From: "Mattox, Thoma" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hello, We just recently got an iMac 266. What upgrades are available (processor, video, memory, hard drive)? What is recommended? Anyone know of cheap sources?
I'll be happy to tell you, but I feel it only fair to point out that for just a few dollars more than what I'm going to suggest, you could buy a refurb'd eMac that totally kicks that machine's ... er, shiny plastic butt.
You may want to consider whether the iMac would serve better donated to a school or institution.
First of all, I'd strongly recommend the HARMONi upgrade from Sonnet. For about $300 (I think,) you double the speed of the processor and gain a FireWire port (which is VITAL for things like external hard drives, iPods, digital video cameras and a lot more stuff as we go forward).
Second, I'd strongly recommend EITHER having MCE replace the CD-ROM drive with a CD-burner ($200) **or** buying a 120GB hard drive and external FW case (assuming you go with the Sonnet HARMONi upgrade so you have FW), and that will run you about $150. It is **important** to have some way of backing up and relocating your vital info if the machine should break down.
Next, you need to maximise the RAM. I'm not sure if those machines can take 512MB (dealram.com seems to think so), but if they can, you should put one in if you're going to run OS X. That'll cost about $120. If you're just going to run OS 9 or OS 8, you can get away with say 128MB memory which of course is dramatically cheaper ($30).
I believe there is some way to up the VRAM on those machines to 4MB, but I don't know much about that. Google up "iMac 266 VRAM" and I'm sure you'll get some guidance. Visit lowendmac.com for much more info on that.
Finally, I'd recommend you replace the internal HD with a 120GB drive as well. You should be able to find one for less than $100 since they are PC-standard IDE/ATA drives.
As you can see, you can spend between $500-800 and get a really nice little G3 iMac, or you can pay around $600 and buy yourself a refurbished, warrantied G4 eMac with more RAM, more HD, more burning capability, bigger screen and more everything else.
If you just want to use the iMac for some limited purpose and don't want to spend a lot of money on it, I'd suggest locating a USB 1.1 CD-burner (4x maximum, like the old Iomega 650) and a copy of Toast. You can also make a heck of a kid's computer out of it by installing cheap educational software (which I find at Ross and TJ Maxx et al all the time!). Install 9.1 or 9.2.x on it and search ebay for OS 9 software like MS Office 98 etc. Those iMacs are still incredibly useful, but they are rapidly falling behind when it comes to Internet and "iLife" type technologies.
_Chas_
FL-MUG: central Florida's Macintosh User Group. Meetings: second Thursday of the month, 6-9pm, at the Orlando Science Center. http://www.flmug.org
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