Access Internet recovery from an Imac Late 2013 with broken screen and blank HDD

[fleoslapper]

Hello everyone.

A friend of mine just gifted to me his old imac 21 Late 2013. Problem is, the screen is shattered and he took off the hard drive for privacy reasons. For the rest, it's perfectly fine, since he was using it flawlessly connected to an external monitor. Now I just popped in a brand new ssd.
I then hanged the Imac to my monitor via an miniDP-HDMI cable, but when I boot up, the monitor receives no signal whatsoever. I tried booting with no key pressed, then I tried booting holding cmd+R, and finally cmd+F1. None of them worked. Do you have any advice? Thank you.

 

[pigoo3]

Just out of curiosity...does the iMac builtin display illuminate? I know you mentioned that the "screen is shattered"...but maybe it still illuminates. Just want to be sure the iMac is actually powering on.

- Nick

 

[fleoslapper]

The screen is currently disconnected, but at power on the fan starts spinning and the boot chime plays.

 

[pigoo3]

Thanks for the info. To startup with Internet Recovery...press & hold the 3 or 4 key combo Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

HTH,

- Nick

 

[fleoslapper]

None of the three worked. Maybe the recovery firmware doesn't allow for a second screen function? What else can I try?

 

[ferrarr]

What happens when you connect the screen? Maybe the internal screen will be mirrored to the second screen?

 

[fleoslapper]

Just tried reconnecting the screen. No changes at all, I don't know what kind of damage the screen received, but it's completely black, no backlight either. Is buying a new screen the only real solution?

EDIT: What about trying to install OS on the HDD in an external caddy from another mac and then pop the HDD back in? Will it work even if it's not the same model?

 

[fleoslapper]

Update: the USB hdd caddy thingy didn't work. There are two more plausible solutions I can think of: target disk mode and macosx remote installer. The only problem is I would be completely blind on the iMac side for any input. Could someone be so kind to help me listing the exact order key I should press blindly in order to install via ethernet remotely the OS?