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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: AmigaEd on September 26, 2010, 04:01:30 AM

Title: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on September 26, 2010, 04:01:30 AM
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Amigamia on September 26, 2010, 04:19:20 AM
Use it as a door stopper or resell it for higher price that you bought it.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on September 26, 2010, 04:30:52 AM
Quote from: Amigamia;581262
Use it as a door stopper or resell it for higher price that you bought it.


Fairly cold answer.

Why don't you burn a copy of PPC Ubuntu and  install that OS on it? I use it on my Powermac and except for the lack of decent Flash support its a pretty solid OS. I also find it somewhat more responsive than OSX (which probably wouldn't run on a G3 anyway).
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: ChrisUnionNJ on September 26, 2010, 04:52:21 AM
Quote from: AmigaEd;581256
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd

I thought Morphos 2.5 will work I know they added eMac's to it..:roflmao:

Chris  :furious:
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Matt_H on September 26, 2010, 06:13:47 AM
Not a lot you can do with it unless you want a MacOS 9.x machine. And unless you hire them, the MorphOS team will never port to that platform. It's just too old.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on September 26, 2010, 06:14:00 AM
Quote from: ChrisUnionNJ;581266
I thought Morphos 2.5 will work I know they added eMac's to it..:roflmao:

Chris  :furious:
This is an iMac and a G3. MorphOS coulds support it, but its unlikely. Ununtu PPC still seems the best answer.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: actung_bab on September 26, 2010, 09:41:04 AM
boat anchor .door stop , paper weight, hehe
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: actung_bab on September 26, 2010, 09:43:36 AM
l have g3 ppc it came with osx early version runs fine with opera makes fine web machine
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Debaser on September 26, 2010, 11:58:10 AM
You can start lurking the M68K Liberation Army website. (yeah, they accept PPC Mac users too over there) Lots of old-school discussions - you are bound to get some ideas there.

http://68kmla.org/forums/

But I am not quite sure what you'd expect as a use:
Simple audio editing
Email
Playing Marathon and discovering how much Amiga owned. :)
Simple Photo Editing
Browsing


It still has life in it but in my opinion if you put OSX on it - just use terminal apps and fuss through life with OS9 on the thing.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: brownb2 on September 26, 2010, 12:21:23 PM
Quote from: AmigaEd;581256
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd

When I finally ditched my 12 year old 28 inch CRT TV last year at the local town dump I saw one of these in the TVs/monitors shipping container, bright blue, immaculate (ha!) condition, set down properly on the floor and a mouse nearby (keyboard wouldn't have been far). I nearly picked it up and ran but the sanity of my better half told me it was junk... if you find a good use for it please report back... I still regret not picking it up :(
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: KThunder on September 26, 2010, 01:12:41 PM
I always wanted to gut an Imac and put in a pc mobo and monitor. But when I had the chance awhile ago ($25 ~10miles from me) I didn't. Craigslist has Imacs all the time.
They are pretty cool looking computers. Terrible os though, Ubuntu sounds like it could be a good idea though.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: persia on September 26, 2010, 02:27:33 PM
CRTs are banned from my house, if I never have to lift one again it'll be too soon.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: mongo on September 26, 2010, 02:28:27 PM
Quote from: AmigaEd;581256
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd


Which iMac is it? It could be anything from a 233 MHz G3 to a 700MHz one.

You can run MacOS X 10.4 on it. I don't know if I would try on a 233 MHz one, but on a 700MHz one it should run pretty well.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Crom00 on September 26, 2010, 02:50:31 PM
The 350 mhz - 400 mhz versions of this can be expanded to a gig of ram, slap a new IDE hard drive in there and it will run OSX tiget FASTER than os9 would ever run. OS9 is dog slow no matter how you try and run it.

OSX is actually faster. The key here is the ram. Anything online is going to be a problem the heavy use of flash coded to run on faster CPU's will slow down anything online. Non flash won't be a problem. Safari will be slow no matter what.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: persia on September 26, 2010, 02:56:08 PM
@Crom00
I actually got Tiger on one through net boot....
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on September 26, 2010, 03:36:30 PM
Quote from: mongo;581323
Which iMac is it? It could be anything from a 233 MHz G3 to a 700MHz one.


Well, I tried to find out some about this iMac, but I think my lack of knowledge about these systems is hurting a bit.

