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What to do with a VERY old iMac 233Mhz

D

damianjmcgrath

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2010
1
0
Hi,

I have recently found in my attic a VERY old Apple iMac G3 in bright orange. Research on the internet has found out it has 233Mhz processor, 6GB hard drive, and 32Mb RAM.

I havent used an Apple PC for some considerable years, but I booted it up, and it loaded fine. I would guess it's around 1998-1999, and the operating system is OS9.

It has ClarisWorks on it - that brought back horrible memories as I was doing my first ever university assignment using Claris back in the day!

I have no intention of keeping it, I'm assuming it's too slow and old to be used as anything functional in the house (like an internet server) and I severely doubt it'd be worth upgrading and installing iTunes on.

So....the question.....what can be done with it?

On eBay, 2 people just sold theirs for £11 each - hardly worth the hassle! Postage would be a right pain as well, so I don't want to go down that route unless it was going to auction for £100's, which isn't likely!

It's a big machine and as it's on the dinner table at the moment, I'm being chased to shift it! I'm faced with the prospect of the rubbish dump.....but I'm sure there must be something more useful to be done with it! I hate just dumping computers!


Any thoughts.....or is it literally just scrap now?

Thanks all!
 
Hi,

There is iTunes for OS 9 but it's version 2.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120073

I've fixed one up a couple of years ago, upped the RAM to 512 and had OS X 10.3 running. Video is not going to happen with that video card, but it could still be a music player if you upgraded the hard drive. The G3 iMac had a "thing" that required a larger hard drive to be partitioned into an 8 gb section for the OS. I can't remember the details. If you are into rising something from the dead it could be fun, and could become a music server of some kind, but don't expect any return from it.

I think you have at least the 266mhz as the orange didn't come in the 233mhz.

http://lowendmac.com/imacs/rev-c-imac-g3-266-mhz.html

Personally, I would leave it the way it is with OS 9, stick it back in the attic and pull it down in 30-40 years. If it still works in 2050 you have something that somebody would be willing to pay for.

s.
 
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_266.html

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/100SO256168L/

It can apparently take up to 512 MB RAM.

And it can run OS/X 10.3 Panther, the first decent version of OS/X for doing S/W development. It won't be much slower than my 400 MHz iMac that's running OS/X 10.4 Tiger; browsing is fine if you stay away from embedded video.

As the machine is nearly twelve years old, it will surely need a new 1/2 AA 3.6 V PRAM battery. (US$10 and you have to take apart the iMac case.)

Biggest drawbacks: Special treatment needed for a drive with over 8 GB capacity, no DVD support, USB is only USB 1 (12.5 Mbps max), and no FireWire.
 
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