OS X on G3 iMac

Joined
Mar 24, 2007
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Location
Langebaan, South Africa
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook wannabe
Hi

I recently got a 400MHz slot loading iMac G3 from a friend. I have set it up for my 4 year old daughter. It runs OS 9 but ideally I would like to install OS X. Unfortunately it only has 128 Mb RAM. I see that it takes SDRAM and as I have plenty PC SDRAM lying around, I was wondering if I could use it in the iMac? What is the specs of the SDRAM used in the iMac?

Any assistance and helpful comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Cobus
 
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
1,964
Reaction score
174
Points
63
A company selling RAM has this listing for an iMac G3: 168-pin PC100 SCRAM DIMM, but I hauled up only that one page. I doubt it would be wrong, though.
 
OP
C
Joined
Mar 24, 2007
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Location
Langebaan, South Africa
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook wannabe
Thanks for the info. I have two 512Mb 168 pin PC133 SDRAM DIMM's lying around, do you think it will work? I assume it will just operate at PC100.

Any chance of damaging something?

Cobus
 
Joined
Mar 22, 2007
Messages
101
Reaction score
4
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
imac G3 450MHZ 512 RAM DVD
If it helps here is the ram in my imac G3:

DIMM0/J13:

Size: 256 MB
Type: SDRAM
Speed: PC133-333

and

DIMM1/J14:

Size: 256 MB
Type: SDRAM
Speed: PC100-322S


Both these collected from system profiler

PC100 SDRAM (3.3 V, 64-bit, 168-pin, 100 MHz) according to lowendmac

So the same as Brown Study

I run a 450MHZ, 512 RAM in panther 3.9

It will do fine for stuff like word and excell if you ever have to use it but if you are visiting educational sites with your daughter, playing their flash games and so on it may start to crawl.

I know this one doesn't streaming video at all. It can really start to stutter

Nice gift for your daughter though! They are fun little things, theres always OS 9 games, eh?

One thing if your imac has it, at the bottom kind of hidden under a vent/grill you'll find a VGA out. If you need to use it this is great, or if your daughter starts to complain its too small (Do four yearolds go so deep into technology? I don't know!) mine is currently hooked up to a 21inch CRT (on it now)

Good luck
 

Eif


Joined
Mar 25, 2007
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Points
1
just a thought, does your mac have a dvd drive? i just bought a g3 imac, and picked up os x on ebay, but am having to buy an external dvd drive to install the software, as the mac has a cd rom.
 
M

MacHeadCase

Guest
Welcome to Mac-Forums, Eif!

You can get Tiger on CD from Apple. They will charge you 9 or 10$ for it but it is possible to get it in CD form, much less expensive than buying an external DVD. :girl:
 
Joined
Mar 22, 2007
Messages
101
Reaction score
4
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
imac G3 450MHZ 512 RAM DVD
Its up to you but you could always get panther? It works great - so does tiger but some features (Not including dashboard because it can easily be turned off) can really hold back a 400MHZ

panther comes on CD but you'd be buying from somewhere like ebay

Mine has a DVD drive, I think i'm wrong but only the DV models had DVD drives?

External DVD drives can be expensive but a good investment if you need the write features (Yet another strain on the CPU and the speed of firewire or USB)
 

Eif


Joined
Mar 25, 2007
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Welcome to Mac-Forums, Eif!

You can get Tiger on CD from Apple. They will charge you 9 or 10$ for it but it is possible to get it in CD form, much less expensive than buying an external DVD. :girl:


Hello..thanks for the welcome :) i will have a look into that, i have os x panther 10.3.5, so not sure if they would upgrade it to tiger, worth checking out though, thanks :)
 
M

MacHeadCase

Guest
Going with Tiger is a whole new OS so you won't have an upgrade pricing. You can always look on eBay if you are looking for a bargain. Just make sure you buy it on CD.

But Miffle does have a point. Panther was rock solid and is less demanding on hardware than Tiger is. There will be Tiger-only features that will not render on your machine because your graphics card is not supported. If you update Panther to version 10.3.9, you get a lot the benefits of having Tiger.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top