Today we present you one of those retro stories that even we would be very happy to experience. For starters, if you’re a retro Mac user, do you remember the iMac G4? This Mac It was first released in 2002 and is already more than an outdated product.. Today I can create a pure text document if the system still allows it. Now imagine if we said this Mac could be perfectly available in 2024. Would you believe it? It’s hard to believe but A YouTube creator managed to bring a 22-year-old Mac back to life with an M2 chip.

It is possible to stream the image to a 2002 iMac G4 via HDMI

If you are reading us and are a user with sufficient hardware knowledge, you will know that it is possible to operate the iMac’s screen as an external display. Youtuber Action Retro has sufficient experience in this field, I took apart an iMac G4 so I could use a Mac mini M2 in it. is It’s amazing how a computer from the beginning of the millennium can still work and there is some youth in it.

Thanks to the video below posted on their channel, you will see what the whole process is like. The first episode shows the change in the iMac’s interiorThe 20-inch screen is maintained as an external source. This was made possible thanks to a special plate created by Juicy Crumb Systems.The person who happened to be responsible for encouraging Sean to perform this complex procedure.

Using the card and connecting original cables for iMac G4 Shows how to enable the display and use it as an HDMI input. It’s connected to a Mac mini M2, a Windows PC, and even a Steam Deck.

Can you really use a refurbished iMac G4 with an M2 chip?

The interesting part comes later. Carrying out huge jobs of cables and solders, Sean managed to give the iMac a completely new and permanent interior. Some of the internals of the old equipment were removed, such as the optical drive and many cables that would no longer be useful. New power and cabling added along with the M2 chip component.

M2 chip remains in place of optical drive

The experience you get by doing this is completely unparalleled.. Last step to complete the process Install the software that comes with the Juicy Crumb Systems board. With this, the brightness can be leveled and the screen will also have firmware support for all kinds of graphics needs. It looks like a new iMac even without the IPS display it has a rather striking body (we remember that this refers to a generation device).

(Sean) Who is Action Retro?

The video is 16 minutes long, but this process takes a lot of time.. This is a complex job and one that only a person with knowledge and skills can perform. If you visit both the Action Retro website and the YouTube channel, you will see that expert in retouching old computersmostly Macintosh.

iMac G4 becomes fully usable after several internal changes

He loves the PowerPC era of Macs in the 90s, and much of his work comes from Patreon donations and merchandise sales. Old equipment arrives in full thanks to anonymous donors. It is ready to cover the transportation of the products that interest you. If you have a PowerPC Mac with accessories, Macintosh 68k (You can reach him via e-mail for curiosities such as Macintosh Plus from 1986, Sun and SGI architectures, old Linux articles.)

Finally, as an important observation, both the card capable of transmitting video via HDMI and the implementation of the M2 chip are completely reversible. Sean notes that any trained user can perform the operation and return it to its original state. After this great success, it would be hard to imagine anyone wanting to return a team to a state of inactivity when it was no longer performing its most basic tasks. Best of all, it rose from the ashes as if it were truly a team. Phoenix.

If you had the wherewithal, namely an iMac G4 and a Mac mini with an M1 or M2 chip, plus the knowledge… would you go for it?