Panther on iMac DV

[Legacy]

Hello everyone, I am in the process of acquiring a used iMac DV with 128Mb RAM for vintage purposes and to get my mother into computers! It is currently running Panther OS X.

Given that I want to upgrade the memory to 320Mb (256+64) I have a couple of questions to ask.

Firstly, for basic internet, ilife, chat and office use will 320Mb RAM suffice? I know about RAM because I run Tiger on a 12' Radeon 9550 iBook w/ 1Gb Ram and seems to run fine, so Panther requiring half the RAM of Tiger should be okayish with 320Mb, or will it?

Secondly, I have a 40GB Western Digital 7200rpm HD lying around, can I replace the 10GB with that?

EDIT: If I did this would it be possible to copy the Panther system over from the 10GB disk using a third party machine (PC) so that I can preserve the installation?

Third, I've been reading alot of uptake on the idea of upgrading even these slow models to Tiger. Is it technically possible to use my iBook Tiger to install a copy of Tiger onto the iMac if I wish to not use the iBook for a period so that I can test Tiger on the iMac (so I am within license permissions)? If so, how?

But, since I have no restore disks for Panther and given that I really don't want to get more than a 256Mb module for the computer, should I just stick with Panther?

Thanks Very Much!!

Regards

 

[aquajet]

Firstly, for basic internet, ilife, chat and office use will 320Mb RAM suffice? I know about RAM because I run Tiger on a 12' Radeon 9550 iBook w/ 1Gb Ram and seems to run fine, so Panther requiring half the RAM of Tiger should be okayish with 320Mb, or will it?

Go for 512 MB as a minimum. OS X requires lots of RAM, and 320 mb is probably just adequate to run a single application without any pageouts.

Secondly, I have a 40GB Western Digital 7200rpm HD lying around, can I replace the 10GB with that? If I did this would it be possible to copy the Panther system over from the 10GB disk using a third party machine (PC) so that I can preserve the installation?

Yes. In fact, you'll probably notice a bit of a speed improvement over the old drive.

You could use Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer data to the newer drive http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html. This could be a bit tricky for you however. Both drives need to be connected to the iMac in order to do this. You'll need to install the 40 gb drive into an external firewire case, connect it to your iMac's firewire port, and initiate the cloning process. Once complete, install the 40 gb drive into the iMac. Unless you already have an external firewire case you could use, I suggest skipping this entirely and either stick with the older 10 gb drive or find a cheap copy of Panther on ebay to install on the 40 gb drive.

Third, I've been reading alot of uptake on the idea of upgrading even these slow models to Tiger. Is it technically possible to use my iBook Tiger to install a copy of Tiger onto the iMac if I wish to not use the iBook for a period so that I can test Tiger on the iMac (so I am within license permissions)? If so, how?

Yes, you can use the Tiger install disk from your iBook on the iMac. However, in my experience, Panther is the better choice for those older iMacs.

 

[Will Cheyney]

I agree with all yours suggestions.
If you add the additional RAM though, Tiger should run without any hiccups.

 

[bi0metric]

I would also agree!

 

[Legacy]

Go for 512 MB as a minimum. OS X requires lots of RAM, and 320 mb is probably just adequate to run a single application without any pageouts.



Yes. In fact, you'll probably notice a bit of a speed improvement over the old drive.

You could use Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer data to the newer drive http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html. This could be a bit tricky for you however. Both drives need to be connected to the iMac in order to do this. You'll need to install the 40 gb drive into an external firewire case, connect it to your iMac's firewire port, and initiate the cloning process. Once complete, install the 40 gb drive into the iMac. Unless you already have an external firewire case you could use, I suggest skipping this entirely and either stick with the older 10 gb drive or find a cheap copy of Panther on ebay to install on the 40 gb drive.



Yes, you can use the Tiger install disk from your iBook on the iMac. However, in my experience, Panther is the better choice for those older iMacs.

