I bought my parents this iMac back in 2008. They’ve both passed, and now it’s mine. I was able to retrieve most of the old photos and such from it, but without the iCloud password I wasn’t able to update anything, or even allow some location service settings.
I tried to reinstall OS X Leopard, but even finding the right file was difficult. Then trying to set up a “bootable USB drive” became a nightmare. Formatting, terminal stuff, nothing worked out.
Then I got curious and started to look to see if I could install another OS, and well, turns out installing ChromeOS Flex on the iMac was super easy.
Setting up the boot disk was easy. Then rebooting the iMac to the thumb drive was a snap, installation was a breeze, and now I have a machine where I can update it and make it secure as needed – at least for a Google OS machine.
I’m mostly going to use it to display Weather Star 4000 while working. It’s just so soothing having that going in the background. I may also use it for notes and such for Zoom calls. Something that’s not tied directly to the machine that I use for my growing Zoom call meetings.