11-23-2009, 02:34 PM

Hello everyone!

My friend needed a computer on the cheap and asap, so I found her an iMac G3 for £50. It is the 500MHz DVD-ROM model and has 576MB of RAM and a 40GB HDD. This was back in May and it serves her far beyond what she expected for a computer for £50. But now she has a little pocket money and could get some small upgrades.

What effect would increasing the RAM to 1GB have?
What about replacing the HDD with a larger one?
Any other possible improvements?

From what I gather the only possible improvements she wants are BBC iPlayer or Youtube. I'm not too sure if this will do much, but any knowledge would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

11-23-2009, 03:36 PM

Originally Posted by 613

What effect would increasing the RAM to 1GB have?
What about replacing the HDD with a larger one?
Any other possible improvements?

From what I gather the only possible improvements she wants are BBC iPlayer or Youtube. I'm not too sure if this will do much, but any knowledge would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

Increasing the ram to 1 gig certainly won't hurt...and of course a larger hard drive will increase the storage capacity.

I don't know what OS version you're running in the iMac...OS 10.4 (10.4.11) is the newest you can use. But if you don't have a 10.4 install disk it will most likely cost you more than you paid for the iMac.

There's not much more upgrading you can do...other than installing an airport card for wireless networking.

As far as Youtube...no matter what you do in terms of upgrades on a 500mhz G3 iMac won't do much to improve Youtube performance. You need a MUCH faster computer to get Youtube to run smoothly these days!

Good luck,

- Nick

11-23-2009, 04:01 PM

Thanks for the reply Nick,

Its running 10.4.11, so the OS isn't a problem, although I don't have the install discs if anything was to go wrong, so that could be a worry.

I was looking at the airport card as she is using a simple USB wifi adaptor, but it would save always opening that program to access the wireless network if I got her the airport card.

If I were to get a larger HDD, how would I get the OS onto the new drive without the Install discs? Or would I have to find them somewhere?

Shame about the lack of Youtube, but for a £50 computer, I have no complaints!

Thanks for the help!

David

11-23-2009, 04:14 PM

The HDD is upgradeable up to about 120 GB. Any more than that wouldn't be recognized by the computer. Also, I'm pretty certain you would need to reinstall Os, as it may not run as efficiently as a slave drive. I queried craigslist for local people who may have parts/software for my 400mhz G3 and found a couple of really helpful people that pretty much gave me their old memory and software. People hang on to this kind of stuff because they know its still useful to others and hate to see it wasted . If you have craigslist or an equivalent in your area, you may want to try that, just beware of the scammers that seem to troll those kind of sites.

11-23-2009, 04:30 PM

And don't bother with Airport. Everything is working so leave it be. Any IDE drive up to 128GB can be formatted and yes you would need a new operating installation unless you went to the trouble of purchasing a firewire case and popping the drive in, connecting to the G3 and cloning the current hard drive using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Simpler, and cheaper, to keep a lookout for a full retail install DVD of Tiger OS X.4. Make sure it is a black disc and not a silver grey coloured system install disc which is very model specific.

Macs are very fussy on memory so the modules need to be Mac compatible low density PC100 modules. Memory from PC chops tends to be high density which may well cause kernel panic and freezes in the G3.

11-23-2009, 04:51 PM

Also, there are apparently rules as to where you put the memory, or so I'm told. I forget into which end you put larger mem modules (I think closer to the center of the board, but check first).

11-23-2009, 06:47 PM

Originally Posted by x slurm x

Also, there are apparently rules as to where you put the memory, or so I'm told. I forget into which end you put larger mem modules (I think closer to the center of the board, but check first).

You may be thinking of the "Lampshade iMacs"...they have two differing sized memory sticks. One officially user accessible slot...and one less accessible & different sized slot.

iMac G3's have two memory slots...both the same size.

- Nick

11-23-2009, 06:50 PM

Originally Posted by 613

I was looking at the airport card as she is using a simple USB wifi adaptor, but it would save always opening that program to access the wireless network if I got her the airport card.

If you do decide to go with an airport card...you need a special adapter card as well.

- Nick

11-24-2009, 08:20 AM

I'll certainly make her aware of what can be done.

It seems like having those Tiger Restore/ Install discs would be a good idea anyway, even if she doesn't want anything done. I'll have to look them out.

The RAM is going really cheap these days as people split up their old systems, I'll just wait for the right one.

I've seen a lot of these airport cards and adaptors around the place, so I guess that shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for all the help everyone!


David

11-24-2009, 04:42 PM

For goodness sake 613, NOT restore discs. They are very much model specific only. As stated you need the black coloured full retail install version,. not restore, upgrade, pop in or whatever. And expect to pay around the +$100.00 mark.

11-25-2009, 10:35 AM

Quite right, I must have been typing in a rush. I'll see what I can find, and see what she says.

Thanks