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Author Topic: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?  (Read 12777 times)

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Offline Tension

Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #29 from previous page: 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!

Offline amigadave

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #30 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.
How are you helping the Amiga community? :)
 

Offline save2600

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #31 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.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #32 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.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline AmigaEdTopic starter

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #33 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!
"Pretty soon they will have numbers tattooed on our foreheads." - Jay Miner 1990

La Familia...
A1K - La Primera Dama -1987
A1K - La Princesa- January 2005
A2K - La Reina - February 2005
A2K - Doomy - March 2005
A500 - El Gran Jugador - April 2005
A1200 - La Hermosa Vista - May 2005
A2KHD - El Duro Grande - May 2005
A600 - Prístino - May 2005
A1200 - El Trueno Grande - July 2005
CDTV - El Misterioso - August 2005
C64 - El Gran Lebows
 

Offline tone007

Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #34 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!
3 Commodore file cabinets, 2 Commodore USB turntables, 1 AmigaWorld beer mug
Alienware M14x i7 laptop running AmigaForever
 

Offline AmigaEdTopic starter

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #35 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
"Pretty soon they will have numbers tattooed on our foreheads." - Jay Miner 1990

La Familia...
A1K - La Primera Dama -1987
A1K - La Princesa- January 2005
A2K - La Reina - February 2005
A2K - Doomy - March 2005
A500 - El Gran Jugador - April 2005
A1200 - La Hermosa Vista - May 2005
A2KHD - El Duro Grande - May 2005
A600 - Prístino - May 2005
A1200 - El Trueno Grande - July 2005
CDTV - El Misterioso - August 2005
C64 - El Gran Lebows
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #36 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.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline AmigaEdTopic starter

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #37 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
"Pretty soon they will have numbers tattooed on our foreheads." - Jay Miner 1990

La Familia...
A1K - La Primera Dama -1987
A1K - La Princesa- January 2005
A2K - La Reina - February 2005
A2K - Doomy - March 2005
A500 - El Gran Jugador - April 2005
A1200 - La Hermosa Vista - May 2005
A2KHD - El Duro Grande - May 2005
A600 - Prístino - May 2005
A1200 - El Trueno Grande - July 2005
CDTV - El Misterioso - August 2005
C64 - El Gran Lebows
 

Offline Amiga_Nut

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #38 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.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #39 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
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline johnklos

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #40 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.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2010, 06:37:19 AM by johnklos »
 

Offline AmigaEdTopic starter

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Re: Just got an Imac G3 - Now what to do with it?
« Reply #41 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
"Pretty soon they will have numbers tattooed on our foreheads." - Jay Miner 1990

La Familia...
A1K - La Primera Dama -1987
A1K - La Princesa- January 2005
A2K - La Reina - February 2005
A2K - Doomy - March 2005
A500 - El Gran Jugador - April 2005
A1200 - La Hermosa Vista - May 2005
A2KHD - El Duro Grande - May 2005
A600 - Prístino - May 2005
A1200 - El Trueno Grande - July 2005
CDTV - El Misterioso - August 2005
C64 - El Gran Lebows