Don't Laugh - Trying to Upgrade an old iMac

My apologies if this topic is posted elsewhere - I have scanned the forum and haven't found the answer to my questions.

I was gifted a slot-loading iMac (G3, 400MHz, 8MB video memory, running 9.2 - ugh) and want to allow my five-year-old to use it to play games on it so she'll quit using my MacBook and iPad. Obviously, I don't want to invest much money in this machine, but I'm willing to install new RAM - I know I can install two 512s which I've ordered for about $20 each - and that I can go to 10.4 once the memory is in place. Rather than installing an airport card, I planned to use a UBS with Wi-Fi, though I also know that many sites won't render with 10.4. I've found some (supposedly) unopened 10.4 boxes available on eBay for about $40.

I have never done this before, but I am totally willing to spend $100 to make this old iMac usable for my kid. I have install instructions from a 2001 edition of MacWorld, complete with pictures. I think I can do this! But there has to be a catch. What am I missing? Any advice, other than "put the $100 toward a newer machine that can actually run the Flash-based kids' games your child wants to play online and won't be able to with 10.4?"

G'day and welcome to the forums.

For that memory make sure it is Apple compatible. PC memory is generally high density and Macs are low density, which is dearer, and you will not find it in PC shops. Good luck with the USB adapter never got one to work satisfactorily yet, and the worst seems to be Realtek which do not make Mac drivers despite claiming to.

I severely upgraded my PowerMac G4 AGP Graphics including Video card and CPU (Went from 450MHz to 1.8GHz) for my kids to use as their own system and it's a pretty speedy box as a result...

Except for Flash based websites. (I know you asked not to hear this but I just wanted to point out that even a much faster box has problems in that area)

They never ran satisfactorily for my kids when they went to their websites and ultimately, I gave up and got them a cheap Compaq desktop instead. The sites always were jerky, slow to load and amazingly horrible.

If this box is specifically for that purpose, I would abandon it now. No upgrades you could put into it would make it play flash decently.

Having said that, the upgrade process is actually pretty easy and fun and was a good learning experience since I had to do firmware updates to get the CPU upgrade to work.

-MikeM

MamaMac said:

I was gifted a slot-loading iMac (G3, 400MHz, 8MB video memory, running 9.2 - ugh) and want to allow my five-year-old to use it to play games on it so she'll quit using my MacBook and iPad.

Click to expand...

Good luck with that...even a 5 year-old knows the difference between a MacBook or iPad...and a 10 year-old G3 iMac!

Kind of like the difference between broccoli (G3 iMac)...and a big piece of chocolate cake (iPad)!

- Nick