Having been toying with the idea of upgrading a couple of the family's trustee old G3 iMacs to OS X, I decided to make an experiment with the less essential 400MHz DV machine with only a slot-load CD...
Never having seen OS X run on a G3 I wanted to see how well it would work... I borrowed my sister's G4 iBook and (bundled) install disks intending to use the G4 as a slave DVD drive over Firewire (discs are DVDs)
I read (and re-read) every piece of online info about upgrading a G3 to OS X... the machine was already on OS9.1 so I upgraded to OS9.2.2, got the 4.1.9f1 firmware upgrade etc. etc. so everything looked rosy!
Using the G4 in target mode (so that its DVD drive appeared on the G3) didn't work (half expected) because the installer realised it was on a G3.
I tried it the other way around: booting the G3 in target mode and choosing the G3's hard drive in the installer (running on the G4 iBook)
It worked a treat! IIRC, the G3 didn't boot straight throught the first time, but did the second time and I was greated with the OS X desktop.
All seems to running fine - have downloaded a lot of software upgrades, all seem to be working fine: latest versions of many applications etc. Performance is okay, but will be upgrading from the 128MB if all else works okay! Surprised how capable it is, especially with a new superfast 8Mbps broadband internet connection.
The only problem is that the screen appears slightly out of focus now and any activity on the computer (HD access, audio through the speakers and moving the mouse pointer) results in faint horizontal interference on the screen. It is starting to cause me eye strain!
I tried adjusting the focus on the flyback: a minor improvement (but still the interference of course)
I've played with the Display Service Utility (and Adjustment Utility) but no improvement.
If I boot into OS9 the display is crystal sharp (maybe a bit less so than before fiddling with the focus adjustment!) so the CRT is still in good shape.
The only interference that I recall using it in OS9 (until only a couple of weeks ago) was with LOUD audio through the speakers there is sometimes from distortion in the bottom corners of the screen - to be expected.
My only suspicion is that since they were iBook install discs that something is missing for driving a CRT optimally? I know that the half-AA battery is poor/dead on this, but it stays connected to the mains so hopefully not an issue?
I plan to get a retail version of Panther for install on this machine, the other G3 iMac and a G3 iBook IF I am sure that it is worth it!
Any help greatly appreciated!
Matt
Never having seen OS X run on a G3 I wanted to see how well it would work... I borrowed my sister's G4 iBook and (bundled) install disks intending to use the G4 as a slave DVD drive over Firewire (discs are DVDs)
I read (and re-read) every piece of online info about upgrading a G3 to OS X... the machine was already on OS9.1 so I upgraded to OS9.2.2, got the 4.1.9f1 firmware upgrade etc. etc. so everything looked rosy!
Using the G4 in target mode (so that its DVD drive appeared on the G3) didn't work (half expected) because the installer realised it was on a G3.
I tried it the other way around: booting the G3 in target mode and choosing the G3's hard drive in the installer (running on the G4 iBook)
It worked a treat! IIRC, the G3 didn't boot straight throught the first time, but did the second time and I was greated with the OS X desktop.
All seems to running fine - have downloaded a lot of software upgrades, all seem to be working fine: latest versions of many applications etc. Performance is okay, but will be upgrading from the 128MB if all else works okay! Surprised how capable it is, especially with a new superfast 8Mbps broadband internet connection.
The only problem is that the screen appears slightly out of focus now and any activity on the computer (HD access, audio through the speakers and moving the mouse pointer) results in faint horizontal interference on the screen. It is starting to cause me eye strain!
I tried adjusting the focus on the flyback: a minor improvement (but still the interference of course)
I've played with the Display Service Utility (and Adjustment Utility) but no improvement.
If I boot into OS9 the display is crystal sharp (maybe a bit less so than before fiddling with the focus adjustment!) so the CRT is still in good shape.
The only interference that I recall using it in OS9 (until only a couple of weeks ago) was with LOUD audio through the speakers there is sometimes from distortion in the bottom corners of the screen - to be expected.
My only suspicion is that since they were iBook install discs that something is missing for driving a CRT optimally? I know that the half-AA battery is poor/dead on this, but it stays connected to the mains so hopefully not an issue?
I plan to get a retail version of Panther for install on this machine, the other G3 iMac and a G3 iBook IF I am sure that it is worth it!
Any help greatly appreciated!
Matt