IMac in trash!

One of my neighbors threw away an original tray-loading imac a few days ago. I've never owned a mac, so I grabbed it from the can and away I went!

I brought it home and it powered up fine, but I have a few problems. First of all, the guy who owned it put linux on it. That's cool and all, but I want to play with the mac os. If I can get os 9 on there, I might try and sell it to use the money for a newer mac. I found a copy of os9, but I have to update the firmware, first. This requires a pre-existing mac os, so I'm out of luck. I found a norwegian copy of os 8.6 online, but my mac won't boot after I installed it. (grey screen with alternating mac face and "?" in the center).

Can somebody help me find a retail copy of os 8.5? I really don't want to spend much money on it, certainly not the $40 to $75 I've seen it go for online.

Thanks in advance!

ebay. expect to pay 10$ ha

does anybody know if he can get 10.2 on there? it is a much better idea of what macs are like today. os9, imho, is the reason that many people dont like macs a lot
-chris

Tray loading imacs can run up to 10.3 just fine if he has enough memory.

cradom said:

Tray loading imacs can run up to 10.3 just fine if he has enough memory.

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They could, but not without the firmware updates. Aparently, there are some important video firmware updates and the like that are required for it to be usable under osx. OS9 won't even install without these. Since my Imac tops out at 160 megs of ram, and runs at 233 mhz, I'm not sure I want to submit myself to that kind of resource-starved punishment under osx.

motown said:

Since my Imac tops out at 160 megs of ram, and runs at 233 mhz, I'm not sure I want to submit myself to that kind of resource-starved punishment under osx.

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is that the big teal one? the offical death of the floppy disk?

my ex g/f got one in college (like 1999); it was a pile honestly. it would crash a LOT.

try buying a new one...they cost under 30 dollars....actually, i have 2 newer ones sitting in my basement....

kevin_msu said:

is that the big teal one? the offical death of the floppy disk?

my ex g/f got one in college (like 1999); it was a pile honestly. it would crash a LOT.

Click to expand...

I loved mine never crashed.

i love G3's. collectables if you ask me, since they are so cheap these days.

im using a G3 Snow. OS 10.3 runs fine. next for me will be an eMac