Back in the day I had to look after a lab full of these lads. Honestly, they were just ... good. Low maintenance, no drama workhorses that basically just kept on trucking despite what the students threw at them every day. I liked them.
any site exist that troubleshoots these? or do i have to ship them out to a retro person to fix? i don't think there's a fuse in the PS to check - these are too modern, so it would be a maize of cap checking and replacing.
Would it be possible to have an old Windows OS installed and maybe even the mobo changed to one from the early 2000's? I was thinking of a little CRT retro gaming PC.
@@GU__NIThey definitely can't run Windows out the box. These are Power PC G4 machines, not Intel. Dunno if it's possible to hack an Intel machine into them. Maybe?
This was my first mac. Throughout the 90s I was unix/freebsd person and was excited to have Unix with a good UI once MacOS X had matured a bit. MacOS also had Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer (this was before Safari) - two things the Unix world was lacking, the open source equivalents weren't very good at the time. I had considered G4 iMac (iLamp) but was drawn to the CRT - it was larger, bright, could handle different resolutions. The G4 iMac screen at the time was only 1024x758 15" kind of limiting. So as soon as the eMac was available to consumers I went up to CompUSA and bought one and the stand! It got me hooked on macs - I eventually sold it for a TiBook and have been using macs since, all because the eMac.
I never will forget when I was in 4th grade in 2005 seeing the librarian unbox and set one of these up in my classroom. It was the 1.42ghz model and my first experience with OSX as all the other schools computers were g3 iMacs with os9 or apple performa machines on os 7-8. It was like something straight out of the future. So white pretty and cool looking. And ran so fast. I miss those days
I LOVE my old Emac. It could do everything: HD video editing, snappy audio editing, and a super-sharp CRT-screen that looks better than most LCDs today.
I remember I went on a field trip in fourth grade to a local university (which I ended up graduating from lol) and they had a computer lab FILLED with eMacs. It was the first time I’ve ever used a Mac and I wasn’t really sure what it was (although I knew about stuff like iBooks and iMacs) and I was blown away at how futuristic Tiger looked, and I wanted one SO BAD. I also loved the vent on the back, the whole computer was gorgeous. To this day I absolutely love the eMac, and it’s a shame they’re so large because I would love to have one!
Great video! The eMac is a great system, especially the fastest model (like yours). The stand really ties them all together. I'm glad you were able to rescue it! Sadly some of the earlier units had capacitor issues that caused odd display patterns and glitches. But there was a recall program, so hopefully those systems were mostly serviced. I look forward to seeing what you'll be doing with your eMac!
Ackchyually, there's one faster model from 2005 at 1.42GHz with a 64MB Radeon 9600 in it. I just bought one and I'm currently trying to figure out if the 1.25GHz's Radeon 9200 is actually the better GPU, despite its lesser memory. The one thing I'm noticing about this model is that it's recognizing BOTH sticks of PC3200 DDR RAM successfully. I've read that the 1.25GHz model would only see one stick at that speed and the other at a maximum of PC2700, thus underclocking the memory. That makes a significant difference in speed.
I remember hanging out in the Apple store at a time as a kid when these were around.. I think they had them setup with beanbag chairs for kids. Always wanted one, unfortunately haven't fallen into one just yet. Nice to see they're pretty serviceable!
they are horrific - imho- to service. upgrading like Mr L here is not as hard. Getting the mobo out, and the mini boards with caps checked too- is a monumental feat...
Huzzah! I have a couple myself. Add an air card and you have a lovely industrial grade all in one that just gets cooler with time. And ooh the gorgeous CRT!
P.S. These play DVD, video and other media like a boss. That makes it a rock solid staple for background decoration, running demos, etc. Mac isn’t my forte, but the eMac is a sleeper gem. Thx for the video. Nicely done.
I had one before a house fire, it was definitely one of my favorite macs ever. It was great in every way except expansion.you need the base, the base was awesome. This was no cheap mac, it was better then the imac except for the size. I used it for watching dvds, and I modded it to use it as a minityfor my video game systems as well with the great speakers it was perfect
I came here via the link on Mark’s birthday video, and am glad I did. Very entertaining, so I subscribed. I am ancient, so at secondary school in England in the ‘60s my “computer” was a slide rule.
