12-26-2009, 04:51 PM

Hi

I am trying to help my brother upgrade an iMac G4 (bought used) with the following specifications:

The series that looks like a bowl upside down, with an arm holding a flat-screen LCD-monitor on top.

1 GHz PPC processor
256 MB memory 333MHz SDRAM
167 MHz system bus
Model ID: PowerMac 6.1 versjon 3.3
Darwin kernel from 2003
The monitor seems more 15-inch-ish than 17-inch.

Might get more info from system profiler if needed. Looking at the above specs, it looks like this must be the model apple has listed as "iMac (USB 2.0)" - using this guide:

How to identify iMac (Flat Panel) models

The only thing that doesn't look right is that this article iMac (USB 2.0) - Technical Specifications says it shipped with MacOS 10.3, while our machine has 10.2.8 installed. Could it be the first units shipped with 10.2, and later units shipped with 10.3 installed? Have we found the right machine? We need to know, because we are looking for an Airport card for it. Can we assume our model supports an Airport Extreme card?

Second question is the following: We have ordered some extra RAM for the machine, from MemoryTen. Their site says that this card...

M9655G/A, M9298G/A, KTA-IMAC400/1G, 1GB Apple PowerMac G5 PC3200 DDR400 DIMM

...is compatible with the factory memory slot. This card is listed as "1GB Apple PowerMac G5 PC3200 DDR400 DIMM", but the original card is PC2700 DDR333. Will it still be compatible?

12-26-2009, 05:13 PM

I use this site Apple iMac Specs (All iMac Technical Specs) @ EveryMac.com cos i like the layout and u can see they show 2 units a 15 and a 17. Those G4 have 2 different memory cards - a 200 pin and a 184 pin - one at the top and one underneath (200) which is easy. Best deal i reckon is add a 1GB chip to the lower one. The 15 shows it pre installed with 10.2.3, so that looks Ok. Airport was optional so that is a another story. Will see what i can find. Look at upgrading to 10.4.11 will run well on that with 1.2 GB memory.

There you go - piece of cake http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/h...t-cip.mov.html

12-26-2009, 05:35 PM

Thanks a bunch. Must be the right model. Now, the memory question remains. The model ships with PC2700 333MHz, but MemoryTen says PC3200 400MHz is compatible. Are they right? Are the speed reqs of memory minimum reqs, or must it be that speed exactly?

12-26-2009, 05:38 PM

Not my area of expertise but if Everymac gives the same specs i would go for it. i do know more than one chip speed will be usable on some models. i assume u can add faster chips and they will operate with the slower speeds.

12-26-2009, 05:49 PM

No the 400MHz is backwards compatible and will operate at the 333MHz. Make sure the memory they sell you is Apple compatible and low density. Also check out OWC for memory. This is the precise RAM and price from OWC:-

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../2700DDRS1GBA/

12-26-2009, 06:09 PM

Thanks a lot. The memory is ordered already, I just needed to make sure we had ordered the right kind. I'll put the site in my bookmarks!