The annoying world of the iMac and Mac OS 8 updates NEWBIE!

[XDelusion]

My friend offered to sell me his old 233 Mhz iMac with 32Mb of RAM for cheap, and I thought I had talked myself out of buying it until my dual AMD PC died on my today.

No I am stuck using this piece of crap and am also stuck with OS 8.1 which, as fate would have it has NO support what so ever!

My first problem is the CD-ROM, it does not like Burned CD's at ALL, can I just pop that piece of crap out an put in a 52X IDE burner in in its place or is it a Sony Paystation story where you have to fork out A LOT of money to buy a company brand burner from Apple?

My second problem is how in the heck do I install Mandrake Linux on this, it will not boot off the CD, infact when I look at the contents of the CD's it looks kinda like you got to install that crap by hand, if that is the case, then forget it, I'm not a Linux nerd, I was ease of use (is that so hard to ask?).

My third and most troubling question is how do I update from OS 8.1 to 8.6? I thought updates were supposed to be free till OS 9, but it seems like I got to fork out $50 bucks or more for an obsolete OS, WTF!?!?

Forth question, if I really do have to fork out cash for a crappy Mac OS then forget it, what "good" browsers, FTP, Overnet, and IRC programs work with 8.1, and are there any good pages with FREE stuff to download. I'm poor, and I miss the free world of the PC and Amiga. :/

[XDelusion]

Oh yes, I also could use Samba and Wheel Mouse drivers for my Logitech Optical mouse ( all 3 buttons act the same right now) if anyone can help with that too.

 Sorry if I sound like a Mac virgin, but I pretty much am.

 As for browsers, I sadly have to admit that IE 5 works real good on here, and so far no pop ups?!!? Amazing!

[XDelusion]

Ok, I have "aquired" that bloated POS that we call Mac OS 8.5, so I am a step ahead of this horrible game.

 My new question is this:

How do I assign certain programs to certain file types. I.E. When I download a MP3 file in iCab, it ends up with an iCab icon, and when I double click on it, it opens iCab and makes a copy of the file.

I downloaded a Mp3 player, but it will not let me load the Mp3 files, except that random few that will download and not get a iCab icon.

Mac is on Crack!





Now for a short rant. Ok so PPC is better than pIntel, but Winblows blows Mac OS away! I had a PC with the same CPU speed and Ram as this Mac and Winblows 98 ran faster, and did not run out of RAM every five seconds while merely browsing the web. On top of that Winblows did not lock up and randomly begin to close programs because I ran out of RAM (where did it all go!!!). Another thing, with a PC I can hit the reset switch if I did crash, on the Mac, you got to unplug the thing.

 I'll never understand Mac users, let alone PC users, but now at least the PC makes more sence.

Amiga still rules! Too bad we can't have MorphOS or AROS on this iMac, then the hardware would actually shine!!!

[Cass]

Amiga still rules! Too bad we can't have MorphOS or AROS on this iMac, then the hardware would actually shine!!!

This is a task for Matt! :-) (I was quicker than you Matt :-D ).

If there was such a thing usable, I'd consider buying a second-hand Mac.
________
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[HopperJF]

oy oy theres nothing wrong with Macs providing u got OS X and upwards. I'm not sure if it will run well but add RAM and it shud be capable.
OS X is the finest OS I have used EVER.

[cdog]

Firstly, you would be well advised to get OS X and more RAM.
All the crashing is the result of not having enough RAM, but in
OS 8 -9.x, RAM is not allocated dynamically as it is in Windoz.
If you want to stop the browser from crashing, you have to
allocate more RAM to the browser. It sounds very primitive,
but all of this is fixed in OS X (but you still need lots of RAM -
it's not an Amiga:)

Secondly, a G3 is probably only a little faster than a P3 at the
same MHz, so the iMac is not a speed demon by any measure.

Check out places like macsales.com for better prices on Mac
OS upgrade CDs  (9.1 or 10.1 $40, etc).

[Tomas]

Classic MacOS sure suck alot... I guess it would be impossible to install MacOSX on this thing?? You for sure need more ram though... MacOSX is a much better OS than MacOS classic... I even think that classic macos is worse whan win9x..

[Wolfe]

You could run Yellow Dog Linux.  If you don't want to down load it you can usually find it on ebay.
here's one.

ebay

But no matter what OS you decide to run, add more ram :-D
Specs

[Wolfe]

Tomas wrote:
Classic MacOS sure suck alot... I guess it would be impossible to install MacOSX on this thing?? You for sure need more ram though... MacOSX is a much better OS than MacOS classic... I even think that classic macos is worse whan win9x..

Wrong. . . .  More ram is needed to run OS X, not to mention a copy of OS X which will cost more than what our newbe will want to spend.   :-)

[Amiga1200PPC]

I thought this is amiga.org and not mac.org

[odin]

Wishmaster:
Take a look in which forum it's posted okay?

[XDelusion]

Somebody PMed me a while back offering to sell me some upgrades for this system at a fair price, but I deleted his PM's when I thought I was no longer going to buy this Mac. I regeret that now! :/


 Anyhow if I wanted to run OSX on here I'd have to fork out a LOT of money, and would have to have that 600 some Mhz G4 upgrade with the fire wire and all. Even more RAM is not cheap because you can not use standard RAM, you have to buy iMac specific RAM, and I am poor. Someday....

 And even though OSX fixes a lot of my problems it is SLOOOOOOOWWWWWW and bulky just like our pal Linux when you want to run a decent GUI on top of it. But I guess I got to make that move some day if I wanna stop crashing.

 So can someone help me with my problems without suggesting I upgrade, cause I can't right now. :/

[jeffimix]

Ermm.... Windows NT existed for PPC at one point, it might be very primitive, but maybe it'll suck up less RAM et cetera, with the way windows manages RAM.... well the NT 4.0 we have in our office claims to run on PPC computers...

PS: I can't believe I'm suggesting this, I must be sick...

[jonbyk]

Hi Mac,

Go to google and download  Mac OS9 forever.

Then follow the instructions to upgrade to os9.2.

You can get all the OS files you need from Mac Support download.

I have and old Supermac 900/G3/500 that I upgraded to 9.2.2.  I like it much better than OSx which I have on a new laptop.

You can buy memory cheap.  Just google memory and try a few of the URLs.

Try it.  You'll like it!

Jon Byk

[spihunter]

Do not try and put OSX on a 233/g3. It will be dog slow!!!. on top of that it probably has a really old and slow graphics chipset. If you want that machine to be decent then take the advice of the good people here and get it up to OS 9.2.

PS: the tray loading imacs have problems with burned CD's

PSS: classic MacOS, co-operative multitasking in the year 1999 :-o . The Amiga had pre-emptive in 1985 :-D