I have a g3 mac...now what

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Ok, my gf's mom had this computer, and then one day it would not turn on any more, so, I figured woot, I can put a pc in it.

Well, last night, for the heck of it, I decided to google and found that there was a reset button inside of the computer that could be pushed.

So, I pushed the button and it booted, I put it backtogether, no boot...

Right now it is sitting 1/2 apart and 1/2 together running.

Since I got it apart, I was wondering about maybe a larger hard drive, more ram, maybe a diff os?

It has a 233mhz proc in it, 64 megs of ram, not sure of hard drive size, I am sure something like 4 gigs or whatever they put in it.

Also, there is a bunch of stuff on it that does not need to be on there, a bunch of printer and other stuff that they don't need. I did not see anywhere to remove the programs and startup items, it takes a LONG time to finish booting.

Any syggestions for a n00bhie mac user would be great.
 
I would assume with 64Mb of RAM you are running an OS that is pre-OSX. In that case go to the apple menu, select control panels, and open extensions manager.

That is where you have a lot of the startup items I believe you are referring to. If you post up a list I can help you dig through stuff that is most likely unneeded.

I cannot remember for the life of me processor specs on machines that old, so I'm going to ask :). Is that one a biege box, or the blue and white tower?
 
It is a colord imac, crt, with the computer all in the monitor.

It is running os 9.1, it runs at 233mhz, has 64 megs of ram, 2 megs video ram, 4.3 gig hard drive, it is one of the early imacs....

It does not like to work when fully assembled. The ram is so-dimm sticks, and there is a stick on each side of the processor card, the video ram is also upgradeable. It is a tray loading d rom, a slim note book one. It has a color screen in it.
 
That's what I wanted to know.

What I would recommend doing with that thing (if you want to spend a few dollars) is get it up to at least 256 mb of RAM and install 10.2 or 10.3 on it. A bigger harddrive is a good idea as well, but I would not stick with 9, it's not exactly the best OS on the planet.
 
Rev A iMac, nice. Yeah I'd say just upgrade the ram and OS X as well. The vid ram will hold it back a bit, but it's not worth the cost to increase that.
 
Well, this mac has developed a prolem.

The caddy that holds all the stuff on it, hard drive, cdrom, motherboard....when it is inserted all the way into the imac, it will not turn on, so, then I have to pull the works out at hit that one button on the mobo, and slide it back in, not all the way, just enough, and it will turn right on.

I suspect a short, the only wire that look like it had a short in it was, I belive the cable for the monotor, it was the wider cable, not the svid one, and have a biege shielded looking jacket on it.

I notice the apple site says this mac supports a max of 256 mb of ram. I take it that would be 128mb*2, or, can 1 256mb stick be put in?

If I can't get it working right, I am just going to gut the imac case and put a PC in it:)
 
sc0tty8 said:
Well, this mac has developed a prolem.

The caddy that holds all the stuff on it, hard drive, cdrom, motherboard....when it is inserted all the way into the imac, it will not turn on, so, then I have to pull the works out at hit that one button on the mobo, and slide it back in, not all the way, just enough, and it will turn right on.

I suspect a short, the only wire that look like it had a short in it was, I belive the cable for the monotor, it was the wider cable, not the svid one, and have a biege shielded looking jacket on it.

I notice the apple site says this mac supports a max of 256 mb of ram. I take it that would be 128mb*2, or, can 1 256mb stick be put in?

If I can't get it working right, I am just going to gut the imac case and put a PC in it:)
Click to expand...
I

I thought there was only one slot for ram in the original iMacs. Its underneath the tray thingie (and it needs a SO-DIMM)
 
Try wrapping the cable in question with some electric tape, sounds like it might be grounding out to the case.
 
Nasty_Savage said:
I

I thought there was only one slot for ram in the original iMacs. Its underneath the tray thingie (and it needs a SO-DIMM)
Click to expand...


There are 2 slots.

Pull out the card thingy the proc sits on and there is a slot under neath it.

I will try the elec tape some time and see if that helps.
 
Please let us know how it goes, you use OSX on a machine that old and after seeing how incredible it is on 5-7 year old hardware, I'm confident your next purchase will be a mac :).
 
OS X will just about take up that whole hard drive. Upgrade the RAM and and the HDD if you can. I dont know if it will see a 40GB drive or not but it would be a nice cheap upgrade. Make it so much faster over that old drive in there.