The reason why I asked about 320Mb RAM is because I can pick up a chip for around £15-20, whereas a 512Mb chip is £45. I just want it to be okay with Safari, iLife and Office use. But if 320Mb won't run these well then I might take up the advice. Obviously I am used to speedy response because of the spacious RAM on my iBook but as I said this computer is mainly to introduce my mother to the world of computing and serve as a nice way of complimenting my iBook while I am at home.

In the case of the Hard Drive cloning, could I do this via my PC as I have a Win XP computer. Could I connect both hard drives to the machine and run a program that could clone from one disk to another or is this purely exclusive to being run on a macintosh?

And finally, I have been reading about some people who say the iBook discs are designed only for use with that computer because of a hardware check upon installation and therefore some posters have suggested the use of boot up with firewire to run the installation successfully. Obviously the iMac comes with a DVD drive, but the hardware checks would, I assume, prevent such an installation (or indeed even an upgrade from taking place).

I would like to reiterate that I intend in no way to violate my license, as I will have no use of my iBook while at home until I return back to university so this is time for me to experiment - if it works I will get another copy of Tiger.

If I installed the 40GB Hard Drive and wanted to install Tiger from the iBook disks, how would I go about doing this? (Given that the Hard Drive is from a Windows machine and is formatted in NTFS)

Thank you so much for your patience with my situation

Regards

 

[mad jew]

Firstly, for basic internet, ilife, chat and office use will 320Mb RAM suffice? I know about RAM because I run Tiger on a 12' Radeon 9550 iBook w/ 1Gb Ram and seems to run fine, so Panther requiring half the RAM of Tiger should be okayish with 320Mb, or will it?

I'd say 320MB will be fine. There's not much point in spending more on RAM for such a machine because the processor will become a significant bottleneck after a while.

Secondly, I have a 40GB Western Digital 7200rpm HD lying around, can I replace the 10GB with that?

It'll be fine. You'll probably just have to format it using Disk Utility (on your Panther disks).

EDIT: If I did this would it be possible to copy the Panther system over from the 10GB disk using a third party machine (PC) so that I can preserve the installation?

In the case of the Hard Drive cloning, could I do this via my PC as I have a Win XP computer. Could I connect both hard drives to the machine and run a program that could clone from one disk to another or is this purely exclusive to being run on a macintosh?

Although possible using CCC or something similar, I highly recommend a clean install if you want the sense of security of a pretty much perfectly-running system. Unless you have an external drive to clone to, it's probably a bit too much work using a networked PC drive. The slow connection to the PC (unless you have Gigabit Ethernet) will just leave more room for error too. Plus, you'll have to get an OS on the iMac before you can network back to the PC to get your old OS again. Then you'd have to create two partitions on your iMac; one with the first install and then one with the transferred install.

Third, I've been reading alot of uptake on the idea of upgrading even these slow models to Tiger. Is it technically possible to use my iBook Tiger to install a copy of Tiger onto the iMac if I wish to not use the iBook for a period so that I can test Tiger on the iMac (so I am within license permissions)? If so, how?

...you can use the Tiger install disk from your iBook on the iMac. However, in my experience, Panther is the better choice for those older iMacs.

And finally, I have been reading about some people who say the iBook discs are designed only for use with that computer because of a hardware check upon installation and therefore some posters have suggested the use of boot up with firewire to run the installation successfully. Obviously the iMac comes with a DVD drive, but the hardware checks would, I assume, prevent such an installation (or indeed even an upgrade from taking place).

I'm pretty sure the licence actually only entitles you to use Tiger on the computer it came with. Plus, the disks that came with your iBook were made for your iBook and not the iMac. Things like GPU firmware/drivers may give you a little bit of grief. Booting from a different computer doesn't affect what's actually on the disk and therefore what would be installed.

I would like to reiterate that I intend in no way to violate my license, as I will have no use of my iBook while at home until I return back to university so this is time for me to experiment - if it works I will get another copy of Tiger.

Erm, maybe just get the copy of Tiger now then... However, I think the average user would be just as happy with Panther.

The reason why I asked about 320Mb RAM is because I can pick up a chip for around £15-20, whereas a 512Mb chip is £45.

