What to do with old/broken mac

FButler

New Member
So the hard drive on my late 2009 21.5" imac has died; I've decided to upgrade to a newer model, but I don't know what to do with the old one. I thought I could use it as a second screen but bought a cable for it and apparently this model is only compatible for using as a 2nd screen if it's the 27" version!!!

I don't really want to throw it away, it seems wasteful as the the rest of the machine was fine (although a bit slow) and would work either with an external hard drive or if I replaced it (around £150).

Any suggestions? Does anywhere buy old macs to recycle or to fix up and sell on? I did a quick google search but the few websites I found weren't offering any money, I guess because it's so old. Other models like this don't seem to be selling on ebay either..

If anyone is technical enough to figure out a way of using it as a 2nd screen that would be perfect; but it's beyond me and the woman I spoke to at apple was no genius... (just shared links to all the web pages I had already looked at myself!)

Thanks!
 
It's quite easy to put a new HDD in that model of iMac and teh tools are pretty easy to come by on ebay.

Once fixed, you're not going to be able to pay off the mortgage with what you'll make selling it but you should get a couple of hundred, so enough to make it worth while.
 
I'd look into putting in a SSD which would make it work faster in terms of booting up and saving/loading large file sizes.

If that's a possibility then go for that.
 
I'd look into putting in a SSD which would make it work faster in terms of booting up and saving/loading large file sizes.

If that's a possibility then go for that.
I'm not sure that would actually help. The link I posted does say you need 'specific' hard drive brands etc to get the temp sensor/fan to work properly and I'm not even sure that an ssd is fully supported in older os-x (Windows only here :)).
 
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