Picked up an iMac G3.

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Hey guys. I just picked up an iMac G3 tonight from somebody on Craigslist for free. I'm wanting to restore it to default basically, but it didn't have any cd's or anything with it. It came with the colored keyboard and the power plug. It has Mac OS 9.2.2 loaded on it. It's a PPC G3 350 Mhz with 193MB of RAM. How would I go about restoring it to factory without the disc or how would I get a copy of OS 9? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

- ImageX
 
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Best bet would probably be on eBay or a similar site, an early version of OSX might run well on that thing. 10.2 or 3 Maybe?
 
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From what I've read on wikipedia, 10.1 seems to be about perfect for the specs. 10.2 likes a little more RAM than I have. 9.2 seems fine, but I would feel more comfortable using OS X.

- ImageX
 
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iMac G3 best OS?

Just picked up an old iMac G3 for free today. 350Mhz, 196MB RAM, ~7GB HDD. Was wondering if I should keep OS 9.2 on it or put 10.1, 10.2 or 10.3 Help me decide.
 

bobtomay

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Note: Merged basically duplicate threads. Please don't crosspost.
 
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I voted 10.3 simply cause my downstairs imac is a 333Mhz imac and it runs 10.3 just fine. Takes an eon to install though like a few hours at least. But let it go and make sure the screen does not go to sleep during the install and once it's installed it'll run just fine. If you can get some really cheap ram for it that'll help a lot. But don't spend anything more then peanut money on old ram for this. Cause it's just not worth it.
 
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I'd go for 10.2 at the most with those specs, personally.
It was a great OS, and leaps and bounds ahead of 9.
 
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I believe 10.1 is available for download online somewhere... Which will save you money for buying disks. Also, Camino is still supporting their browser for 10.1 (Meaning you won't get errors when you go to certain sites) My G3 is running 10.1 and I love it, pretty fast too. Although mine is a 500 MHz with 320 MB Ram.
 
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So I got a hold of a copy of OS 9.2. When I insert the disc, whether I hold down "c" or use option to boot to the cd drive, it stays on the floppy logo and doesn't do anything. It takes a couple of minutes to get to the floppy disc logo and then it stays there. I've let it sit for about an hour and turned it off and tried again with the same result. Any help? Thanks. I'm trying to boot to the cd because I want to format and fresh install OS 9.2 so I have a clean foundation to load whatever version of OS 10 I decide to put on it.

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Try leaving it for like... 4 hours? It could take a while. Especially with that slow of a computer.
 
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Also, a question mark pops up on the floppy disc logo every once in a while. What does that question mark mean?

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The disc has to be a full retail install version. Its white with an orange 9 on it. Says
version 9.2.1. You know if you put X on it you must upgrade the firmware on a slot load iMac to boot rom 4.1.9. Look in system profiler for the current boot rom version.
 
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Yeah, it won't work if the Disc is Machine Specific. You need a retail version.
 
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I meant you cant take a Disc that is Machine specific for one machine, and use it on another. :D
 
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Just to keep this thread updated, I loaded 10.3 onto this machine successfully. It's actually really decent. I could see using this as my only computer if I didn't have one. Thanks for everyones help.

- ImageX
 

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