Are you sure that's the correct RAM? It sounds a little too cheap. That may just be that I'm used to Australia's over-inflated prices though.

 

[Legacy]

Erm, maybe just get the copy of Tiger now then... However, I think the average user would be just as happy with Panther.





Are you sure that's the correct RAM? It sounds a little too cheap. That may just be that I'm used to Australia's over-inflated prices though.

Well it is a used chip taken from a Powermac G4 (PC133) so it should work, its 168pin. I havent got any Panther disks, its preinstallled. All I really would like to do is copy the contents of the 10GB disk over to the 40GB one using my PC and then use the 40GB drive for the iMAC. (So not only must it copy the contents but also be effectively a clone and therefore bootable). Then repair permissions and it should be fine. I'm picking up the mac for around £50-60 so I dont want to spend much more on upgrades except for RAM.

Regards

 

[mad jew]

I don't think it's possible to boot from a drive on a PC, sorry.

It could potentially be done by installing the 40GB drive in the PC (assuming you have a spare spot for it), cloning to it over the network form the iMac using CCC and then putting it back in the iMac. However, you'll have a formatting issue in that PCs and Macs only share FAT32 as a common format and FAT32 cannot be used to boot from AFAIK. Mac OS Extended format can potentially be read by the PC using MacDrive (US$50), however you'll have to format it with the iMac beforehand. This means putting it in the imac, starting from your iBook disks and formatting (legal and feasible) before removing it and putting it in the PC whilst reinstalling the 10GB drive in the iMac. Cloning the 10GB onto the PC (hopefully without any errors from slow transfer speeds) and then putting the 40GB back into the iMac. Even so, I don't know if it'll work, there's a lot of room for error.

I really think it's more work than it's worth, especially considering a cheap external drive case will make the job easier and save you money.

 

[zami]

I installed a 40GB HD into a friend's iMac DV400 when the 10GB IBM Deathstar gave up the ghost . The drive came from a G4 Digital Audio PowerMac with Panther already installed. The computer works great to this day and is even kind of retro cool. It has 128 + 256 RAM if I remember correctly.

Be careful as regards the correct and up to date Firmware, I am not sure but believe that a mistake here can kill the iMac.

If possible put the drive in someones PowerMac or external HD enclosure and format it there, otherwise you can get a very cheap external 3.5" HD case and do it there from any Mac.

 

[Legacy]

I don't think it's possible to boot from a drive on a PC, sorry.

It could potentially be done by installing the 40GB drive in the PC (assuming you have a spare spot for it), cloning to it over the network form the iMac using CCC and then putting it back in the iMac. However, you'll have a formatting issue in that PCs and Macs only share FAT32 as a common format and FAT32 cannot be used to boot from AFAIK. Mac OS Extended format can potentially be read by the PC using MacDrive (US$50), however you'll have to format it with the iMac beforehand. This means putting it in the imac, starting from your iBook disks and formatting (legal and feasible) before removing it and putting it in the PC whilst reinstalling the 10GB drive in the iMac. Cloning the 10GB onto the PC (hopefully without any errors from slow transfer speeds) and then putting the 40GB back into the iMac. Even so, I don't know if it'll work, there's a lot of room for error.

I really think it's more work than it's worth, especially considering a cheap external drive case will make the job easier and save you money.

Thank you..yes the thing is I already have the 40GB drive lying around! hehe and I am a student so I'm not exactly financially sound. (Eg; my mother would buy a copy of tiger if she liked it and we agreed it worked well, but I think Panther is fine for her needs).

So I can't format a Hard Drive in a format for Macintosh on a PC? My plan was:

Main windows XP Drive (iDE1), 10GB HD (iDE2) 40GB Hard Drive (iDE3) boot into XP from PC. Then download a program to format the 40GB drive in mac file system within XP, and then clone the contents of the 10GB drive onto the 40Gb drive using a program within XP. Then take out the cloned 40GB and install it in the iMac and boot! I guess this isnt possible?

