Hey Bloo, if you have an extra monitor, you can get a usb keyboard? If so you might consider looking for a used G3 Blue & White tower. You might get that for around $200. Then fill it up with SDRAM - you probably have some of that left over from your PCs, if not you can scrounge it cheaply enough. That, I think, will be the cheapest way to get into Tiger.
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G3 iMac for $45 Worth it?
- Thread starter Bloo Ice
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my friend threw his Green iMac G3 in the garbage can three weeks ago! I thought he was nuts but he said it was taking up space in his basement. I'm glad he didn't throw his G4 MDD out in the garbage now that he has a new iMac G5 20"! I wouldn't waste time on it. I cringe at the thought of the trash compacter destroying the G3, yikes
As an owner of a 600MHz G3 iMac, it's kind of disappointing to see what the Mac mini has done to the resale price of old Macs. Before the mini, I could have sold mine for up to $400 and maybe more, but now I probably couldn't get much more than $200 or so. I've been planning on upgrading to an iMac G5 ever since they came out and was going to sell my current iMac, but now I might as well just keep it and add it to my collection along with my "worthless" Apple II, Mac Plus, and Performa.
cubist said:
Probably the route I will go. My current Sony montior has 2 inputs, so that will be nice, and I can get a keyboard for it. I've got about 6 old pcs laying around, so maybe I could get a few dollars from them on eBay. One is an old server...bought for $11,000 back in the day. All junk to me. I only care about my new system..but it's a PC so you guys wouldn't care about it.
Jiggleicious gave great advice- a slot-loading iMac is a great way to experiment with Mac, and will run OSX decently if you upgrade the RAM and hard drive. Both of these are cheap. If your expectations are reasonable then it will run pretty well to give you a good taste of OSX.
I bought a iMac DV (400 MHz) to try out a few months ago. Since then, I have bought a eMac and a PowerBook!
If that Mac in the auction was a slot-loading one, I would have snatched it up myself just to have another Mac. The slot-loading ones also have no fan, so with a decent hard drive are almost completely silent.
I bought a iMac DV (400 MHz) to try out a few months ago. Since then, I have bought a eMac and a PowerBook!
If that Mac in the auction was a slot-loading one, I would have snatched it up myself just to have another Mac. The slot-loading ones also have no fan, so with a decent hard drive are almost completely silent.
It's not too good to be true, it's just that there's still a few hours before the auction ends. The final bid will definitely be higher.
But it does seem like a nice unit. His feedback is somewhat spotty, but has been better lately. The main thing with these iMacs is that shipping is usually a bear...just have to take it into account before you bid.
Also, the specs are very unclear- CD? DVD-ROM? Firewire?
But it does seem like a nice unit. His feedback is somewhat spotty, but has been better lately. The main thing with these iMacs is that shipping is usually a bear...just have to take it into account before you bid.
Also, the specs are very unclear- CD? DVD-ROM? Firewire?
madmaxmedia said:
I agree. The description is very short and uninformative, and it doesn't guarentee against DOA. With the addition, of that terrible feedback, I wouldn't buy from that guy, no matter how good of deal it was.
Ed H said:I have a G3 500 DV SE Graphite iMac with 512mb of ram and it runs 10.3.8 just fine
I am currently debating selling said iMac, though i figure it is probably still worth 250-300 ish.. i think..
Ed
500 MHz. 512 MB of RAM. Twice the speed of the computer listed, and sixteen times the memory.
Thanks. See, I don't know what to look for in a mac. That's why I asked you guys, and you are VERY helpful! Btw, I was looking at some of your guys' setups in the picture forum....and DAMN! What I'd do for some of those...with the 30" displays and all!! That wouldn't look nearly as good on a PC, because mac is more on looks. Where do you guys get all that money? Rob a bank?
Just keep your eyes on craigslist (and if you must, ebay) for old iMacs. Just pick up any slot loading DV model (meaning 400mhz and higher), get it up to 512mb of RAM and upgrading the aging whiny hard drive, and you have a very nice little computer to toy around with. Just make sure you don't pay more than $100 for the mac. I have seen quite a few slot loading models go for under $100 on craigslist, but you have to keep an eye out for them because they go quickly! Pick up a used 512 stick of PC133 for like $40 and a new hard drive for $60, and you have quite a nice mac for around $200.
Why do I recommend this? Because its exactly what I did when I wanted to first dabble in the Mac world. Unfortunately, now I can't stop
Why do I recommend this? Because its exactly what I did when I wanted to first dabble in the Mac world. Unfortunately, now I can't stop
Craigslist? Never heard of it..
