G3 or G4

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Hi All,

I picked up an older iMac on Craigslist and I have a couple of questions because I got it to fix up and donate or let my kids play with but it is awesome and I am thinking about keeping it for myself.

The "About This Mac" page says it has a power PC G4 processor but it is the old style "bondi blue" machine. Did Apple make a machine a CRT iMac like that or has it been upgraded? It is running Jaguar and has 384 Mb of ram. I would like to find out more about it because I have a bigger hard drive that I can put in but I am going to have to buy an OS and I want to make sure I get the most recent one it can run.

I am shocked that I got a machine that is this good for free!

Thanks!
Rich
 
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Mac Mini 2.5 i5/16Gb/500Gb/Radeon 6630M-256MB
I'm running Tiger a G3 500Mhz iMac qith a Gig of RAM, runs extremely well, It's worth it to just simply max out the RAM.....can't go wrong
 
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Was it standard for max memory to be 1Gb? Also, I haven't looked inside but it appears to have 2 memory slots. Are both accessible? If I could put 1Gb or ram in the machine, I am confident it could run Panther or Tiger because it runs Jaguar so well right now as long as there are no minimum video card requirements.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Depends on what model iMac the memory question. 384MB was the max for Rev A model Bondi Blues and 512MB for Revision B's. Try Tiger by all means, however a Revision A video card may well struggle with the graphics with only 2MB VRAM. Here is a link to Everymac's specs on the Bondi Blue. Don't know what difference the upgrade makes to memory, if any.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_ab.html
 
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Thanks for the info everyone.

Harryb- I think this may be a version A machine because the guy used it to run his business and he probably maxed out the ram.

Will this machine support a bigger hard drive? How about a DVD drive?

I really like this machine. Can you tell? I would like to be able to use it as a regular machine.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Yep I can tell as your enthusiasm just shines through.

Changing the HDD is a tough job, and below is a link to the instructions and same with the DVD drive. But they will work. Was going to suggest an external USB DVD burner/drive but it will not be bootable.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2496/2001/10/howtoimac.html
 

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