Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Best web browser for 10.3.9 Panther(G3)
- Thread starter MacCubed
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well, any of those three could handle that.Ok , what I need it for is real light browsing and MacRumors
You could probably even find a copy of Firefox 1 or 2 I'd think if you want to stay Mozilla.
Alternatively, there is SeaMonkey. Netscape and Navigator should also work. And there is also just plain Mozilla (yes, Mozilla once had their own browser named Mozilla).
The stock Safari should also do fine as well.
Edit. Camino too.
There were a bazillion options on 10.3. Only a handful made it past that OS.
I'm using an old build of Firefox and I used to use Safari, but pages wouldn't load right and I want a browser that will load most of the stuff there. Might try Camino
iCab is a reasonable choice.
Just scroll down to a version that supports 10.3.9 - there's at least two generations of iCab that support Panther.
You can try Firefox, but you would need version 2 for Panther.
Last version Firefox for Panther would be v. 2.0.0.20
Or, you could simplify the choices by updating your G3 to Tiger.
Just scroll down to a version that supports 10.3.9 - there's at least two generations of iCab that support Panther.
You can try Firefox, but you would need version 2 for Panther.
Last version Firefox for Panther would be v. 2.0.0.20
Or, you could simplify the choices by updating your G3 to Tiger.
Why not upgrade to 10.4? If it's already running 10.3, Xpostfacto should get you there. Of course, if it has built in Firewire, you don't even need Xpostfacto.
I would upgrade, but my 30 gb and 100 gb IDE drives crashed which only leaves me with 4 gb IDE drives. They are the original ones and Tiger requires 3 gb of space rendering the drives practically useless. I could use a USB as storage, but thanks to USB 1 it would be terribly slow
I put five of my old browsers up in Dropbox for you.
Might want to take a look. I'm not sure if all of them run in 10.3.9 though.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Real Old Browsers.zip
Might want to take a look. I'm not sure if all of them run in 10.3.9 though.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Real Old Browsers.zip
Deselect printers and languages when installing. Uninstall iMovie and other stock apps you won't need by dragging their app files and app support files to the trash. You won't need anything like 3GB to install Tiger.
I recently installed 10.3.9 on my tray-loader iMac G3 333MHz. It only has 192MB of RAM, so I wasn't expecting it to work well at all. But in spite of this it handles quite reasonably. It only gets slow when it has to do more than one thing at a time.
I found stock Safari to be less than ideal formatting and compatibility wise, so I tried iCab too.
Long story short, for the most part, neither has a significant advantage over the other based on my own experience. If you are just doing light browsing such as surfing these forums, then they will both suffice aptly. Anything heavier, and you are going to need TFF and Tiger.
I also need more RAM for my iMac G3...but not before I pointlessly max out my 8600 to 1GB!
----------
Aye, while installing Panther, I was shocked to find out how much room I could save on my iMac G3's tiny 6GB drive by simply deselecting all the languages, that Apple optimistically assumes I can make use of. I was very hesitant to put any version of OS X on such a small drive, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not that a bit more room would be nice...
I actually have a bunch of 40GB IDE drives my Computer Science department threw out from old Dell's. Might try putting one of those in instead this summer. I've put it off because opening and accessing the insides of those G3's is a tedious job.
I found stock Safari to be less than ideal formatting and compatibility wise, so I tried iCab too.
Long story short, for the most part, neither has a significant advantage over the other based on my own experience. If you are just doing light browsing such as surfing these forums, then they will both suffice aptly. Anything heavier, and you are going to need TFF and Tiger.
I also need more RAM for my iMac G3...but not before I pointlessly max out my 8600 to 1GB!
----------
Aye, while installing Panther, I was shocked to find out how much room I could save on my iMac G3's tiny 6GB drive by simply deselecting all the languages, that Apple optimistically assumes I can make use of. I was very hesitant to put any version of OS X on such a small drive, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not that a bit more room would be nice...
