iMac G3 RAM

Crucial or OWC should still have the specs on their websites.

First of all, which iMac G3 is it?
If is the tray loading CD version (233 - 266 - 333 MHz) then it needs laptop format SODIMMs.

If it is a slot loading CD model (300, 350 MHz and up) then it uses PC100 DIMMs like the G3 tower.

The DIMMs have to be low density, so modern PC133 generic RAM if it is made with high density chips, won't work. Depending on the size, single banked RAM may not work.

The maximum is 1 Gb with 2 x 512 Mb DIMMs

As usual, the safest route is to buy from a reputable seller who guarantees compatibility with your model Mac.

zali0n said:

Sorry my mistake its a slot loading iMac DV! I'm going to try some hynix branded 256MB x PC100 RAM

Click to expand...

I've got a couple of those in my classroom. So much easier to upgrade than the tray load! Anyway, I always threw whatever popped up on ramseeker into them. The equivalent now would be dealram.com I never had any trouble except with a stick of OWC ram (and I love OWC, they're great, it just happened to be a bad stick of ram).

If your planning on running OS X Tiger, I might suggest you get a bit more ram. I have a similar g3 iMac, with one 512 and one 256 for a total of 768. I used to have 640 and it runs a bit smoother. I plan on upgrading to a second stick of 512 eventually, unless I get a 24 incher first.
It will still run great with only 512, but it is something to consider if she plans on keeping it for a while.

I've got a slot-load 500MHz. Are you saying Tiger would run acceptably on this machine? I need to upgrade it past 10.2.8 for compatibility on my network.

Tiger on iMac

Tiger 10.4.8 runs surprisingly well on my iMac (400 MHz, slot-loading, special edition grey iMac), but I have 1 GB of RAM installed. This seems to indicate that Tiger should run well on your iMac too, as long as you have 1 GB of RAM, or something close (say, 768 MB, for instance).

Good luck!

Thanks. I bumped to 768 some time ago.

The G3 600MHz I bought my daughters reports that it has PC133 RAM. What kind did they use? I can't seem to find the specs even though I've been trying to track them down.

PC100 was specced for my machine, and I would assume yours is the same. But PC133 is just fine. When I upgraded to 768MB last year (or was it 2 years ago), that was all that was easily available on the market.

Just go to crucial.com and type "imac g3" into the search. You will see specs saying PC133, but the original was PC100. I presume Crucial's current specs match what they sell today rather than 7 year old spec sheets. Their price seems a bit high to me right now