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cheeseblock

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2010
86
0
SLC, UT
Today i bought a 1999 iBook G3 Blueberry "clamshell" off the classifieds (awesome looking, only $20!). So the guy tells me he's selling it because it was a gift, and is running debian linux, and never learned to use it. He gave me a login (root) and password (qwerty), but that's all he knows. I know nothing of command prompts and googled this already and couldn't figure out much. I don't have any blank discs, but have an empty 16gb flash drive. If that won't work, i will go get whatever discs i need. I understand it originally ran OS 8.6. I just want to be able to turn the thing on running mac, don't care how well or slow. Please steer me in the right direction, this command line stuff makes me feel dumb :confused:
 

chrismacguy

macrumors 68000
Feb 13, 2009
1,979
2
United Kingdom
Today i bought a 1999 iBook G3 Blueberry "clamshell" off the classifieds (awesome looking, only $20!). So the guy tells me he's selling it because it was a gift, and is running debian linux, and never learned to use it. He gave me a login (root) and password (qwerty), but that's all he knows. I know nothing of command prompts and googled this already and couldn't figure out much. I don't have any blank discs, but have an empty 16gb flash drive. If that won't work, i will go get whatever discs i need. I understand it originally ran OS 8.6. I just want to be able to turn the thing on running mac, don't care how well or slow. Please steer me in the right direction, this command line stuff makes me feel dumb :confused:

You need to go out and purchase some retail CDs (or that particular model of iBooks Official Restore CDs) of Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. If you can find out how much RAM it has, if its over 256MB, I would purchase and install Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, if its between 128MB and 256MB I would stick to finding and installing Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, and if its under 128MB RAM, I would stay under Mac OS 9. You can get these CDs off of eBay or any other auction site.
 

max¥¥

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2008
640
29
Over there....
All you need to do is get a disk of whatever mac os you want to run on it (it will run 8.6 all the way up to 10.3.9, and even 10.4.11 with xpostfacto, but that is a little more difficult to install) insert your chosen disk, restart holding down c and it will boot the disk and you can install from there.

With 10.4.11 you need to install mac os 9 first, then download and run xpostfacto and follow the steps in xpostfacto to install 10.4.11
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
i bought a 366/192ram/6 gig hd clamshell a couple weeks back...

-you may have to update the firmware for osx (requires min mac os 9.1) http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1284?viewlocale=en_US
-i install mac os 9.2.2 (last mac os before osx) and installed classilla for update web browser http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/
-also installed osx panther and using both camino and firefox for web browsinghttp://caminobrowser.org/releases/1.6.11/...you will find a lot of sites with render issues and script errors....i find last version of firefox for panther 2.0.0.20 is better at rendering pages and no script errors ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0.0.20/mac/en-US/

-os 9.2.2 runs great but perhaps because my ram is only 192 web browsing can be somewhat laggy...osx panther is fine but once again web browsing is very very laggy...so i prefer os 9.2.2
 

chrismacguy

macrumors 68000
Feb 13, 2009
1,979
2
United Kingdom
xpostfacto is only needed for oldworld macs...clamshell ibooks are newworld

incorrect. XPostFacto is required to get Tiger to install on G3 Macs without a FireWire Port. Since this is an original Clamshell, it doesnt have a FireWire Port, and hence XPostFacto is required.

XPostFacto, while originally designed to install OS X on Old World Macs, its later revisions also added the ability to boot Tiger on G3s without FireWire.
 
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