iMac G3 and OS X

[mmzplanet]

I have an Indigo iMac G3 that I got for my little one to play around with. It has OS 9.2 installed on it but I would like to put OS X on it. Which version (.2, .3, or .4) of OS X do you reccommend. Of course Tiger would be great but after all he is only 5 years old. The specs are 400Mhz, 1GB RAM, and 10GB HDD (will get larger 40 HDD soon I hope).

[FDX]

I have 10.3.9 and in runs fine w/512 ram.

[Jaffa Cake]

My old G3 iMac ran Panther great on 384MB – I upgraded to a G5 before Tiger came out, But i reckon it would have done alright with that too. One of the key things is to have plenty of RAM in there – the 1GB you have is a good amount. The hard dive size is a little on the low side at the moment, so the upgrade you're looking at there will be beneficial.

[Steven1621]

10.3.9 is definitely your best bet.

[joepunk]

Panther will work just fine. Tiger will work also since a 400MHz has firewire. Just do a custom install and leave out languages, printer drivers and anything else that you don't need.

Some reads from lowendmac.com:

Why the Slot Loading iMac Is a Good Choice for OS X (http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/04/0910.html)

Is the Tray Loading iMac a Good Choice for OS X? (http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/04/0907.html)

If yours dosen't have a DVD drive then read:

Installing OS X 10.4 "Tiger" on DVD-challenged Macs using FireWire Target Disk Mode (http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/06/0710.html)

[mmzplanet]

Thanks for the info everyone... I did put Jaguar on it and it is running surprisingly well. If i upgrade it to Panther or Tiger... will it slow up any? Only asking because I hear that newer versions of OS X can be faster than the previous.

[Jaffa Cake]

As I mentioned, I ran Panther on my iMac with no problems whatsoever – it was snappy enough for my liking. I'd agree with FDX and Steven1621 that 10.3.9 should serve you perfectly well.

[Macky-Mac]

Thanks for the info everyone... I did put Jaguar on it and it is running surprisingly well. If i upgrade it to Panther or Tiger... will it slow up any? Only asking because I hear that newer versions of OS X can be faster than the previous.

when I went from jaguar to panther on a similar imac, it seemed a tad quicker......but who knows if that was real.......it certainly wasn't slower

I haven't bothered to upgrade it to tiger because of the cost

[d-fi]

i have a powermac G3 300Mhz with 320 mb RAM and i'm running tiger without any worries

The only 2 adjustments that i have made are:

Disable spotlight since indexing can take a lot of cpu power on a G3 and the indexing usually starts just when you don't want it too.
Disable widgets since i only have a little bit of ram, plus widgets use extra reasources when running as well.

I installed EasyFind to make up for the lack of spotlight.

Basicly i can run any normal (not resource intensive) program i want to i just try to only run one thing at a time. The only multitasking that i do is running iTunes while running something else.

here are the main things that i run on my G3:


Microsoft Word
Azureus (use the G3 as my torrenting machine sometimes)
Safari
iTunes 4 (the one that comes with tiger)

fairly basic but it works great as a second computer :)

[elppa]

Panther will definitely speed it up. I certainly speed up out G3 266 (with less RAM than you have).

It is a much more refined OS and runs quicker on old machines.

I'm not sure about Tiger though. Haven't had any experience with that on older machines.

[maxrobertson]

Probably 10.3. It's relatively new and runs most shareware games and stuff, but won't slow you down with "extras" like Dashboard and stuff.

At least that's what I've heard. I wouldn't know what 10.4 is like on a G3.

[d-fi]

When i put Tiger on my G3 originally i was a bit hesitant since Panther was working fine but i figured i could always go back to Panther if it didn't work out.

Speedwise Tiger doesn't feel any faster then Panther (not like Jaguar to Panther) but it doesn't feel any slower either.

The only thing that didn't work that great was spotlight which doesn't bother me since i'm not a fan of spotlight anyway, turn off spotlight install EasyFind problem solved. Now Dashboard (aka widgets) worked fine and i like widgets and while widgets don't use much CPU power they love RAM. But since my computer is low on RAM to begin with i decided to disable Dashboard until i can get some more RAM for cheap.

Now there was some bonuses switching to Tiger i now have a RSS reading Safari which i love and there are also a few small programs that i use that only work in tiger. (older versions available for Panther)

My advice for OS X on a G3 is use either Panther or Tiger whatever is easier to get your hands on.

Panther is ready to go out of the box on a G3 but lacks things like RSS Safari and Dashboard and as Panther gets older more programs are Tiger only.

Tiger might take a little tweaking if your G3 is slow, i.e. Spotlight seems a bit slow on some G3's. But Tiger has all the extra features and your will programs run the same speed as on Panther.

either option is good IMHO

:)