I actually have a bunch of 40GB IDE drives my Computer Science department threw out from old Dell's. Might try putting one of those in instead this summer. I've put it off because opening and accessing the insides of those G3's is a tedious job.
Last edited:
6gb is tons of space at least for early versions of OS X.
The beige G3s normally shipped with 4gb drives stock, and those handled up through 10.2.8 just fine. Of course, I've replaced all of mine with larger drives for my own sanity(those old WD Caviars are loud and slow) but are fine. Even then, you are limited to installing OS X in the first 8gb(or really a little over 7gb) of the drive.
One of my B&Ws has the OEM 12gb Quantum Fireball which had no issues with 10.4. The sound of a Fireball spinning up and accessing brings back enough fond memories for me that I've left it
. No other drive sounds like a Fireball.
6gb is tons of space at least for early versions of OS X.
The beige G3s normally shipped with 4gb drives stock, and those handled up through 10.2.8 just fine. Of course, I've replaced all of mine with larger drives for my own sanity(those old WD Caviars are loud and slow) but are fine. Even then, you are limited to installing OS X in the first 8gb(or really a little over 7gb) of the drive.
One of my B&Ws has the OEM 12gb Quantum Fireball which had no issues with 10.4. The sound of a Fireball spinning up and accessing brings back enough fond memories for me that I've left it
I have one of those from my old TiVo lol
I'm debating on whether to install Tiger, there are a few issues:
1: The CD drive broke so I have a Floppy in it
2: The hard drive crunches and grinds so much, I dont think it would make it through install
3: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think USB booting works on PBG3's
Worked for me on my Pismo. Have not tried on my Lombard but that is more like an OWR G3, although it is strictly speaking a NWR Mac.
I think that USB booting was introduced with the Sawtooth G4-at least contemporary articles made a big deal out of.
I suspect that all the NWR computers which were updated after the Sawtooth came out in late August of '99 could do it, although I wouldn't swear to it. I'm pretty sure I've booted my iMac G3(either early or mid 2001-I couldn't swear which) off USB. I'm not surprised that a Pismo(early 2000) can, but would be surprised if a Lombard(May '99) could.
I find it interesting that there's a lot of prevailing internet "wisdom" that PPC Macs can't boot off USB. On the majority of Powermac G4s and Powerbook G4s that have USB 1.1(Yikes! excepted), it's even easy as you can select the USB disk from boot manager on startup. This was an advertised feature, although admittedly it's very slow(~15 minutes to a useable desktop from an external USB drive with Leopard installed on my TiBook). Even though the feature was there, I think it was as much to make you crave Firewire(an Apple technology) for booting.
. USB 2.0 PPC Macs can-as we all know-be booted from OF without too much trouble. We can theorize all we want, but I suspect the removal of this feature in USB 2.0 Macs was to-again-steer people toward Firewire externals.The B&W G3 is the least flexible Mac in that respect. No USB or FW booting although both are on board. If your optical drive fails, then you are left with whatever drive you have attached to the IDE ports or supported SCSI cards to boot from.
I suspect the Lombard is the equivalent in notebook form. I was very surprised how much more closely it resembled my Wallstreets rather than my Pismos. Clearly a transition model.
I suspect the Lombard is the equivalent in notebook form. I was very surprised how much more closely it resembled my Wallstreets rather than my Pismos. Clearly a transition model.
Yeah I have a Lombard, I'm not too sure about USB booting, but I can put the HDD in my G4 and install from there.
[doublepost=1494812844][/doublepost]
Hi I've got an IMac G3 with the same problem, but I can't open the file. Thanks
Lots has changed with Dropbox since then. Give me a while and I'll zip these back up and post them again.
Here you go.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlp4sq142ltcbid/Real Old Browsers.zip?dl=0
No guarantee any of these will work on your OS.
I would also suggest a processor-optimized build of Camino for Panther. Last I checked (probably somewhere around May '16 or something), Panther Camino ACTUALLY ran YouTube pretty well. Learn something new every day!
But both are still great browsers and are my internet taxis of choice for 10.3.