On Aug 25, 2009, at 8:25 PM, SLiCk wrote: > I recently purchesed a tangerine iMac G3 233mhz at a garage sale for > $10. Seemed like a good deal even though there was no peripherals or > CD's. The machine boots perfect and it's loaded with lots of kids > programs and runs pretty fast considering. I just added 256MB RAM > PC100 (2X128) that I got from eBay for $10. The OS is 8.6. I have a > 40GB IDE drive I'm going to install a into the machine also. That's > all the hardware upgrades I intend to perform. $20 investment so far > for a good running mac is pretty cheap, lol. So...a few questions if > anyone can help...
Some errors in your description perhaps? The ONLY 233 MHz iMac was the original Bondi Blue iMac, so unless someone changed all the exterior plastic to Tangerine, it's likely that your Tangerine is either a 266 MHz or 333 MHz model? Also, you say you added PC100 RAM which only came in the later iMac DV models (350-500MHz), but since all these came with slot loading drives and you've said you have a tray loading drive, this means your iMac likely uses "SoDimm PC100" (laptop RAM) rather than normal PC100 (desktop RAM)? > 1 - What is the best OS I should upgrade to and still keep the machine > running good? I've heard the OSX might slow it down alot. I have no > upgraded software (yet) btw. You can run OS X up to Tiger 10.4.11 if you have sufficient HD space and RAM. I don't think 256MB is sufficient RAM. 512MB would be better, and I think 1 GB is the maximum, and prohibitively expensive most likely. > 2 - Can I keep the games that are currently installed on the hard > drive and xfer them to the new drive? Probably, but you'd want to leave the games on the old HD and transfer them after installing the new OS and new HD. > 3 - I read that I need to partition the new drive to 7GB to run OSX on > the primary partition. Can I do that when I install the new OS? You partition the drive using Disk Utility when you boot the OS X installer CD/DVD. The 1st 8 GB partition is kind of a red herring, it's true that you must have a partition within the 1st 8 GB, but XPostFacto's "Helper Disk" option boot process can enable booting OS X on any size partition outside the 1st 8 GB, and you'd NEVER want to be restricted to only 8 GB of boot partition, so I'd recommend installing OS X onto the largest partition you can make outside a smaller 1st 8 GB partition. You'd probably want to do a MacOS 9.x partition within the 1st 8 GB, and then make the remainder of the 40 GB into an OS X primary boot partition using XPostFacto to boot with. > 4 - The machine only has a CD drive (tray loading). I'm guessing OSX > comes on a DVD? If so, how can I see the drive to install the new OS? If the iMac has Firewire, you can boot into Target Disk mode and install OS X from another Mac that has a DVD drive. You can also use a Firewire DVD drive to boot and install with. Also, these colored iMacs & iBooks CAN boot from USB, but it's hard to boot, and very slow, not worthwhile unless there is no other alternative. I can help you off-list if you want, but this isn't a simple upgrade project, and the results may be less than stellar in terms of performance. With AGP G4's being sent to recyclers and dumped for next- to-nothing, you could likely have done better in terms of hardware for the not much more investment. I might recommend you upgrade from 8.6 to 9.2.2 and forget about OS X unless you're willing to spend more money, and a lot more time. If you have the resources (another Mac with DVD, perhaps a Firewire or USB enclosure, and more RAM), it might be a fun learning project to stick Tiger on this old iMac, but otherwise, I'd probably leave it as a $20 game machine. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
