Crackin' the Case

Ready to install the Airport Extreme card I began following the instructions in the 'iMac G5 User's Guide' for performing such an operation (the other upgrade demonstrated in the User's Guide is for upgrading the machine's memory). The guide suggested placing a soft towel down to sit the iMac on while it is face down. Since mine was still in its shipping wrapping I decided to just use that. The screen itself is recessed within its frame about an 1/8th of an inch so it is not actually sitting on the surface. In the picture below the sticker in the upper lefthand corner reminds me that by using the iMac I'm accepting all of Apple's terms and conditions and what not.




The back of the case is opened by undoing three captive phillps head screws which are located in the bottom of the case where the speakers are located, then you grab hold of the base and tilt upward toward the top of the case. The case itself has some slots which fit tabs on the case back, acting as a hinge. So you hinge the bottom end of the caseback up until the tabs clear then you can remove the case back. The aluminum? base is suprisingly heavy. In the foto below notice how nicely the ports and power switch are layed out; from the bottom is the power switch, ethernet port, modem port, 2 firewire ports, 3 USB 2.0 ports, video port, analog/digital line-out jack and line-in jack. It is suggested you route the cables through the hole in the base.





Here's the inside of the iMac G5. Nice design and after years of building up PCs doesn't much resemble the familiar motherboard and internals layout of those things. The CPU itself is hidden under the cover/heatsink labeled G5. The machine came with 512megs of memory. Dani, the very helpful Apple salesperson who assisted me during the purchase of my iMac said that the 512 was in 2 256meg sticks. I was suprised to find only one slot occupied once the case was cracked. I was afraid that the machine only had the base 256megs, but I double-checked the invoice and it looked correct, so I figured maybe Dani was just mistaken. Once fired up I confirmed that the box did indeed have 512megs with the System Profiler. This is sweet because now I get it up to 1gig of memory, just purchase another 512meg stick of aftermarket memory for about a $100 and not be wasting a 256meg stick.

That's the hard drive in the upper right corner. The mainboard is mainly all the blue circuit board. Notice the couple of fan housings and air tunnels moving and routing air around to keep things cool. I think there are a coupla three more fans hiding in there somewhere. You would not believe how quiet this thing is, you hear just about nothing from it.



Airport Extreme card ready, just outta the box. Not much to the installation, plug in the antenna and snap the card into its slot.





It took a bit of fettling to get the tabs back properly seated in the case's slots. After that, tighten up the 3 captive screws and things are all buttoned up again.



Plugged it in and turned it on. Went through the usual new Mac setup without incident except for the bluetooth mouse and keyboard and this was probably my fault. While unpacking I had installed the batteries in both the keyboard and mouse and had powered them on an off. This might have messed with them a bit, as I had to turn them on and off a coupla three times before they would associate themselves with the iMac. Had I followed the start up instructions and not installed the batteries and turned on the mouse and keyboard until told to they might have found the iMac a bit faster.


After that it was time to get to installing all my most used software and such. I'll detail that next post.