Finally found a Facebook Marketplace project to tackle.
10 bucks! Sold as “parts only.” Previous owner claimed the GPU bad.
I’ll post my progress here.
Had the same thing with a 27". Got it to boot once to blank gray screen, then couldn't get anything but a black screen. GPU failures are common, and it appears to often be related to bad solder joints. That's when I found @JDW 's series on YouTube about the iMac GPU bake. It sounds absurd, but it revived mine and it's been kicking for several months with no issues. (You can read about it here: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/imac-late-2009-graphics-card-bake-success-story.232/)Cycled a boot chime every few minutes with a blank screen. Taking apart to diagnose because it was apparent someone had already take a peek inside.
"Professional" has come to mean "someone who does something for a living," instead of the more intuitive definition of "a real expert in their field." You'd think the daily experience of doing something "on the job" would make one a real expert, but such isn't always the case. As is true of Louis Rossmann, the KIND of experience is key. Rossmann appeared on Linus Tech Tips in the past because Linus wanted help with an iMac. In the course of that video, Linus joked he shouldn't have asked Rossmann to come because Rossmann wasn't that much help with the iMac. Why? Because Rossmann fixes MacBooks and iPhones mostly, hardly ever touching iMacs. That's why when people who have little practical experience with certain machines claim that "such and such a fix is stupid and dumb," it shouldn't carry much weight. The bake really does work, and while it doesn't last forever, no repair lasts forever, nor does any product. The bake simply lasts long enough, in most cases, to have been worth the effort. And when you have nothing to lose, it makes sense to try it, especially since it works well for most people who try it.Had the same thing with a 27". Got it to boot once to blank gray screen, then couldn't get anything but a black screen. GPU failures are common, and it appears to often be related to bad solder joints. That's when I found @JDW 's series on YouTube about the iMac GPU bake. It sounds absurd, but it revived mine and it's been kicking for several months with no issues. (You can read about it here: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/imac-late-2009-graphics-card-bake-success-story.232/)
I had been told by the owner that they had a "professional" try to fix it and they had been told it was a complete logic board failure (which is an odd diagnosis, especially since the owner apparently had the machine set to auto-login and start playing a podcast on startup, so you could hear the audio playing if you powered on and gave it enough time. Said "pro" also damaged the backlight cable when poking around inside, so I did have to replace that as well.
Best of luck!
2008 to 2011 iMacs have graphics card issues. I know this because many 2008 owners of both the smaller and larger type contact me in the comments section under my YouTube Bake videos and let me know they had a problem but the bake cured it for them.Regarding the GPU bake solution, that is targeted to a particular subset of iMacs with specific GPUs in the 2009-2011 era, right? My 2008 iMac shows no signs of graphics problems necessitating a bake. I'm wondering if the blank screen problem that @KingDingus is describing is due to another factor, such as someone previously fiddling in the interior and messing with the screen connection cable.
This just made my day. Thank you for sharing .
Hmm, I typically use disk utility & format a 8gb + flash drive to GUID, then copy over the dmg you want to install. Reboot-option and select the flashdrive via boot selector and install. IIRC max macOS for 2008 imac is El Cap 10.11 64bit but if you want to beyond that, you can use a patcher.Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a application that assists with creating a bootable USB drive so I can put a fresh install of an OS on this computer?
I’ve tried following directions to do it manually but Monterey doesn’t seem to want to play nice.