Won iMac on eBay

[Shaun.P]

Hey,

I have just won an iMac on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8776576431&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWN:IT&rd=1


As I would like a nice old computer to supplement my iBook. I would like to upgrade the hard drive with an 80GB 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda as this will provide silent operation. Does this computer have a fan, or is it silent? Does this computer use ATA 100 or ATA 133 or IDE?

I plan to install this good hard drive, upgrade the RAM and would like to install it onto my wireless internet.

What OS would be best?

Mac OS 9.2.2. or Mac OS 10.3 or Mac OS 10.4?

Thank you for any advice and do you think this computer was worth the money?

Shaun.

 

[calebjohnston]

As far as the OS goes, if the computer can handle it, go with 10.2/10.3 ish. 10.4 would probably be slow on there.

Avoid 9.x as your main OS on there. iiiiick.

 

[aquajet]

Does this computer have a fan, or is it silent? Does this computer use ATA 100 or ATA 133 or IDE?

The slot-load iMacs don't have fans. It uses an ATA/66 hard drive, but any modern ATA/100 or 133 drive will work, although drives larger than 137 gb will not be properly recognized. You should be fine with a 80gb Seagate.

I plan to install this good hard drive, upgrade the RAM and would like to install it onto my wireless internet.

What OS would be best?

Mac OS 9.2.2. or Mac OS 10.3 or Mac OS 10.4?

The blueberry slot-load iMac 350mhz includes an Airport slot. I assume yours doesn't include the Airport card, and the original Airport cards (non-extreme) are expensive.

If you don't have any programs that require OS 9, then there's no need to install it. Panther and Tiger will both work well, as long as you've got enough RAM. That shouldn't be an issue of course because you plan to upgrade.

 

[AppleGuy08]

dude..i think you should just shelled out the money and bough a new computer..now ur gona waste money putting hardware into something thats obsolete. This is 2006 dog.

 

[Eidorian]

You need the 400 MHz model to install Tiger on it. 10.3 should run just fine with lots of RAM on this one.

dude..i think you should just shelled out the money and bough a new computer..now ur gona waste money putting hardware into something thats obsolete. This is 2006 dog.

Yeah, he won that auction at US$92 + shipping. You're not going to find that much going that low.

 

[zap2]

dude..i think you should just shelled out the money and bough a new computer..now ur gona waste money putting hardware into something thats obsolete. This is 2006 dog.

it hardly obsolete, and it low priced. Just something to have, not to use for "pro" work



And grammar is such a great thing!(i don't mind "ur" but "you should just shelled" did you mean "you should HAVE just shelled" or "you should shell out" amoung other mistakes

 

[aquajet]

dude..i think you should just shelled out the money and bough a new computer..now ur gona waste money putting hardware into something thats obsolete. This is 2006 dog.

Some people don't have the money to purchase new. But thanks for the input anyway.

 

[Eidorian]

it hardly obsolete, and it low priced. Just something to have, not to use for "pro" work



And grammar is such a great thing!(i don't mind "ur" but "you should just shelled" did you mean "you should HAVE just shelled" or "you should shell out" amoung other mistakes

I need my Quartz Extreme support. PCI Extreme open ups a whole world of low balling on Power Mac G3's and just adding a Radeon and hacking it to work.

 

[QCassidy352]

As far as the OS goes, if the computer can handle it, go with 10.2/10.3 ish. 10.4 would probably be slow on there.

Avoid 9.x as your main OS on there. iiiiick.

I strongly disagree with this. OS X was made for the G4 processor and later. Yes, it can run on G3s, and I know many people do that, but in my experience, it never really runs right. It ran Ok on my 900 mhz ibook G3, but it was a total dog on both the 400 mhz imac and 600 mhz ibook that I used to have.

OS 9 was made to run on G3s, and G3s were made to run OS 9. And they do it quite well - 9 runs very snappily. X on g3s is painful, especially if you're coming from a modern system like your ibook.

Personally, I would never buy an old G3 for just this reason. I don't want to use OS 9. But if I did have a G3, I'd rather it run 9 correctly than X badly.

 

[AppleGuy08]

lol i dont have the money to do that either..i just prefer new stuff.

 

[Eidorian]

I strongly disagree with this. OS X was made for the G4 processor and later. Yes, it can run on G3s, and I know many people do that, but in my experience, it never really runs right. It ran Ok on my 900 mhz ibook G3, but it was a total dog on both the 400 mhz imac and 600 mhz ibook that I used to have.

OS 9 was made to run on G3s, and G3s were made to run OS 9. And they do it quite well - 9 runs very snappily. X on g3s is painful, especially if you're coming from a modern system like your ibook.

Personally, I would never buy an old G3 for just this reason. I don't want to use OS 9. But if I did have a G3, I'd rather it run 9 correctly than X badly.