It appears to be running OSX 10.0.3 and has 384 MB of RAM. Any advice on how to expand the RAM?

How do I find out what speed the processor is running at?

I have to say that while I really haven't done anything with this yet, when just moving around within the OS it seems fairly responsive.

Regards,
AmigaEd
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: dougal on September 26, 2010, 03:58:40 PM
I run OS X Tiiger 10.4 on an iBook G3 800Mhz / 640Mb and it runs very well. Very decent OS. The only thing that suffers is flash/youtube.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: smerf on September 26, 2010, 05:50:12 PM
Quote from: AmigaEd;581256
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd


====================================================================

Hi,

If you can still find a word processor, you can write letters with it, and I do believe that it did have a data base made for it which cost somewhere in the range of $999, you might be able to find one for about $499 on ebay. I can't ever remember a spreadsheet being made for it. Lets see in the game arena I do believe that they made empire for it, I seem to remember my friend saying it was the greatest game ever made.  Anyway have fun WPing on it.

smerf
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Trev on September 26, 2010, 05:58:56 PM
I have Panther installed on my iMac G3 333 MHz. It's slow, and I don't turn it on much. I also have a Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver) running Leopard. It's slow, and I don't turn it on much. ;-) Both systems can run most Apple and third-party PowerPC software. The G4 isn't fast enough to play Flash video at more than one frame per second. I understand Apple's reservations regarding Flash on its ARM chips.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Cammy on September 28, 2010, 02:53:22 AM
Here is the latest Ubuntu for PPC Macs if you want to try it: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/lucid/release/

It would be cool if Aros PPC, which runs on Sam440s, could be ported to old Macs too.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on September 28, 2010, 04:33:36 AM
Wow! I've got to say that I'm quite amazed by the amount of interest that this thread has generated. I thought everyone would be too busy hammering on Commodore-USA too pay any attention to this thread.

Anyway, Thank you to all who have replied! Maybe it's just me, but I think have noticed a wee bit of trend in the responses that have been posted.

I'm still not sure what the processor speed is of this thing, where the heck is Sysinfo when you need it?

I can't wait to really find out how slow this computer with OSX really is. By all accounts, it seems that I should be waiting for inexplicable amounts of time for even the simplest task to run. All I've really done so far is just turn it on and stare at it while repeatedly clicking the left mouse button (It seems the right button is mis-placed.) while poking around the standard OS applications.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: amigadave on September 28, 2010, 08:58:34 AM
Quote from: AmigaEd;581256
Oh Happy Day! I just picked up an Imac G3 - I thought that it might not work correctly, but it seems to work fine.

This is the first Apple computer that I've used since 1984. It's my understanding that Morphos won't work on this, so now what can I do with it?

Regards,
AmigaEd

I have a 333MHz model of the Tangerine iMac and have found that it is a perfect match to install my Efika inside of.  I will provide snapshots of how it all goes together once I figure out a few more details.  My Radeon 9250 video card has both DVI & an additional VGA port that connects to the card via a pin header on the card and ribbon cable to the standard 15pin VGA connector port.  The iMac has an internal video ribbon cable that fits the pin header of the Radeon 9250 video card, but I have not tested it yet, as I have not been able to confirm the pinout of the card matches the pinout of the iMac ribbon cable and pcb which converts and connects to the two row 15pin monitor cable for the iMac's crt display.  I have also found that I can gut the USB CD/DVD external drive and connect it to the iMac's internal CD drive.  I just wish the Efika had an internal USB header, instead of having to route a short USB cable from the Efika's external USB port back into the iMac case to connect to the USB to IDE adapter.  Other than that one cable and the difference in the port placements, it will be very difficult to see that this iMac is not stock.  The only other work I need to complete is opening the case further to tap into the iMac's PSU and adapt a plug to it that will connect to the Efika's electrical input connector.

I think it will make a great looking bottom of the line MorphOS computer and hope to have it completed in time for the AmiWest 2010 Show, sitting side by side with the G4 eMac, G4 MacMini, and Dual G4 PowerMac, on the MorphOS display table.

The Efika running at 400MHz probably runs MorphOS2.5 much faster and better than the iMac's G3 running at 333MHz runs any version of MacOSX.  I think it is a great match and should be more fun with the Efika inside than the original iMac mobo.

