Do you have complete hardware damage? No. The system is working.
Therefore no surge. A surge protector ignores everything but a voltage
so high as to damage electronics. Look on the protector's box. What
is the let-through voltage? 330 volts? Anything less is ignored - the
protector does nothing. Furthermore, protector manufacture also
forgets to mention the protector is ineffective without a short earth
ground conneciton. Where is that wire less than 10 feet to earth
ground? Something they forget to mention so that you will buy
ineffective plug-in protectors.

Your symtpoms are consistent with internal Mac failure - an internal
problem that would be slowly getting worse.

Joseph Littleshoes wrote:
> I live in an old building with equally old wiring and my old mac's (OS
> 8.1) monitor would flicker but other wise worked fine.
>
> Now i get this new iMac (OS X) and the colour comes and goes from full
> wonderful millions of colours to a washed out blue, yellow and white.
>
> Will a "surge protector" alleviate this problem?
>
> Or is there something else i need to do to regularize the current? I
> live in an old apartment building with business on the ground floor that
> pull a lot of electricity.