At 21 years old, the iMac G4 is still down to party

It’s been 20 years since Apple discontinued the iMac G4, a unsocial machine with a funky half-globe basal and a flatscreen LCD connected a fancy hinge and adjustable arm. In its unaltered state, it’s a nice-to-look-at, nostalgic relic that’s unusable successful modern contexts. I coveted it and ne'er got to ain 1 astatine the time, but acknowledgment to Juicy Crumb’s DockLite G4, I’m utilizing this classical iMac each time arsenic an outer monitor.

The DockLite G4 is simply a drop-in replacement motherboard for the iMac G4’s committee that features an HDMI port, on with 3 USB-A and a azygous USB-C port, and 3.5mm ports for audio. Most importantly, it uses the iMac’s existing mounting holes and interior connectors for powerfulness and video, truthful each you request is simply a mates of screwdrivers and a prying instrumentality — nary soldering required.

It took astir 30 minutes for maine to unfastened my eBay-acquired 17-inch 1.25GHz iMac G4, region the motherboard, enactment successful the DockLite, and adjacent it backmost up, and suddenly, I could plug successful immoderate I wanted, from a MacBook Air to my Anbernic GBA SP knockoff. (Juicy Crumb adjacent has a helpful video guide.) It was overmuch easier than some alternative DIY methods.

Here are a fewer pictures I took of the installation process:

With the DockLite installed, my iMac present works precisely similar an outer display. It sleeps erstwhile my machine does (although you person to pat the iMac’s powerfulness fastener to crook disconnected the backlight) and I tin power the brightness successful bundle oregon utilizing hardware buttons successful the back.

There are things you suffer successful the process, similar entree to the iMac’s optical drive. And you can’t tally it arsenic a standalone machine unless you spell the other mile and regenerate much of its internals with something similar a Mac Mini. On the positive side, the installation is reversible — you tin ever enactment the archetypal motherboard backmost in.

The DockLite G4 doesn’t travel cheap, astatine $260. The terms owes to the “time, effort, and wealth to get adjacent a comparatively elemental merchandise specified arsenic the DockLite retired to market,” Juicy Crumb CEO and co-founder Timothy de Denaro told maine successful an email. The DockLite G4 “is a comparatively debased measurement product,” helium added, and “every portion is manually tested by myself earlier being shipped” to customers.

That seems fair, and it besides doesn’t alteration the information that I spent a batch of wealth and effort conscionable to usage a low-res show with atrocious viewing angles. Then again, I didn’t bargain the DockLite G4 due to the fact that I respect the prime of my iMac G4’s 21-year-old LCD. I did it due to the fact that this machine looks sick connected my desk, and I wanted to beryllium capable to usage it each day.