Display gone on imac, can I view on external monitor or TV?

[NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown]

The display on my imac g5 powerpc (2005?) died last year and I'm desperate to get to all the photos, videos & music on there - maybe by transferring them to an external hard drive. I used to view my pc through my tv with a special wire - - can I do this with a mac? I bought a wire (mini dvi?) on eBay but it was the wrong size. How can I find out what wire I need and will it work without being able to adjust any settings on the screen??

I think you should find your answer on this page - I've never done it but the instructions include finding out what kind of video socket there is on your iMac.

Alternatively, you can just take your machine to somewhere (even PC World I would have thought) where they can read off the content of the hard disk.

Thank you. If possible I still want to use the mac so it would be preferable to connect it to another screen. Ive read that article and I'm still at a loss as to what port it has. I think it might be a mini vga but no idea how to check. Will keep trying but I suspect I'm just not tech savvy enough!

So the article suggests you need to look up the specification of your iMac in the tech spec database. I had a look at iMac G5 Powerpc and I think the likelihood is you have a VGA or mini-VGA port but you need to confirm that, preferably by typing in your iMac's serial number to be sure. There are also some caveats that suggest an adapter is required to make it work.

Then it depends what kind of port your TV has in. The article lists the kind of cables needed to connect one to t'other when you know what kind of ports each has.

The other option is to look at having the iMac's screen fixed, perhaps?

Yes I have considered that but I think the likelihood is it will cost a lot more than I can afford. I bought it second hand from Amazon and the sticker that had the serial number on had been removed. I know the tv has vga or hdmi, think I'm going to attempt buying a mini vga to vga adapter and hope for the best! Thank you for your help :)

If you just want to get the stuff of you don't need a monitor at all, as long as you have another Mac and a firewire cable. Hold down the T key when you boot up the iMac and it will go into Firewire Target Disk Mode, which means it will be seen as an external drive by another computer (but it would have to be a Mac, in practice). Connect it to another Mac with a FW cable and you'll be able to see everything that's on it, and copy it off to another drive or whatever you want to put it on.