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Could I use an eMac as the display for my Mac mini?
Friday, August 7, 2009 / Displays, Hardware
I have an eMac with this processor: 1.25 GHz, Power PC G4. The memory is: 512 MB DDR SDRAM. The eMac was purchased 12/01/04. Could this eMac be used as the display for a Mac mini? What would I need to do to connect the two units?
- Kenneth
There is no physical way to connect the screen of an eMac or iMac to another computer. They are hardware locked to the logic board of Apple computers. You can, however, use the built-in screen sharing feature of 10.5 Leopard to view and control the Mac Mini remotely. They both need to be connected to the same network and the Mini would need to be configured to allow remote connections. So it would need to be connected to a monitor and keyboard-mouse for the initial setup. You would also need to upgrade the eMac to Leopard to control the Mac Mini. After that it the eMac should be able to see the new Mac Mini as available for screen sharing in the sidebar of any Finder window. If this is just a matter of saving money, you can get an LCD display that will work on your Mac Mini cheaply. It will work two times better than Screen Sharing, perhaps ten times better.
- Jacob
August 10th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
If you want to hack around inside the eMac, you could patch in a VGA connector and a switching setup (to switch between eMac and external input) to the monitor section. However, that is a lot of work to get a 17″ CRT monitor. You can find a working used one for as little as $10, or even free in areas where you have to pay disposal fees to junk them. However, cost of operation for an LCD monitor is quite a bit lower.