I refurbished an iMac only to blunder...
I refurbished this older iMac—what I think to be is a mid 2010 model with a 21.5" display—with the idea of using it as a monitor for my PC with Target Display Mode. But as I'm learning now, it seems target display mode only works with other Macs, so I can't use it with my PC.
The story is, my cousin had this machine and upgraded to something else. She didn't need it anymore and was going to bring it to a rage room for smashing.... so I rescued it.
It ran hot and I knew it was older, so I opened it up to replace the thermal paste. I was greeted by a lot of dust. I did my best at removing all of the parts from the shell and blew it out real good with an air compressor. I opened the covers on the fans and brushed out the blades as best as I could. I replaced thermal paste on the CPU and GPU die, and cut new thermal pads for the VRAM. Lastly, I replaced the mechanical hard drive for an SSD and mounted it with double-sided tape.
I've never owned an Apple product before now, and it was really fun cleaning this old machine out—even though I was very busy with life and had to clean this out over the course of 4 days.
As for using it as just a monitor... I know I can pair the panel with a different control board, but if I'm spending money for a good quality board, I might as well just purchase a new monitor. I also just refurbished this whole thing and don't want to waste it.
I thought about splitting the partition and putting a Linux OS with the macOS, and upgrade the macOS to something newer than OS High Sierra that it was previously running... what can I do with this machine?