To bad it is the origional bondi blue with 2MB of RAM, the B revision had 6MB. Hope you like it.

That reminds me I still need to find an ATA66 card for the 450MHz G3 I picked up in May. The SCSI drive has a high pitch whine and is annoying.
 
When installing OS X, make sure to partition the new drive into two partitions.. one partition with 8GB and the other with the rest. OS X has to be installed on the 8GB partition on that system.
 
Deific said:
When installing OS X, make sure to partition the new drive into two partitions.. one partition with 8GB and the other with the rest. OS X has to be installed on the 8GB partition on that system.
Click to expand...


Hugh, I have never come across this on any OS X install.
 
Ok, I got the POS up n moving. I had an old dimm I threw that in there, so it now has 96mb of ram.

I have a 15 gigger laying around somewhere, but, I am unfamilar with how to do an install at all on a mac.

Right now it has 9.1 on it, and the 4.3 gigger is 1/2 full, startup takes soo friggin' long...

I figured out how to get it on the net.

I hate the mouse, I am guessing I could plug in one of my old M$ mouseys to it?

Is this thing even worth doing anything to?

Is there a firmware upgrade that will allow for more ram or am I capped at 256mb?

I am not sure if my gf's mom wants thing back or not, they never used it, since the school just put in pc's, My gf's lil sis can't bring her home work home with her and do it on the mac, and, her mom don't have the internet...usually she comes here and uses my computer or goes to her dad's to use his computer.


After seeing the price of os x at 125$, I am not really sure it is worth buying and putting on here lol....

Are there any processors that can be bought cheap for this thing?
 
sc0tty8 said:
Ok, I got the POS up n moving. I had an old dimm I threw that in there, so it now has 96mb of ram.

I have a 15 gigger laying around somewhere, but, I am unfamilar with how to do an install at all on a mac.

Right now it has 9.1 on it, and the 4.3 gigger is 1/2 full, startup takes soo friggin' long...

I figured out how to get it on the net.

I hate the mouse, I am guessing I could plug in one of my old M$ mouseys to it?

Is this thing even worth doing anything to?

Is there a firmware upgrade that will allow for more ram or am I capped at 256mb?

I am not sure if my gf's mom wants thing back or not, they never used it, since the school just put in pc's, My gf's lil sis can't bring her home work home with her and do it on the mac, and, her mom don't have the internet...usually she comes here and uses my computer or goes to her dad's to use his computer.


After seeing the price of os x at 125$, I am not really sure it is worth buying and putting on here lol....

Are there any processors that can be bought cheap for this thing?
Click to expand...

Well macs aren't exactly like a pc when it come to hardware. you can update ram harddrive and maybe a vid card, but that's it. if you want a newer prossesor you'll have to buy a new mac. however, i do miss the days when you could buy parts like that :(
 
How about a fresh install? What is needed/required? Since it is not like a PC where I have the boot from cd option, wtf do I do?
 
You do have the boot from CD option. Just put an OS CD in and hold the "C" key.
 
celsmore said:
You do have the boot from CD option. Just put an OS CD in and hold the "C" key.
Click to expand...


Any other spiffy mac secrets? How hard would it be to put a larger hard drive in it, say, a 15 gigger?
 
15 gig will run fine, just make sure that the first partition is set up to be less than 8 gb large.

All system software must be installed on that first 8 gb partition, or it cannot boot properly. Other than that, you are golden using a 15.
 
spidy said:
Well macs aren't exactly like a pc when it come to hardware. you can update ram harddrive and maybe a vid card, but that's it. if you want a newer prossesor you'll have to buy a new mac. however, i do miss the days when you could buy parts like that :(
Click to expand...

That's true with the iMacs, but not with other G3 and G4s. The G3 towers had ZIFs, and you could pop in one of the "Yikes!" G4 ZIFs. Past "Yikes!" You start getting daughter card G4s. Those are also interchangeable. The only problem was that if you upgraded your 400mhz Sawtooth to a 1.2ghz chip straight out of a Mirror Drive Door G4, it would only run at 750mhz due to the difference in FSB. The FSB is risky and a pain in the ass to change on the G4 logicboards too. There were 3rd party processor upgrade cards you could buy that let you go all the way to 1.4, just with higher multipliers. The 3rd party daughercards are also very easy to overclock (especially the Gigadesign ones if I remember correctly) and some very nice numbers have been gotten out of the ~1ghz ones.

