Connecting RasberryPi to an iMac G3 CRT?

[m2306]

I haven’t even considered using a CRT for a retropie project because of the size and uglyness of CRTs in general. Since I recently saw an iMac G3 I changed my mind. It’s very compact and looks kind of cool. So if it would be realistic to get a RasberryPi connected to the CRT it would make a really nice solid case for keybord based systems on Retropie. Does anyone have any knowledge about the possibilities of such a project?

[mitu]

@m2306 Does it have any video input port ? If it does, most likely you'll be able to connect it with a converter from HDMI. Looking at that model though, it looks like an 'all-in-one' system without one.

[carlhungus74]

Hello.
It depends on the imac generation. On the first generations (with a tray loading cdrom), there is a vga connector between the motherboard and the CRT. You could use it without problems.

For the next generations (with slot-loading), it is a now a proprietary connector, and the motherboard controls the frequency, colors and so on...
I saw some attempts to use the CRT on several forums, but without any success.

hope this helps.

[future.child]

Not sure if it helps but you may be interested in this , this and this site/thread.

basically you need to send a i2c sequence to "start" the crt and feed it with vga signals.

[m2306]

@cacrlhungus74 Thank you. I have an old G3 somewhere, I think. this is some good information. Now I don’t need to pull it apart unless it’s the correct generation.

[m2306]

@future-child Thank you. Some of the links are for eMac, which I didn’t even know existed. Not as cool looking as the G3 iMac but fairly solid design as well. I found the last link myself as well and that one made me hesitate with even starting to plan this project as it seemed like a huge pain and was not resolved in that thread.