Edit: Does your iMac have a CD/DVD drive door, or is it the "Slot Loading" type of optical drive?  I believe the Slot Loading type started with the 400MHz models that came out right after the 333MHz model that I have.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: haywirepc on September 28, 2010, 11:02:07 AM
I agree with cammy, if I had a g3 powermac, I would install ubuntu for power pc or some light linux distro. Osx on these machines is no joy to use.
 
making it into a morphos machine or perhaps a dedicated emulated amiga by changing out motherboards and guts would be interesting.
 
Or perhaps when the new minimig with aga's come out that would be cool.
 
Steven
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Franko on September 28, 2010, 01:57:32 PM
Currently I'm using an iMacG4 800Mhz with OSX 10.4.11 (the max OS it can use). While it's fine for most browsing on the net, you can't watch things like youtube videos on it properly, it only displays a pic about every half second or so.

Strange, because it can play DVD movies with any problems. I wouldn't use it for anything else other than the net, as my 060/ppc amiga can edit JPegs and gfx quicker using ImageFX. In fact trying to do most things on it is just way too slow and can be done more easily on my amiga.

I don't know if the OS versions were all basically the same, but to find the processor speed on this one, all you do is go to the apple menu and select about this mac then info.

Unless you can buy a mac with at least a G5 in it, I wouldn't recommend it for anything other than a net browser, they are just too slow and flakey for anything else... :(

To find out all the details about any old mac ever made go here...

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Super TWiT on September 28, 2010, 03:46:36 PM
I run debian linux on mine.  I used the original imac as my only computer for a few months, while my desktop was having some issues.  Worked well.  I wrote a tutorial (http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=43326) on it.  I prefer debian, especially on older machines, because you can customize what it runs, and what services are running a little bit better.  Ubuntu tends to have a lot of extra bloat and crap running in the background, not good for older gear.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: haywirepc on September 28, 2010, 04:19:42 PM
Thats a nice tutorial, I'd like to have an imac running debian if only I didn't have so many other computers around here, space is an issue.
 
Its interesting to see what people do with old doorstops sometimes. Mac hardware is nice looking,but I'm no fan of osx.
 
Steven
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on October 29, 2010, 01:40:22 AM
Quote from: amigadave;581696
I have a 333MHz model of the Tangerine iMac and have found that it is a perfect match to install my Efika inside of.  I will provide snapshots of how it all goes together once I figure out a few more details.  My Radeon 9250 video card has both DVI & an additional VGA port that connects to the card via a pin header on the card and ribbon cable to the standard 15pin VGA connector port.  The iMac has an internal video ribbon cable that fits the pin header of the Radeon 9250 video card, but I have not tested it yet, as I have not been able to confirm the pinout of the card matches the pinout of the iMac ribbon cable and pcb which converts and connects to the two row 15pin monitor cable for the iMac's crt display.  I have also found that I can gut the USB CD/DVD external drive and connect it to the iMac's internal CD drive.  I just wish the Efika had an internal USB header, instead of having to route a short USB cable from the Efika's external USB port back into the iMac case to connect to the USB to IDE adapter.  Other than that one cable and the difference in the port placements, it will be very difficult to see that this iMac is not stock.  The only other work I need to complete is opening the case further to tap into the iMac's PSU and adapt a plug to it that will connect to the Efika's electrical input connector.

I think it will make a great looking bottom of the line MorphOS computer and hope to have it completed in time for the AmiWest 2010 Show, sitting side by side with the G4 eMac, G4 MacMini, and Dual G4 PowerMac, on the MorphOS display table.

The Efika running at 400MHz probably runs MorphOS2.5 much faster and better than the iMac's G3 running at 333MHz runs any version of MacOSX.  I think it is a great match and should be more fun with the Efika inside than the original iMac mobo.

Edit: Does your iMac have a CD/DVD drive door, or is it the "Slot Loading" type of optical drive?  I believe the Slot Loading type started with the 400MHz models that came out right after the 333MHz model that I have.

@amigadave, I haven't had a chance to really do much with mine yet. Did you get yours completed for Amiwest? Also, to answer your question, mine has the slot loading drive.

