[marcosmagan]

My Imac G3 500 was running fine until the screen suddenly went dead and a smell of smoke came up.
At an apple aut. serv. they told me that both the analog video board and the part behing the screen short circuited and melted.

What I'd like to know is if there is any means of taking the entire video and monitor off the imac and simply plugging an external monitor on the vga port on it's back????

Apparently it does not start if the video board is not connected to the mother board. Is there any way around this? TKS

[Captain Obvious]

If it has just been the screen then there would be no problem just plugging in a VGA monitor into the port in back. But you would not be able to remove the built in CRT.
But if your situation is that the video board that has the VRAM is shot then it is quite possible the whole thing is a loss unless you replace that board.