Help! Dead iMac monitor!

There is an external monitor port but its hidden really well.At the back of your imac you have a largeish pop off cover with vent holes. If you pop it off you have the metal shielding underneath and in the middle of it there should be a raised(2mm) section big enough to hide the 15 pin port.Based on 400mhz model.

For some reason, i believe the 350 was the oddball and it didn't have the port unlike the 400s. Please correct me if i'm wrong but I didn't see a vga port like I did once when i worked on a 400mhz imac when I removed the base cover to do some work on mine.

I think i read somewhere that the solder pads are there, but no port was actually mounted or something.

Correct. Only the iMac DV models have VGA outs. The Bondi 350MHz model was not an iMac DV.

What were you doing when it happened? WEre you in the middle of tryiing to upgrade to OS X? Or did it happen while the machine was just sitting there running as normal?

I work in an IT department at a large ad agency. I'd say nearly half of all the old CRT iMacs we had were fried or near death when we sent them back at the end of a three year lease. Short of installing your own liquid cooling system, I wouldn't expect even an exceptionally well cared for CRT iMac to last more than four to five and a half years at most before hitting that same point that a 15 year old car does where too many parts are crapping out all at once to really be worth fixing.

That color shift sounds like what happened to some of ours before they kicked the bucket or the screens burnt out permanently. We also had a lot of screen shrinkage, a problem that our admin assistants discovered could be temporarily solved by wacking the computer.

I am not a big fan of the iMac CRT.

I would advice sucking it up and getting one of the older model G4 LCDs if economy is an issue. Best iMac design so far and they run nice and cold.

Taking 5 minutes and checking and trying a firmware patch is pretty much the first and easiest step to trying to fix a slot loader with bad video. Then troubleshoot more if that isn't the problem. I'd wait to chuck the sucker 'til it's been diagnosed fully. iMac do die, but when they do it's more likely a GLOD.

BTW: To the OP, the otehr are right - the 350 didn't have a VGA port on the board. It was cost cut. Mine has empty hole for a through-hole port. If/when you do find it's hardware problems and decide on an ATX conversion you'll need to solder one to the pads.

This is interesting. My Rev. B Bondi 233 still has a crisp display at 1024x768@75hz and everything works fine. It's in pristine condition however and I'm sure other iMacs are exposed to much harsher conditions.