OS X can run just fine on the G3. I've found that my Power Mac G3 450 Mhz (Overclocked), with 1 GB of RAM, and PCI Extreme hacked onto the Radeon make it as perky as most iMac G4's.

The bottlenecks lay in the GPU and RAM. You just can't upgrade the all-in-one iMac G3's so OS 9 is much more prefered. If you have a Power Mac G3 running OS X and you have a Radeon please use PCI Extreme. I have it running on 10.4.3 just fine. I don't think I can update it any further though.

 

[cubist]

I've run Panther on a G3 iMac, and it ran pretty well. Panther may run faster than Tiger. Word of warning on the hard drive, there's not much cooling in there, the drive's life may not be all that long.

 

[calebjohnston]

"it's 2006 dog"

OMG YOU'RE SO RIGHT. THROW AWAY ALL NON-INTEL MAC'S. OMGOMG.

He got a desktop in addition to his iBook. Something cheap just to have as a counterpart. Under 100 dollars for a computer that can play music, do word processing, and internet sounds damn good to me.

Not everyone has money to spend left and right on every little whim. Maybe your parents haven't explained that to you yet.

 

[strider42]

The blueberry slot-load iMac 350mhz includes an Airport slot. I assume yours doesn't include the Airport card, and the original Airport cards (non-extreme) are expensive.

Another option besides airport cards are ethernet wireless bridges. They work great. Avoid USB wireless bridges as driver support ranges from flaky to non existant.

 

[QCassidy352]

OS X can run just fine on the G3. I've found that my Power Mac G3 450 Mhz (Overclocked), with 1 GB of RAM, and PCI Extreme hacked onto the Radeon make it as perky as most iMac G4's.

The bottlenecks lay in the GPU and RAM. You just can't upgrade the all-in-one iMac G3's so OS 9 is much more prefered. If you have a Power Mac G3 running OS X and you have a Radeon please use PCI Extreme. I have it running on 10.4.3 just fine. I don't think I can update it any further though.

well, i've never tried it on a G3 powermac, (just an imac and ibook, as I noted) but my experiences aren't good. Even my ibook G3 600 with 640 RAM was painfully choppy with OS X. Maybe it was just the GPU, or maybe we have different standards of acceptable performance. But I wouldn't use X on a G3. (Oh, and the G4 does itself make a difference. The iapps, and I believe the OS itself, take advantage of altivec, making everything "snappier.)

 

[munkees]

I strongly disagree with this. OS X was made for the G4 processor and later. Yes, it can run on G3s, and I know many people do that, but in my experience, it never really runs right. It ran Ok on my 900 mhz ibook G3, but it was a total dog on both the 400 mhz imac and 600 mhz ibook that I used to have.

OS 9 was made to run on G3s, and G3s were made to run OS 9. And they do it quite well - 9 runs very snappily. X on g3s is painful, especially if you're coming from a modern system like your ibook.

Personally, I would never buy an old G3 for just this reason. I don't want to use OS 9. But if I did have a G3, I'd rather it run 9 correctly than X badly.

I have to disagree, I have 4 G3 running Mac OS X and there are not slow.

I have an iBook G3 700 running tiger with 640MB ram runs fine.
I have iMac G3 350 slot 128 Run OK 10.2.8
I have iMac G3 333 160 MB Ram runs like champ 10.2.8
and I have an iBook G3 300 128 MB run OK. 10.2.8

I will not put panther on, but 10.2.8 is great for what I am using these for. the iBook is many used for classic apps, but my other 2 iMacs serve a great purpose, Both are in my Lab, I have a camera Microscope hooked into the 333Mhz, and the 350, has other senors. It a great setup.

I love the iMacs, great computers.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

I strongly disagree with this. OS X was made for the G4 processor and later. Yes, it can run on G3s, and I know many people do that, but in my experience, it never really runs right. It ran Ok on my 900 mhz ibook G3, but it was a total dog on both the 400 mhz imac and 600 mhz ibook that I used to have.

OS 9 was made to run on G3s, and G3s were made to run OS 9. And they do it quite well - 9 runs very snappily. X on g3s is painful, especially if you're coming from a modern system like your ibook.

Personally, I would never buy an old G3 for just this reason. I don't want to use OS 9. But if I did have a G3, I'd rather it run 9 correctly than X badly.

Uhm. I strongly disagree with that. My PowerBook G3 Lombard runs Panther pretty good! (333MHz) Also, my iMac G3, 500MHz/256MB runs Tiger GREAT. It does boot Tiger faster than my G5. And no, there is nothing wrong with my G5... or my G4 either.

 

[QCassidy352]

Well, i see that I'm getting a lot of disagreement to my post above. All I can say is that in my experience G3's do not run OS X at acceptable speeds. The systems I'm talking about are:
- imac G3 DV 400 mhz, 256 RAM
- ibook G3 600 mhz, 640 RAM
- ibook G3 900 mhz, 640 RAM

As I said, the 900 mhz ibook ran it fairly well. The other two were so frustrating I went back to OS 9 on them. It really made me crazy trying to use them on a daily basis. My pro-photographer friend also would never run OS X on his ibook G3 500 mhz for the same reason.