Regards,
AmigaEd
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: coldfire on October 29, 2010, 01:59:48 AM
I've got a powerbook G4 1.67mhz 15" model running OSX 10.5 leopard.  I use it for certain video apps but lately I use it less and less.  It's some sweet hardware, the keyboard is backlit and the screen is large and not glossy.  Really I'd like another laptop exactly like it but with a quadcore intel processor running ubuntu.  If you go to the apple in the upper left corner of your display and click it you'll see a drop down menu that offers as one option "about this mac."  Click that option and it'll tell you about the processor and OS and also how much ram you have.  If tiger (10.4) will run on it I recommend that.  It's the fastest Mac OS that will run on a G3.  I went from 10.2 on a powermac G3 to 10.3 and then 10.4 and each OS was faster than the last.  I enjoyed using macs for several years but now I'm almost exclusively using linux.  I hacked up a dell laptop to run OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard but after a few weeks of playing with it I wiped it and installed Ubuntu 10.10 on it.  I discovered that I actually prefer Ubuntu to Mac now.  Linux has come a long way in the 12 years I've been running it.  The old iMac can still be useful but it'll need the ram bumped.  You can google for sites that tell you how to upgrade it.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on October 29, 2010, 02:03:29 AM
Quote from: AmigaEd;587789
@amigadave, I haven't had a chance to really do much with mine yet. Did you get yours completed for Amiwest? Also, to answer your question, mine has the slot loading drive.

Regards,
AmigaEd


Isn't that an awful lot of work to go through to upgrade a 333 Mhz PPC to a 400 Mhz PPC, guys?
Better video, but lower max. memory.
Except for the fact that the G3 can't run MorphOS (just as the Efika can't run MacOS), I don't really see the point of this one.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Tension on October 29, 2010, 03:18:19 AM
Quote from: actung_bab;581294
l have g3 ppc it came with osx early version runs fine with opera makes fine web machine


...untill you try and watch youtube or any iplayer video on it.

I was so shocked at how much lag there was on a G4 that needless to say I spat out my tea and simultaneously shat myself!
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: amigadave on October 29, 2010, 03:36:35 AM
Quote from: Iggy;587793
Isn't that an awful lot of work to go through to upgrade a 333 Mhz PPC to a 400 Mhz PPC, guys?
Better video, but lower max. memory.
Except for the fact that the G3 can't run MorphOS (just as the Efika can't run MacOS), I don't really see the point of this one.

The point is that this is an Amiga forum and an Efika running MorphOS2.6 can run many Amiga applications and games, as well as MorphOS native software.  Efika motherboards can still be purchased new for $99, and although limited to only 128mb RAM, are still usable and probably more enjoyable to Amiga users than any version of MacOS being run on a 333 to 400MHz G3 iMac.

I don't recommend the purchase of an Efika mobo when used 1.25GHz G4 eMac's, and G4 PowerMac towers of almost any speed above 400MHz can be found for the same or less money and will provide much better performance and in the case of the G4 PowerMac towers, better expandability too, but for anyone that already has an Efika, or anyone that can get one for very little money, putting it into a G3 iMac case can be an interesting project.

I did not finish my conversion before the AmiWest show and was actually seen during the show completely tearing my G3 iMac apart in an attempt to get it to turn the CRT on, without the Mac mobo being installed (unsuccessfully).  I did find out that the design of the slot loading 400MHz G3 iMac is completely different than my model and much easier to take apart, and might be a better candidate for such a project.  I am still going to complete my Efika>iMac conversion and will provide pictures of it as soon as it is completed.

P.S. Starting with version 2.5, MorphOS has included some improvements to memory management in low memory situations when a video card with at least 128mb of VRAM is detected.  This helps the Efika's performance and helps avoid running out of memory in some situations.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: save2600 on October 29, 2010, 04:24:49 AM
First thing I did with my Blue/White PowerMac G3 was upgrade the processor from 300mhz to 1.1ghz ala a $100 CPU replacement from otherworldcomputing.com

It's now got 1gb of RAM, an 80GB HD and runs Tiger 10.4.11 quite fine. Use it as a music server only right now, but it'll still keep up for a while - browsing, e-mail, iWork, anything I've thrown at it, been fine.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on October 29, 2010, 04:35:21 AM
Quote from: amigadave;587811
The point is that this is an Amiga forum and an Efika running MorphOS2.6 can run many Amiga applications and games, as well as MorphOS native software.  Efika motherboards can still be purchased new for $99, and although limited to only 128mb RAM, are still usable and probably more enjoyable to Amiga users than any version of MacOS being run on a 333 to 400MHz G3 iMac.