If you do go about upgarding the harddrive on that Bondi Blue iMac, I believe I remember hearing that 7200rpm harddrives are bad news in the older iMacs, check into that first. 256 megs of RAM really choked OS X on my Gigabit Ethernet G4, so it's unfortunate that you can't get more than that.

Good luck with the iMac though, and good job getting it to work!
 
celsmore said:
15 gig will run fine, just make sure that the first partition is set up to be less than 8 gb large.

All system software must be installed on that first 8 gb partition, or it cannot boot properly. Other than that, you are golden using a 15.
Click to expand...
what is the purpose of this? i've installed OSX before, but i've never heard about making an 8GB partition soly for the OS before. just curious.. anyone have any coments on this?
 
celsmore said:
15 gig will run fine, just make sure that the first partition is set up to be less than 8 gb large.

All system software must be installed on that first 8 gb partition, or it cannot boot properly. Other than that, you are golden using a 15.
Click to expand...


That should not be a prob:)

Right now it only has 96 megs of ram, so, I hope osx works decent. I will not be using it so:p
 
The 8 GB limitation is only on older generation macs such as the original iMacs (not slot loads), the Blue and White G3s and a lot of the older products from that time period. The IDE controller doesn't communicate well with OS X for drives larger than 8 GB, at least for startup purposes. So the key is to partition the drive into two or more partitions, the first 8 GB is for the Operating system and the rest is for whatever else.

8 GB first partition issue
 
So then, does 2 hard drives show up on the desktop then? Or???

Like I said b4, I am a mac noobie, gimme a PC and I can do anything to it lol...
 
Deific said:
The 8 GB limitation is only on older generation macs such as the original iMacs (not slot loads), the Blue and White G3s and a lot of the older products from that time period. The IDE controller doesn't communicate well with OS X for drives larger than 8 GB, at least for startup purposes. So the key is to partition the drive into two or more partitions, the first 8 GB is for the Operating system and the rest is for whatever else.

8 GB first partition issue
Click to expand...

It's true, you do learn something everyday. Thanks Deific for the explanation.
 
Deific said:
The 8 GB limitation is only on older generation macs such as the original iMacs (not slot loads), the Blue and White G3s and a lot of the older products from that time period. The IDE controller doesn't communicate well with OS X for drives larger than 8 GB, at least for startup purposes. So the key is to partition the drive into two or more partitions, the first 8 GB is for the Operating system and the rest is for whatever else.

8 GB first partition issue
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I have decided to just get a SATA card for the G3 since they are the same price as the ATA133 cards. He he 120GB 8MB cache SATA drive with OS X on a 450 MHz G3. :D
 
Punchbugy said:
That's true with the iMacs, but not with other G3 and G4s.
Click to expand...

Actually, you can upgrade the CPU in tray-loading iMacs... :D It's only the slot-loading and later iMacs that can't be upgraded because the CPU is soldered BGA-style right to the mobo whereas the tray-loading iMacs have a removable processor card. FastMac has a line of 466MHz G4 upgrade cards for the tray-loading iMacs which work quite well (though, I've never actually bought one for myself... I used to work for FastMac/AllMac and installed/tested enough of those things to know that they do make a noticeable difference in performance) BUT if you aren't going to max out the RAM in that iMac, then the CPU upgrade isn't worth it. OS X craves a minimum of 256MB of RAM to run decently (yeah, Apple says 128MB minimum but that just causes OS X to run painfully slow, especially on older Macs).
 
Just so everyone is clear. the over 8GB partition will work fine, until any part of that OS or page file ends up outside the 8GB mark. After that the OS will go looking for someone the IDE driver is not able to address properly, and you will end up with a majorly FUBARed system.

I've seen it several times.

In any case, it's not that big of deal to just make and 8 and a whatever else you've got partition. WOn't hurt anything.
 
cv643d said:
Os X works fine on a G3 233 MHz ?! :confused:
Click to expand...

OS 10.3.5 works alright on my old 366MHz G3 iBook SE and 333MHz G3 tray-loading iMac, though, both of them have 320MB of RAM. Hell, I even do some Photoshop work on the iBook...but only when I don't want to be tethered to my desk :rolleyes: .
 
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