iMac HardDrive Question....

I'm looking into getting a G3 iMac ( I know... OLD ) I've never used a mac before, and I pretty much wanna learn how to use one, and then decide if I want to spend more to get a newer one or not.

Anyways - after looking on ebay, it looks like not too many people upgraded from their 6gig hdd. 6 gig's isn't going to cut it for me

My question:
How hard is it to swap out a hard drive (I'm used to windows boxes) and is there any kind of limitation on how big of one you can get? Also, does the hard drive have to be specific to a mac, or will a plain ol' Western Digital do the trick??

I've noticed there's plenty of ram up for grabs on Ebay, so upgrading from the 32mb shouldn't be hard to do at all, fortunatly. How many slots does an iMac have?

And, I am aware that mac's process faster than a pentium/amd processor....... What would a 333mhz be on par with?



Sorry for all the questions!!

If i need to find out about hardware info for ANY mac I always go to this website:

http://www.apple-history.com

It has everything you need to know about hardware layouts for every mac ever made. pretty sweet. Also, be careful about getting RAM on ebay!!! Bad ram can be catastrophic to your machine. If you're willing to pay a little extra, but want a sure bet, go to crucial.com. they have everything you need. You can also search by computer type to find the exact kind of memory you need and then make sure the kind you're buying on ebay matches that description exactly. hope that helps

Apple-History is a great site. i use it a lot.

any HD should work, but i always recommened 7200 rpm Western Digital and Maxtor (for any computer).

only 2 RAM slots, if youre gonna run OS X on it, i would recommend getting at least 256mb. For OS 9, 128 will work fine.

if you run OS 9, 333mhz would be about a 500-600 mhz celeron running win2k

if youre running OS X, RAM makes a huge difference in speed. so a 333mhz with 256mb is about the same as a 800mhz P3 on XP

of course these are only estimates. it really depends on what tasks you want to accomplish

Another good source for pieces parts for older macs is www.fastermacs.com. I've bought stuff from them several times and I've been quite pleased with their products and services. For memory they are usually cheaper than eBay, definitely cheaper than Crucial/Kingston/etc. They have memory, hard drives, proceessor upgrades, etc. I'm going to purchase a processor upgrade from them for my iMac at some point in the near future.

And no, I'm not affiliated with them, just a VERY satisfied customer.


jjh