I don't recommend the purchase of an Efika mobo when used 1.25GHz G4 eMac's, and G4 PowerMac towers of almost any speed above 400MHz can be found for the same or less money and will provide much better performance and in the case of the G4 PowerMac towers, better expandability too, but for anyone that already has an Efika, or anyone that can get one for very little money, putting it into a G3 iMac case can be an interesting project.

I did not finish my conversion before the AmiWest show and was actually seen during the show completely tearing my G3 iMac apart in an attempt to get it to turn the CRT on, without the Mac mobo being installed (unsuccessfully).  I did find out that the design of the slot loading 400MHz G3 iMac is completely different than my model and much easier to take apart, and might be a better candidate for such a project.  I am still going to complete my Efika>iMac conversion and will provide pictures of it as soon as it is completed.

P.S. Starting with version 2.5, MorphOS has included some improvements to memory management in low memory situations when a video card with at least 128mb of VRAM is detected.  This helps the Efika's performance and helps avoid running out of memory in some situations.


I shouldn't have immediately spun the whole idea as negative. If you've got some of the parts and the inclination, it's no stranger than some of the hacking I've done. And if you get it done, it will look good. I've still got one PC with all blueberry colored parts, accessories, and a color matched Epson printer.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on October 29, 2010, 05:19:50 AM
Quote from: Iggy;587822
I shouldn't have immediately spun the whole idea as negative. If you've got some of the parts and the inclination, it's no stranger than some of the hacking I've done. And if you get it done, it will look good. I've still got one PC with all blueberry colored parts, accessories, and a color matched Epson printer.

Ha! This post just made me think of an awesome idea! Back in the day I just loved my old Panasonic dot matrix printer. I put reams and reams of paper through it over the course of several years. So this got me thinking that, maybe I could make a printer that emulates a dot matrix printer!
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: tone007 on October 29, 2010, 09:42:21 AM
Quote from: Tension;587808
...untill you try and watch youtube or any iplayer video on it.

I was so shocked at how much lag there was on a g4 that needless to say i spat out my tea and simultaneously shat myself!


PowerPC FTW!
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on October 30, 2010, 02:45:03 AM
Just discovered some interesting things about my iMac this evening...

First it is an iMac G3 DV and interestingly it comes equiped with a second VGA port as described here...

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8840906

I also was able to upgrade it 512Mb from 384Mb by removing a 128Mb module and replacing it with an 512Mb RAM module that I had collecting dust on my desk. (I think this might be upgradeable to 1Gb) So, I'm going to look around my junk pile for two 512 Mb modules tomorrow.

Regards,
AmigaEd
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on October 30, 2010, 03:01:02 AM
Quote from: AmigaEd;587830
Ha! This post just made me think of an awesome idea! Back in the day I just loved my old Panasonic dot matrix printer. I put reams and reams of paper through it over the course of several years. So this got me thinking that, maybe I could make a printer that emulates a dot matrix printer!


I bet you could , but you'd have to add some kind of sound generator to make that annoying racket those things made. Scary, but I think there's still a few DMPs on the market for companies that rely on multi-part forms.

Don't laugh about the whole apperence issue. When the color coordinated Macs were available my girlfriend (now my wife) wanted a blueberry colored printer (Epson), and blueberry accent colored PC, with blueberry keyboard and a matching blueberry colored mouse.

That color scheme thing worked real well to sell certain markets.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on October 30, 2010, 04:22:50 AM
Quote from: Iggy;588087
I bet you could , but you'd have to add some kind of sound generator to make that annoying racket those things made.

This would be like the floppy drive click sound emulated in WinUAE. I'm sure that I could do that fairly easy. If nothing else, maybe I could do it with a playing card and a clothes pin. You know, like the kids used to put on their bicycle wheel spokes.

Here are some real works of art...

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/07/three-examples-of-do.html

Regards,
AmigaEd
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on October 30, 2010, 04:39:47 AM
Quote from: dougal;581338
I run OS X Tiiger 10.4 on an iBook G3 800Mhz / 640Mb and it runs very well. Very decent OS. The only thing that suffers is flash/youtube.


