[zenithproduct]

So I just purchased a slot-load iMac G3 (blueberry, 350mhz) on Ebay.. Wopping $20.. Anyways.. A couple years ago, back when I had more money (less kids), I owned an Indigo iMac.. My memory fails me, but I think it was a 350, and I overclocked it to 400. Also swapped out the GREEN power light for a blue one that I managed to also make a hard drive activity light by tapping into the IDE cable.. It was pretty sweet. Couldn't quite understand why they took such a gorgeous BLUE computer and gave it a GREEN light on the front.. hehe.. If only I could have gotten into that mouse... haha.. I ended up selling that iMac fully modded on Ebay.. It's living happily in Texas somewhere last I heard..
Anyways.. Always wanted to get back into the iMac world.. So here I am.. Picked up this dirt cheap one.. Now, can I buy one of the dirt cheap logic boards on Ebay, and swap it with mine? 400's seem to be a dime a dozen on there, and I see 500's and even an occasional 600 at a bit steaper price.. Anyone done this? It'd get me firewire and external VGA support.. Firewire would let me run the latest OS X.. Gotta toss in a superdrive while I'm at it, I imagine.
Anyways, sorry about the rambling.. It's my first post, and I never really get any respect from the PC crowd over my past mods..

[zenithproduct]

Never mind, searched the OLD archives, and found a guy that did it. It can be done and will work. Sweet.

[Waragainstsleep]

A 400 should go in fine, you might struggle with a 600 though. I swapped one into a 400 once and it just didn't have the juice to run it.

[zenithproduct]

I picked up a 500 board on Ebay. Pretty sure it's the later model 500 (I hope I hope). Should be here in a couple days.

[zenithproduct]

Well the 500 board arrived today, and go figure, the seller on Ebay was nice enough to include the power board. So no worries about having enough juice! I found that the IBM CPU on this board was 2.5" farther down, and about 1/2" farther over. It's also HALF as tall (thick?) as the 350 (Motorola?) CPU was.. So the spacer needed to be about .060" thicker, AFTER it was moved.. Not to mention I had the flip the spacer over to catch the entire top of the CPU (darn heatspreader). I managed to find some aluminum sheetmetal laying around that was .060"!! That rocked.. So I used some tin snips to cut out a square of the right size. Had to hammer it back flat after that. Then I sanded it very flat. I scraped all the heatsink pad off the old spacer, and just used some Radio Shack heatsink compound between every surface. I put the original spacer on the CPU, and some epoxy on the edges to hold it still while I put the board back in the computer. The thin spacer I made was able to just stick thanks to the heatsink compound. Got it all back together and it works! I'm a happy camper.

[Madferret]

Sweet!

[zenithproduct]

Contemplating a little overclock on this puppy soon. I figure 600MHz should be an attainable goal.. I'd like to get every last ounce out of this puppy.