 

[Jaffa Cake]

I'd say 320MB will be fine. There's not much point in spending more on RAM for such a machine because the processor will become a significant bottleneck after a while.

I'll go along with that. I ran Panther on my old G3 iMac and it worked absolutely perfectly with 384MB of RAM in there – you should be alright with the 320, I would have thought. I never tried it with Tiger so I can't vouch for that though!

 

[doucy2]

Currently im selling my iMac 500mhz dv se
its got a 40gb hd in it and is running Tiger on 512mb (but it runs it on 256 ok too) i wouldnt reccomend it on 256mb and thing higher it runs smothly

 

[mad jew]

So I can't format a Hard Drive in a format for Macintosh on a PC? My plan was:

Main windows XP Drive (iDE1), 10GB HD (iDE2) 40GB Hard Drive (iDE3) boot into XP from PC. Then download a program to format the 40GB drive in mac file system within XP, and then clone the contents of the 10GB drive onto the 40Gb drive using a program within XP. Then take out the cloned 40GB and install it in the iMac and boot! I guess this isnt possible?

Yeah, I don't know of an app that'll let you format a drive for mac from within a PC and I imagine that if one exists, it's going to be costly considering MacDrive's is US$50.

As zami mentions, if you have a friend with a Power Mac, you can do everything from there. Alternatively, you might be able to try to borrow someone's external (Firewire preferably) drive case for a few hours.

 

[California]

Panther and 320mb is fine. Did it on my own mom's iMac G3 500. But bumped her up to 1gig of ram and she's FLYING on panther AND the 80 gig 7200 Deskstar new hd I had put in the machine. But I have a friend running great with 384mb on a iMac G3 233mhz so you should be excellent. Tiger is a CPU and memory suck, so don't bother.

 

[xenicon]

imac kernal panic from airport?

I wanted to setup a wireless network and had the following a g4 400 running tiger and an imac 333 tray loading. I partitioned a new drive in another machine looaded panther thenreplaced the hard drive on the 333, , added some more ram. It booted up fine even without system 9. Bought a used airport snow.
I added an airport card to the g4.
My simple idea was to ethernet the imac and broadcast to the g4.
But no dice. I plugged in the airport and it seemed to be functioning fine.
I received no signal downstairs with the g4. Back upstairs I shut it all down.
yesterday when I turned on the imac i got a grey screen saying reboot failed and then giving me a prompt. I am assuming I'm in single user mode.
I tried mount uw/ which seems to be the initial command according to apple,
It rplies unknown.
I unplugged the ethernet cable. rebooted, same result.
I'll i have is a grey screen.
what gives? any suggestions?

 

[mad jew]

Maybe start a new thread to get the most and best replies.

In that new thread, I'd probably ask if the iMac was working beforehand? Did you get Panther running on it or did you need to install the firmware patch from OS9?

 

[xenicon]

Here's the weird thing

the imac boots only after I reset-nv ram (return) reset-all
and then panther boots and everything is beautiful.

I can't see doing this all the time. I wonder whether this is a firmaware prob or the new RAM?

Almost makes me want to buy a new mini!

 

[mad jew]

Well, test it with just the old RAM if possible. Bad RAM can do crazy things like this (although this particular problem is pretty rare AFAIK).

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

My G3 450MHz is running 10.3.9 with 320 MB RAM just great. Good to see other G3's still running (mines going on 5 years... I think. It still sees use everyday).

 

[mklos]

I just bought 2 500 MHz iMac DV's as Christmas presents, 1 for my brother, and 1 for my sister. They each have 384MB of RAM, with a 20GB HD (1 has a 40GB HD), and slot load CDROM. I have Tiger on both and Tiger runs great on them. The amount of RAM is key to making Tiger function. Hell, I even have Tiger running on my mom's 233MHz Bondi Blue iMac and it runs pretty damn good. So if you have Tiger OEM laying around, slap it on there. No worries!

In case you're wondering how I got Tiger installing on those iMacs since they have CDROM Drives, I put them in target disk mode and then booted off the Tiger DVD on my 17" PowerBook and installed it from there.