Ejb-shop-linux

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ejbimac was Andrea's old iMac repurposed as a Mac for Ed to play with.

VNC

I did't really want to be setting this up as another desktop, so I set it up for remote access from my main Windows 7 machine with two big monitors. It turns out that the more recent Mac OS versions have a decent built in VNC server, so you can just turn that on using the system preferences -> sharing dialog. I turned off all other sharing. The default IP it came up with is ejbimac.local. I installed TightVNC reader on my win7 machine and it did manage to connect, though the first time it took a long time. Then I tucked the iMac into a corner under the desk and used it with my regular screen.

Died

Looked like the power supply died.

Fixed January 2020

It was the power supply. I bought a used one on iFixit.com and it worked. Wouldn't boot though, so I wiped the boot volume and re-installed Mavericks, the latest OS available for that hardware. But Mavericks does not like to play nice with windows networking, so I downgraded (jumping through many hoops) to Mountian Lion. I also replaced the hard drive with a 250gB SSD, so it ran way faster, but I didn't really have a use for it.

Converted to Linux 2023

I played with Ejbimac quite a bit to make it useful, but it only supports very old operating systems. I like that you can build a new machine directly from the Apple web site without installation media, but the world has moved on from Mountain Lion. The machine sat gathering dust until I needed a machine to run my CNC machine, and the screen on this machine is nice and big. So I wiped the SSD and installed the latest Lubuntu (light weight version of Ubuntu Linux.) With some software fiddling, I got it connected to the CNC Arduino controller through USB, and it is now ejb-shop-linux on the network.