Apple iMac baptized by fire; still works

ModYourMac has the story of a rather amazing Apple iMac G5:

Modding with Fire

Notice that this Mac isn’t pristine white. Its yellow. Its black. Its gray and sooty. The plastic have [sic] bubbled and started to melt. Yes, that’s right. This Mac was caught in a fire! I came into work this morning, and this machine had somehow made it into our possession, post-customer. The shop folks were getting a good look at it, since Mac techs always enjoy a look at the extreme destruction that can befall one of MotherShip’s fine machines. Of course, with this unit’s life cycle ended, the guys just opted to leave it for the recycling pile.

I couldn’t let it go though. We can only imagine what this machine saw. How the room around it went up in flames. How, sitting on its desk, it was engulfed in an inferno and managed to still be upright. This machine had obviously made it through a baptism of fire, literally. But how well had it survived? I had to know.

Would this horribly thrashed and discarded machine, who sacrificed all to protect it’s hard drive, power on? And if it did power on, would it boot up? Yes. I had to know.

I went ahead and set the unit up on its own surge protector, just in case. I hooked up a keyboard, mouse, power and ethernet. The usual basics. Then, while compressing the warped back plate assembly, I pressed in the power button. I caught the sound of a fan spinning, a scent of burnt plastic, smoke and ash. Then, the unit elicited the famous Mac startup chime…

More, including many photos, in the full article here.

39 Comments

  1. my old place went up in flames about 5 years ago, and i had Dual G4 MMD that was in the flames, the drive doors were brown, the case was distorted, but that machine worked like a charm and i actually sold it for a decent penny after cleaning it up!

    turns out it was the last mac that could run OS 9 or something ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

  2. Back in March 2005, my PowerBook G4 Aluminium survived a 850°F fire here at home. After surviving a 1-meter drop from a tabletop exhibit, thanks to a stupid guy.
    This baby is still alive, celebrating its 5th year of existence with a little repair : one of the fans is dead, causing graphic card defects when the internal temperature is too high.
    That is industrial design per Apple.

  3. Ampar…you are wrong. Dvorak gave it to Enderle and a love present for Valentines day. Turdrot got so upset that Dvorak ditched him that he set fire to his love gift.

    The poor iMac got burnt having been caught up in this love triangle.

  4. @Ampar:
    Come on that’s lame.
    Especially when it wasn’t a sarcastic comment. I would love to have an imac with a matte screen and the damn thing still works. I sprayed dulling spray all over a co-workers but that didn’t work so well and pissed him off.

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