Maybe I just have higher standards of "acceptable" performance than other people. I'll admit that I don't have much patience with beach balls and hang-time.

Since we're talking subjectively here, I certainly can't say that those of you saying that "OS X runs 'like a champ' on a 333 mhz G3 with 160 RAM" are "wrong." But I highly doubt that I'd agree with that assessment. In my experience even a 1 Ghz G4 runs OS X like a dog when it only has 128 RAM, so I'm pretty doubtful that I'd be impressed by a G3 at 1/3 the clockspeed with equivalent RAM. If you all are happy with your G3s running X, more power to you. But i find the experience unbelievably frustrating, whereas using 9 on a G3 is snappy and easy.

 

[Eidorian]

Quartz Extreme really improves the experience. I remember waiting for Finder windows to grind in on my Power Mac. Once I hack on Quartz Extreme support you wouldn't hear the hard drive fire up and watch it beachball.

You at least want 512 MB to run any version of OS X after 10.2. The 900 MHz iBook G3 had a Radeon 7500 so you have Quartz Extreme support there. The 600 MHz models are a mixed bag. Some came with Rage 128's and others with Radeons. Altivec doesn't improve the core functions of OS X. It'll help with iTunes encoding, decoding video, and Photoshop work.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/quartz_extreme_PCI_mod.html

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3CARDS/G3_1.1GHz_vs_G4_1GHz_review/index.html

Yes, you can also get the ever so coveted ripple effect on your PCI Power Mac G3. You just need to flash a PC PCI based NVidia 5200.

 

[Shaun.P]

Thanks for all your input.

Let me explain some stuff:

Had a G3 iMac 600 Mhz (snow) [for 2 years] which I sold to purchase an eMac , 1.25Ghz G4, which I had for one year and sold to get my current iBook [which I've had since January]. All of my computers to date have had to be sold to finance the next one. However I have a job now (I'm 18) so I can afford to buy another computer without selling anything! I had the Snow iMac for 2 years and it was a great little machine - it ran Panther fine for me and was really reliable and I wish I never sold it [the eMac was so loud I would consider it a 'droning' noise]. But the iMac are silent [at least I hope so!].

I thought it would be nice to add to my iBook. I plan to upgrade the hard drive and use it to store important stuff such as photos, music and videos and some other stuff, basically a secondary machine. I have a cable box, which is connected to a wireless broadband router. The router has four ethernet connection ports at the back. Will it be possible to connect to the internet running a cable from one of these to the iMac?

Someone mentioned about heating regarding the iMac - is this something to worry about? What hard drive would you recommend?

The optical drive in the iMac is a CD rom - would it be possible to stick in a combo drive?

If I remember correctly the RAM I need is PC100? Will any PC100 do? My eMac was extremely fussy with memory!

Thanks again.

 

[MIDI_EVIL]

I have a PowerBook as my main, and an iMac G3 500 Graphite at home for family use. Before i owned it, my girlfriend had it and ran OS X Panther 10.3.9, Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, Word 2004, Powerpoint 2004... she has 640 MB RAM. It's a great little machine, for a backup to your iBook.

I just upgraded her Snow iMac's HD to a Western Digital 80GB 8mb Cache.
They take PC-100 and PC-133 (i'm pretty sure) RAM yes, here is a link to a seller on eBay:
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayI...&userid=component-man&iid=5878236827&frm=1728

I think these machines are still performing brilliantly despite their age, good for you for getting one. Enjoy this iconic little gem!

Rich.

 

[Shaun.P]

Thank you! Is installing the hard drive difficult?

 

[Eidorian]

Thanks for all your input.

Let me explain some stuff:

I thought it would be nice to add to my iBook. I plan to upgrade the hard drive and use it to store important stuff such as photos, music and videos and some other stuff, basically a secondary machine. I have a cable box, which is connected to a wireless broadband router. The router has four ethernet connection ports at the back. Will it be possible to connect to the internet running a cable from one of these to the iMac?

Someone mentioned about heating regarding the iMac - is this something to worry about? What hard drive would you recommend?

The optical drive in the iMac is a CD rom - would it be possible to stick in a combo drive?

If I remember correctly the RAM I need is PC100? Will any PC100 do? My eMac was extremely fussy with memory!

Thanks again.

The older G3/G4 Macs are much more tolerant of mixed memory. PC100 or PC133 will work just fine in the iMac.

It looks like you have the DV model with FireWire. Just get an external FireWire drive and forget about upgrading the slot drive.

 

[Shaun.P]

Nope no firewire!

 

[Eidorian]

Nope no firewire!

It's the 350 MHz slot loading model though. Only the models slower than 350 MHz didn't come with FireWire. (DV vs. Five Flavors)