Today I changed the battery in my iMac for the first time, and when I removed the shell of the iMac, I found a 15 pin serial port... what is this for? I was under the assumption that Mac's had no serial ports?
2) What model iMac? Tray loading? Slot loading? Flat panel?
The tray loading iMacs used the old Macintosh DB-15 monitor interface instead of the industry-standard VGA. That might be it. Other than that I really have no idea.
If you have a slot-load iMac, it's a VGA port and can be used to hook up an external monitor. If you have a tray-load iMac, then it's already being used by the built-in monitor, so it doesn't matter anyway.
It's not very useful to most people, though. Unfortunately, iMacs aren't capable of monitor spanning, only mirroring. In other words you can plug in a second screen, but it's going to show the same thing as the internal one.
Comments
1) How many rows of pins? 2 or 3?
2) What model iMac? Tray loading? Slot loading? Flat panel?
The tray loading iMacs used the old Macintosh DB-15 monitor interface instead of the industry-standard VGA. That might be it. Other than that I really have no idea.
If you have a slot-load iMac, it's a VGA port and can be used to hook up an external monitor. If you have a tray-load iMac, then it's already being used by the built-in monitor, so it doesn't matter anyway.
I hope that answers your questions.
My iMac is a slot loading CRT model.
It's not very useful to most people, though. Unfortunately, iMacs aren't capable of monitor spanning, only mirroring. In other words you can plug in a second screen, but it's going to show the same thing as the internal one.