Long story, but the end is that there is a crack in the glass inside the LCD on my wife's lampshade iMac rendering the lower right corner of the screen unusable. Whe is planning to get rid of this machine and upgrade to somehing newer. As such, I will most likely take it off of her hands for salvage. I would like to raplace the LCD, but now it may be expensive.
What are my solutions (aside from the obvious use of an external VGA monitor)?
TIA
--DDTM
Put the guts in another case and then use it with an external VGA monitor? Really, you only have maybe 4 options. Salvage the usable parts and scrap the rest, use it with Remote Desktop without any connected display or as a server, repair it, or like you said use it with an external display. I really don't see much else you can do.
Which iMac model is it?
The early ones couldn't adjust monitor frequencies with an external monitor, and were locked at 60Hz. That's fine for an LCD, but a recipe for eye strain on a CRT. IIRC, the 15" models were stuck at 1024x768 on an external as well.
If you get the LCD model number, perhaps you can find a replacement in ebay's PC area, rather than the Mac area where it's likely to be more expensive.
I would do one of the following:
(1) See if you can find a cheap-ish dead unit on eBay with a good LCD;
(2) If not, then get it up and running with an external LCD monitor, make sure that works, and then remove the integrated LCD and the "neck" - you'll end up with a retro looking, dome-shaped version of a mac mini.
Best,
Matt
LCD panels show up on ebay from time to time. Replacing the panel itself is a pretty straightforward process.