Is flash for OS X inferior to the version shipped in 2002/3 for Windows XP then? As I never had a problem on that speed of Pentium 3 notebook surfing Youtube back in the past. I had a great G3 beige tower with the Wings A/V input output module I got for free, nice machine but boy is pre OS X Mac a pile of crap to look at AND use, worse than Workbench 3!

Personally if you can get OS X working nicely I would keep it with that, sorry can't help on how to find CPU speed or where the extra RAM slots in.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: Iggy on October 30, 2010, 05:51:43 AM
Actually, for all the hype PPC Apples running OSX are pretty slow. And Flash and other multimedia suffers (until you're well above 1 Ghz or better yet you've got a G5).
I used to blame that on the processor, but I've been running MorphOS on a 933 Ghz 7455 and it runs most audio and video formats much faster (needs better flash apps though since currently the best way to view them is to download them and play them back via a media player).
A G3 running at 800 Mhz running standard Mac OS, the P3 probably would outperform it, but blame the OS (not Flash or the processor).

Anyone notice than even with massive Intel powered Mac's their game play still stinks? Quick hint guys -its not the hardware, its the operating system and attendant software
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: johnklos on October 30, 2010, 06:34:50 AM
Find (Apple-F) System Profiler and run that. In OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) it still looks like OS 9's System Profiler, but it has CPU information.

The first generation tray-loading CD-ROM iMacs could take up to 512 megs (256 meg 66 MHz or faster SDRAM SO-DIMM), and the later iMacs could take 1 gig (standard PC-100 or 133 MHz SDRAM DIMM). You can run up to Mac OS X 10.4.whatever on any G3, but if your iMac doesn't have Firewire then you can't install it on that machine - you have to install it onto the hard drive using another machine and move the drive.

Hard drives of any size can be used, but drives larger than 8 gig on tray loading should have a small partition (less than 8 gigs) at the beginning on the drive with Mac OS 9 on it from which you can run Xpostfacto to boot OS X from the rest of the drive. Drives larger than 128 gigs need all the boot partitions to be below the 128 gig limit so that the OS can load SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver if you want to use the rest of the drive.

I have a first generation iMac which I've built into a Tonka truck:

http://www.ziaspace.com/tonka/installation.jpg
http://www.ziaspace.com/tonka/tonkaonshelf.jpg

It runs Mac OS X Server 10.4, has a Sonnet Hamoni 600 MHz G3 with Firewire, 512 megs, a DVD burner, and a 2TB SATA hard drive on a SATA-IDE adapter.

I don't know why people irrationally connect old with unstable, but unless your battery is dead or your hard drive is dying, there's no reason to think it wouldn't be stable. Mine has uptimes of many months at a time.

As far as speed is concerned, who cares about whether it can run Flash? Install ClickToFlash and your CPU won't get pegged from every advertisement. Flash is too slow on the fastest machines, anyway.

Mac OS X is pretty fast on modest machines. It runs very well on older PowerPC and even on low end Atom systems.
Title: Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
Post by: AmigaEd on October 30, 2010, 01:05:15 PM
Quote from: johnklos;588107
You can run up to Mac OS X 10.4.whatever on any G3, but if your iMac doesn't have Firewire then you can't install it on that machine - you have to install it onto the hard drive using another machine and move the drive.

Hard drives of any size can be used, but drives larger than 8 gig on tray loading should have a small partition (less than 8 gigs) at the beginning on the drive with Mac OS 9 on it from which you can run Xpostfacto to boot OS X from the rest of the drive. Drives larger than 128 gigs need all the boot partitions to be below the 128 gig limit so that the OS can load SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver if you want to use the rest of the drive.

Where can I find more information on upgrading the hard drive?
Also what is the best way to image and backup a Mac drive? Sadly, I didn't get any OS X disks with the computer so if something was to happen the n all would be lost.

Quote from: johnklos;588107
I have a first generation iMac which I've built into a Tonka truck:

http://www.ziaspace.com/tonka/installation.jpg
http://www.ziaspace.com/tonka/tonkaonshelf.jpg

Well, I'm not sure which is more of a classic the iMac parts or the metal Tonka truck.

Regards,
AmigaEd