I have one (with the stand), and I absolutely love it! I love the screen, and I use mine for period applications and also use it to remote into more modern machines allowing to do modern tasks on a vintage machine. And again, display is amazing! It definitely needs more appreciation.
It cleaned up nicely. I really like how when looking at the machine straight on it looks like an early iPod. So cool! I'm not actively looking for this machine, however after watching your video if I come across one now, I wouldn't mind LOL.
They do look nice from afar, until you acquire one, then you think, where the heck am I going to put it? And why is it so heavy? They also do develop capacitor issues, similar to the dodgy capacitors used in the early iMac G5s. When I was selling these eMac G4s, I had to recap at least 2/3 of them.
Love the eMac! Me and 2 other Genii in the DC region Apple Stores were the only 3 who did. All of the other Maryland, DC, and Virginia area stores would send customers to us to do the repairs because we were always quick with them and were comfortable with them. We also had a private school in Bethesda that essentially used the Genius Bar as their Mac Support department and they regularly would bring us 2-3 eMacs at a time. It was a sad day when the last of the eMacs went onto the Vintage list and we could no longer to repairs on them. One of my co-Genii took home the CRT Discharge Tool when we were told that we no longer had a need for it.
eMacs were wonderful machines. The school system in which I taught in the early 2000s had these as the teachers computers. They were solid machines. I bought one a couple of years ago for the nostalgia of it. It was a solid machine in the day, and remains a solid machine to this day. As you indicate, it is simply an iMac G4 "flower pot" with a CRT. And it is a beautiful CRT. Yes, I've been inside as you showed, and I have upgraded it.
IMHO, there are some many much more interesting looking and up-gradable G4 Macs. The Lump=stick -and-square G4 is much more collectable as are the MDD models.
It's my "gaming rig", C64, Amiga, Mame, Snes, DOSBox, Source ports, OS9, OS X etc... Perfect Retro machine coupled with a Roland MT-32. It comes with a CRT, a keyboard and a mouse, for free or just a couple of bucks. Pick a 1.25 or 1.42ghz model though.
Found one at a local Cashies for $50 a few years back and I had to buy it. It was in great condition! The staff all gave me a weird look when I let slip how excited I was for buying it. Took it home, cleaned it up, powered it on, everything worked great! Few minutes later I'm playing eDuke32 on it and having a blast. The CRT is extremely clear and the colour reproduction on it is amazing. Yes, it is heavy. So what, I say to those naysayers! It looks really funky next to my iMac G3 (which honestly feels like a toy in comparison!) Great video, as always!
15:50 Yes! The stand, pain as it was to keep scratch free, made the machine way more majestic. Sadly not even half of the eMacs I ever serviced had the stand attached; most people used it in "G3 iMac" mode.
My first-year roommate at university had one of these - his mother was a schoolteacher so he got one at a discount through the Apple education program. It was an absolute turd. It was broken nearly as much of the time as it was operational. Never did manage to get the CRT to work right. He ended up dumping it halfway through the year and buying a cheap Dell.
I have some of these… they were reasonably powered and yet underrated. I worked in a school and I was told they were being recycled. So I saved the school some money by saving them from the recycler. The biggest issue was that the IT guy never maxed out the RAM. I need to check them out and fix them up to max them out.
Hi Jason Those eMac’s overclock quite well and it give a good bump in preference my 1ghz runs flawlessly at 1.4ghz all day running Minecraft 1.9 and it just the jumpers on the main board to do it
I bought 2 of these from an e-waste recycler about a month ago with the intentions of getting at least one of them working. You are absolutely correct in the Titanic weight of these machines and they do seem to be very nice. I have yet to get around to completing my own eMac project, though. There's a possibility that I might be getting a couple more for the purpose of reselling. Fingers crossed!
That is a comically long screwdriver. Love it. Oh the eMac is kinda cool too! Kinda miss the days when Apple products were (somewhat) meant to be opened...
This is wonderful, it makes me want to dig out my emac. I have the stand with mine as well and I wanna say I have it upgraded to 1GB of ram. I love older tech
I agree. I have no idea why nobody wants these. Its kind of like when the 8-Bit guy sold his Lisa for $5 because nobody wanted it back in the 90's. One day this will also be sought after. Probably not Lisa expensive but they are awesome!
