Hey everyone. I'm new here. But as I was cruising the web looking for G3 iMac info, I found MacTalk! =) So I thought I'd sign up and ask a few questions.

I've been offered a g3 iMac for roughly 50 bucks. It's got a 266mhz, 160mb, 38gb hard drive and 10.3 installed.

My question(s) is, is this a decent buy for web browsing & email? How does it hold up to today's internet? Should I look for a 500mhz machine instead?

I had a 500mhz powerbook ("snow") with 768mb ram. And it struggled when it came to some websites.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly welcome!

Thanks,
Walker

As much as I love the ol' dears, I wouldn't get the iMac. With 160 MB it would churn the swap so hard you'd think the machine had a fan powered by a hamster in hobnail boots and lived on a diet of benzedrine. On top of that, the graphics chip in it are incredibly pokey, which means the CPU has to work even harder making up for the lack of an acceptable GPU.

You onbiously already have a PC with associated peripherals -- why not stretch the budget and get something with a lot more grunt. A second-hand Mac Mini G4 and a baby KVM would be best, and if you poke around long enough you can get them for as little as $350. If that's way over your budget, then I'd look at one of the iMac G4's (the 'luxo lamp' model) or even a G4 minitower. Whichever way you look at things, a G4-based Mac is pretty much the acceptable minimum for tolerable web-browsing. I wouldn't look at a G3 unless it was up near the 1 GHz range and had bucketloads of RAM.


Brains

Thanks for the advice Brains. Yeah, already have a monster gaming machine for my home setup, as well as a Fujitsu ultraportable for work. However, I'm missing OSX. (Grew to love it the old snow ibook.)

However, I was offered a 400mhz 128mb ram, 10gbhd "slot loading" g3 machine for 30$ Can't pass that one up. Even though it's not the best thing out there, I'm partial to the "retro 90's" look of the thing.

But I may look at one of those "luxo lamp" machines. I thought they were quite clever when they first came out. I've also taken a look at the eMac machines. (800mhz setup)

Thanks for the help Brains.

Walker

Keep your eyes on the for-sale ads around the 'net -- ePay, Trading Post, craigslist, special-interest forums, etc -- as sometimes really impressive older machines can be had for a song. As an example, a friend picked up an 800 MHz dual-G4 MDD with twin 120 GB drives and 1 GB of RAM for A$200 two weeks ago. That is a stupidly low price (and I'm highly envious ), but you never know when you might get lucky!


B.

EDIT: BTW, the best way to increase the usable performance of your $30 iMac is to stuff it full of RAM -- hunt down some 256 or 512 MB SO-DIMMs and whack in as much as you can afford to. OS X loves RAM, the more the merrier. You could also ensure that it has a 7200 RPM hard drive, too ... it'll take pretty much any bog-standard PATA mech up to 120 GB, but you will have to split the drive into two and create a boot partition no greater than 8 GB.

I was just given an Imac G3 as well from a friend, still waiting for it come through, and for me for a starter machine it's going to be good to play with. I just need something with email/internet/messaging. Once I saved up enough money I want to upgrade the hard drive to at least 60GIGS and the memory to at least 512. (currently it has 256MB and 7.6 GIG HDD).

Yes I know it will run fairly slow especially with Mac OS X 10.2 on it, but hey for someone who wants to learn macs and start with a basic mac for a first go, it's not so bad. I can put up with its slowness, as I put up with my pc's hissy fits every day.lol

The only problem - I am so not good at computer parts lol and I've looked at documents on the internet on insturctions on how to install rams/hard drives, looks very complicated...lol

Hi ShadowDan,

for taking apart your iMac to do these things, you should download a service manual, which details how to upgrade components and more:

http://home.earthlink.net/~strahm_s/manuals.html

If you can obtain it, don't bother with 10.2 - a lot of OS X software doesn't work with it anymore. 10.3.9 with 512MB RAM is the sweet spot in terms of performance and compatibility with a lowly G3.

Also, what model iMac? If it's an early tray-load machine, you'll find the So-DIMM SDRAM used to be prohibitively expensive; slot-loaders take standard desktop SDRAM which is cheaper and easier to obtain.

JB

For web browsing and mailing, $50 is the go.
Dont expect it to do much more than that.
I would take it for $50.

G'day 10.2 is already installed on it. It won't come with the original discs as he needs i tfor another imac he has. Yes it's a slot loading tray. So you're telling me I could take ram out of my Windows PC and put in my Imac G3? I am definetly getting it. I also want to run word processing/spreadsheeting.

I just if I do the upgrade myself - I'm scared of breaking it because I here it's going to be a pain to take apart as you have to take out other components to get to the ram and to the hard drive. From what I have read. But it's Mac, so I'm probably willing to learn.

Identify it using this guide first. This will help us work out what you're going to get out of it and how to go about it.

Slot-loading iMacs are relatively easy to upgrade RAM-wise, I did it about three months ago and had no trouble at all.

350MHz PowerPC G3 processor Imac
Sloat Loading.


That's what I can gather plus and that the inforamtion I found about the Imac on another website.

Check out this page, which has loads of info and tips for your model (at least, this is the model it sounds like you have). In particular, check out the links for Firmware Update 4.1.9 (a prerequisite for running Panther or Tiger), the "How big a hard drive can I put in my iMac?" link and the Apple specs, which should include diagrams for replacement/upgrade of your RAM and HDD.

Thanks tcn33

a question - I take it this model won't be able to do external monitor display?

I don't believe it will support an external display, but I may be mistaken. Can anyone confirm this?

I'm pretty sure iMac DV 400+Mhz models support VGA out, but could be wrong. If you look at the backside/bum of your iMac, you'll see a removable translucent panel. Pop this out, there will be a VGA connector.

ShadowDan, keep in mind you'll need PC100/PC133 SDRAM for the iMac. Taking this model apart is fairly easy, basically place it face down and remove the six screws on the base, then slide off the entire bottom panel. From there, removing the hard disk is fairly easy (and you've probably seen you just need to remove the bottom door to get to the RAM slots).

JB