridiculous as typing all that out decently and then spelling ridiculous with an 'e'.

Waragainstsleep · Jun 22, 2005, 06:18 AM

There is at least one coaxial cable running from the panel to the logic board. These can be a little more fiddly to extend.

hpence · Jun 22, 2005, 11:10 AM

Tenacious Dyl's idea isnt a bad one. The connectors at the mobo/screen are likely very dense and would be incredibly hard to do by hand - but possible.

One warning - i would not use ATA cable for this. ATA cables tend to get really flakey when they are more than a foot or so long and are carrying more current than typical HD data signals.