Yeah, I do love my eMac, but it's just _so heavy!_ I felt like I had to spend a week laying flat on my back after pulling it apart to upgrade the memory and hard drive (and clean out the dust). It was too big for my workbench, so I had to do all the work on the floor, which was not much fun. Everything worked after I reassembled it, but my copy of Tiger refused to install. Thankfully the Macintosh Garden came to the rescue. I've never seen one with the stand. That really makes it impressively massive. EDIT: Actually, that's probably my best guess as to why they're so unloved, because they're just so massive and heavy.
I think a lot of the reason for this Mac was how comfortable educational facilities had gotten with the original iMacs. By the time it came around that they needed upgrading, you could simply pull out your 300 mhz iMac and simply plop the eMac into the workstation, and all your software would just work. Easy-peasy.
The hard drive can be replaced pretty easily without removing the whole mainboard, after disconnecting a few items; but after you have the mainboard all the way out, it is a good idea to replace the electrolytic caps on there (and on the power board for the crt) - they both tend to be on their way out after this much age and the poor airflow these machines had. Best wishes.
I got mine from FreeGeek. Besides the weight and the fragile power button they aren't too difficult to repair and run pretty well. Honestly despite the size being an all in one makes it more convenient to pull out and setup than my PowerMac G4.
Great machines, nice G4 CPUs and graphics options, great flat tube and image, great speakers and DVD drive options. Modern white look. I've never understood why people don't want them, I was trying to shift 12 of them. The iMac G4 with its poor quality flat screen display pales in comparison, I'd rather have an eMac!
@@MrLurchsThings and you got the stand too! We had a few and someone told me they're hard to find. This machine is kind of like an Amiga 600 I feel, boring and nothing new when released but finds its place in the future as a compact option to run all the classics with room for upgrades.
$99 from cashies - 15 years ago, upgraded it to osx - first mac i owned, last one too until i got a 2nd hand macbook air that i keep around incase needed to access a mac's hdd windows user for most things
And now I wish I had have bought that one a few years back for £20. They are picking up value though, granted still only about £50, so still a good machine for the cost. It might even make for a really good Amiga if you dropped Morphos on there.
bit of an overclock on the 9250 since you have the education model really springs it back to life . a 50 mhz oc on the gpu and ram yeilds another 10 to 20 fps in some games . :) i recommend repasting or using good pads on the gpu also look for the one with the 9600 ati .
Great video on this eMac. There is one flaw with one of your statements. You mentioned that these were one of the most robust machines. I purchased a large number of these from (wait for it) University of Canberra! The last lot I got happened to be similar to the 1.25Ghz model that you have in this video, and they were plagued with dodgy capacitor issues, similar to the dodgy caps that were used in the early iMac G5s. I had to recap about 2/3 of them, giving my tech a good workload with the amount of caps he had to replace in all the eMac G4s and iMac G5s. Anyway, I may do a video on the recapping of these eMacs one day.
@@MrLurchsThings The 1.25Ghz and the 1.42Ghz models [eMac (2005)] had this dodgy caps issue. The earlier models were more reliable with the logic boards, but they tended to have more video issues. I just looked in my database, and I sold a total of 163 eMacs and 55 of those were the 1.25Ghz model. I do have a moulded eMac power cable, if you want one for a moderate price.
I have a 1.25gz emac with stand I love it. It was literally a barn fine. The only thing is I installed Leopard and not tiger trying to get a copy of it so. Ps. I lived of of unreal 2004 so if you do I'm in..
Hi, I have a G3 ibook PPC and G4 Macbook (core2duo), and my son has a core2duo Imac Yes they are old, but still work fine with vintage software. The core2duo are dual boot with Linux Mint 17 so modern youtube is fine But the 2 laptops are used because they still work, they have MS office plus the Apple office version - ( i cant recall the name because i have not used those apps in 5 years Apple iworks or similar it is a seperate dvd to the osx install ) Regards George
My father's eMac still runs good -- I put an SSD and dual boot to OS9 and Leopard. It's slow as a OSX machine, but it's screaming fast for an OS9 machine.