If anyone wants to help me out....I'm selling some old PCs [that one word will cause nobody to go there..lol] on eBay. You could buy them, put another NIC in, run Linux in them, and have a firewall, to protect your nice macs..eh? eh eh eh???
If anyone wants to help me out....I'm selling some old PCs [that one word will cause nobody to go there..lol] on eBay. You could buy them, put another NIC in, run Linux in them, and have a firewall, to protect your nice macs..eh? eh eh eh???
I would say go for it, if you didn't plan on doing heavy multimedia job, it's gonnna do the job, don't expect all the little fancy all around, try to turn off as much video effect as you can. I buy a iMac G3 233 for my sister and my mother so they can use e-mail, web surfing, Word and iTunes. Everything is working just fine in Panther, maybe not Tiger, I didn't try it out. Get at least 256 MB RAM in the machine (try to found one with this amount already install it's going to be cheaper). For sub 75$, you can go really wrong, those are far from being speed deamon but they get it done. I was having a iMac 266 few years ago fro school, get it done with it. As mention above don't forget to download Firmware upgrade on Apple support web site before installing OSX. Also, OS X require a lot of HD, be sure to have a 10 Go or more, 4 Go is nearly the system and few basic appz.
I'm looking at the old G3 Blue and Whites on eBay. There are a LOT of them, many going for under $10. I'm a PC user, used to the 2.6 GHz, 250GB, 256MB video, 2 GB RAM, ect...high numbers in specs. Now I'm looking at macs running at 350MHz, 64MB ect, really low. To me, these look like crap. My question, what exactly do I look for, especailly to run Tiger nice and smoothly. Mainly word processing, IMing, and web surfing, and listeing to music. I've played with video editing, and find it fun, but I won't try that until later, when I can get a better camera, and a better system. But for now I'd like to get a mac to play with, and hopefully fall in love with, and convince my parents to get me a new one. But what do I need????
Bloo Ice said:
You need a high end G3 or a low end G4 with 512 MB of RAM to enjoy Tiger. You need this kind of speed to get the full Mac experience. I know people are saying, "O you can do all that on a 233 MHz G3", but to me that's not true. If you get one of those, you will see beach balls all the time ...
Notes: I just thought of this. It would be a huge pain to even install Tiger on a Bondi Blue, as it doesn't have a DVD drive.
The G3 B&Ws I've been looking at are 400MHz. They have anywhere from 64MB of RAM and on up. I could get some ram and put it it myself. But I noticed too, they don't have any drives other than ZIP. How would you upgrade? Do macs use a special type of CD/DVD drive? Could any ol' IDE drive work? Thanks
Bloo Ice said:
I really don't think you need a high G3 to get a good feel for the Mac OSX. These are the minimum specs IMO:
1. Slot-loading G3 iMac (starts at 350 MHz, goes up to 700 or so)
2. A fast 7200 RPM HD big enough for your files (at least 40GB)
3. At least 256MB RAM
4. Look for a model with Firewire
You're not going to be editing 8 megapixel digital photos on this, but you can surf the web, do email, and do MS Office stuff. OS X will run fine, but without graphical effects due to poor video card/RAM. You can play mp3's and DVD's as well.
Considering that the above system can be found for under $150 total, this is a great way to test out the Mac platform. Whatever slowness you encounter, you will know that a faster machine will run much better.
I bought basically this exact machine (a 400 MHz iMac DV) back in November or so. 2 weeks later I bought a refurb eMac from Apple.com for $549 that had way better specs, and sold both the iMac (for a profit) and my old Windows PC. Since then I have added a 12" PowerBook...the rest was history, thanks to a 5 year old $100 Mac computer.
The other option is to buy a more expensive unit from the get-go. But then I would argue that the refurbished eMacs from Apple.com are a better deal. For $549, I got a great unit that I can overclock to 1.5 Ghz (free), swap in a 120 GB HD ($50), and a DVD burner ($50). That's a modern performance for under $700, vs. a slow G4 for $300 or $400 or whatever...
Also keep in mind that unless you get a fairly recent Mac (or are willing to spend money on a video card), you will not have Quartz Extreme support, so all those fancy effects like Expose will be very choppy. All the iMac G3's do NOT support Quartz Extreme. Anything with a ATI Rage card doesn't. You need a Radeon or a Geforce for QE support.
I still personally think getting a refurb eMac for like $500 is the best value, unless you already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and then i'd get a Mini. Most old Macs that are worth getting (G4 Powermacs that are 800mhz+, G4 Powerbooks) are horribly overpriced on eBay. The mini or an eMac is a far better value for a starting unit.