That's the same eMac version I've got! Nice machine to have even if you don't get those for free/almost free in my neck of the woods (they are more like 60-100 Euro). Neat display and good sounding speakers, too! Also quite a decent performance. A bit of a pity that (like every other Mac of its time, mine was manufactured in '04) the shift to Intel shortened a bit their lifespan as a "modern" computer.
I'd be curious to know if the monitor connections can be adapted to turn the machine into just a CRT monitor? Could probably fit a MiSTer in there once the CDROM is taken out. Would make a nice all in one retro games machine.
The eMac was actually a better machine than the lamp was at the end. The last 2 versions had USB 2.0 and pretty high end ATi Radeon graphics in them, and the last model even had a 1.42ghz G4 in it, which the lamp never came with. They are good looking machines, and the CRT is actually really nice especially since its a Mitsubishi Diamontron which is just a copy of the Sony Trinitron. I still have my 1.25ghz model with USB 2.0 and Radeon graphics and its a good old school gaming machine. Sounds great, looks good, its just heavy as all &^@$!
I installed a school room full of eMacs and upgraded their RAM. They were fine. The worst thing was the rather immature version of OS X that existed back then (eg it had issues with transferring files over ethernet).
Darn, I had one of these, 50$ from a cash converters store (pawn shop) magical picture, did photo's really well. Unfortunately Apple cut off the last of it's support, and I had no Apple software, nor knew anyone into Apple so it went to the tip. Pity However I have now recanted and acquired a Bondi blue iMac, so I should get that out and see if any of the stuff shown here is applicable. (It's just sitting pretty in the corner, I know it powers on and that is it)
At first I was going; yeah, but an iMac doesn't look good and you can't use a better screen, the screen is the computer after all... Oh, eMac... it's even worse!
mmmm...yes. Im glad youre doing a teardown as these beasts are AWFUL to take apart. My emac was beloved by my little girl a decade+ ago, then wouldn't turn on this year, and the mobo is a mofo of overly complex miniboards ontop of a baseboard where hardly a website or vid exists to troubleshoot this- even though its prob a blown cap (of which there are easily 40 spread out all over) even though none look leaky. so... INTO THE BIN IT GOES!
At least replacing it (the whole machine that is) isnt expensive. As for the tear down, it just came down to taking my time and being thorough. It's certainly not a quick job.
Spent some years giving people Tech Support from one of Australia's biggest Telcos. Sorry, but it was really a piece of silicon rubbish. You'd have more luck getting the DreamCast working (I gave that support as well)
Doesn't even look as bad as the usual design outbursts edit: i stand corrected. from behind it looks like something my mom's hair dresser would use to torture people
Yet another computer I’ve never heard of. Nice addition to your collection. Did they ever appear in government schools or were they the domain of private schools and universities?
I think for me the eMac was the precursor of the rather bland design Apple has been doing for years. It didn't have the funky colors of the earlier iMac and it isn't insane looking like the molar Mac. It's the Toyota Camry of Macs. And that's not bad at all - I have one - but it's nobody goes crazy over a Camry.
The standout part of the eMac is that CRT. With the exception of the i-Lamp, yeah - Macs just camry-er and camry-er. With next year being the 40th Anniversary of the Mac, I hope they at least do a beige version of the current model with the rainbow logo. That'd be kinda cool.
running games in classic under os x is pretty poor performance wise for gaming. Unreal Tournament and many of those games that came out just before OS X was released ot games that didnt get official O X ports from OS9 often have unofficial of beta versions that will run under OS X...
Apples are landfill material. Because you can’t do anything with them. They are hard to upgrade/repair and there was software but a limited amount. Old IBM compatibles can still be upgraded/repaired and there’s truckload of software for it. My wife uses apples and goes through them 4 times as fast as my window machines. My last Windows machine went through 3 video cards updates, 1 one power supply, and 1 Hard Drive update, and it still works. But after 9 years technology advances had just required a new PC to do what I want.
I might have been interested, had you actually built a case to put an eMac into, as your illiterate title suggests. As it is, Apple haven't done anything worth my attention since the Apple II, so thanks for briefly wasting my time.