I still personally think getting a refurb eMac for like $500 is the best value, unless you already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and then i'd get a Mini. Most old Macs that are worth getting (G4 Powermacs that are 800mhz+, G4 Powerbooks) are horribly overpriced on eBay. The mini or an eMac is a far better value for a starting unit.
A Blue & White G3 PowerMac might be just what you want. It is fast enough to run Panther (Tiger probably will be similar). And it can be had cheap. I just got mine off ebay for $51 plus shipping. I then added 512 mb ram to the already 256 for a total of 768 (enough). I got it for less than $50 including shipping from 18004memory. It seems to work good. You can only put 1GB of ram in this machine, but that is enough for most people. You can put any ole IDE drive in it, as long as the drive is Mac compatible (don't buy ones that aren't). I put a Maxtor 200 GB IDE HD in it, and a 160 GB IDE HD in it. I also had an Acard 66 ATA PCI card lying around that I use to run the backup hard drive. [Note: I only can use 128 GB per drive because of a limit on early Macs, and I don't have a 133 PCI card IDE controller which would bypass that limit, and generally I don't care--I have tons of space now] It generally will not come with a cd or dvd burner, but mine came with a DVD-ROM drive, and I already had an HP 9600 SCSI CD-burner, which I run off the included SCSI PCI card (works like champ). To get native support for burning using this drive, I installed Patchburn 3.0 and iTunes will burn to it. I use Toast for any other burning. As for pitfalls, you want to make sure it has the ATI Rage 128 card with it. The internal modem would be nice, but is not necessary if you have an ethernet internet hookup (which I do). You also must make the master drive off the fast ATA controller on the motherboard your bootup drive or else you will run into trouble. Also, you would want to do a fresh wipe of the existing hard drive that is in the spot mentioned above as your potential startup disk, and then a clean install of OS X. Any VGA monitor will hook to the 16 mb Rage 128 natively, and you can buy adapters for older Mac monitors (which I run-a 17" multiple scan CRT at 1024 x 768 at thousands of colors).
I also upgraded the processor with a Powerlogix MachSpeed G4/450 Zif card. It is easy to install, but tricky because you have to update the firmware first while running OS 9. Then it will work fine. I paid $65 for the upgrade card. They make faster ones, but this will do fine for me. My machine was a G3/450, so the only difference is that the card gives me a G4--helpful for many things.
To get an idea of how OS X Panther does on my setup, I made a quick movie on my digital camera (with the inherent poor quality), that shows me tooling around my Finder, then scrolling in this thread in Safari, and then clicking on random links so you can see the pages load. Warning: this file is 16mb and takes some time to load to where it will start playing (or it did on my computer):
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/bandrchristy/pics/DSCN2064.MOV
I also upgraded the processor with a Powerlogix MachSpeed G4/450 Zif card. It is easy to install, but tricky because you have to update the firmware first while running OS 9. Then it will work fine. I paid $65 for the upgrade card. They make faster ones, but this will do fine for me. My machine was a G3/450, so the only difference is that the card gives me a G4--helpful for many things.
To get an idea of how OS X Panther does on my setup, I made a quick movie on my digital camera (with the inherent poor quality), that shows me tooling around my Finder, then scrolling in this thread in Safari, and then clicking on random links so you can see the pages load. Warning: this file is 16mb and takes some time to load to where it will start playing (or it did on my computer):
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/bandrchristy/pics/DSCN2064.MOV
Bloo Ice said:
I recently dumped my on eBay for $40. It actually worked out well, because an intercity school teacher bought it for her classroom. Anyways, I would have been willing to give it to you, if I hadn't sold it.
macbaseball said:
Well, at least you got some $$ back from it. I think it'd be better to buy one from someone here. People who like their macs, will take good care of them, and want them to go to a good home. Most of the stuff on ebay is from a company or school where everyone used them, and didn't care what happened to them.
Bloo Ice said:
That's very true. You have some idea of the enviroment that a computer from here was in, but on eBay you have no idea of the condtions.
Yes. Like I am with my PC [and when I get one, mac] I take extremely good care of it. I watch what I install, don't install something I don't need, run virus scans/spyware/adware scans nightly, defrag 2 times monthly, blow all the dust out of the case monthly. I'm sure most of you take just as good of care with your macs. I've bought some CRAP off of ebay before. The pictures of it looked nice, but I got it and it had cigerrate smoke film on it, dirt, ect. One time, there were even cockroaches in the box. That was the worst. Hopefully someone here wouldn't mind getting rid of something for REALLY cheap.