FINALLY!

[comda]

Greetings MacRumors PowerPC fans!

I finally hit my very own jackpot today! its not exactly what ive always wanted but hey its finally one of the models, i got myself an iMac G4! This happens to be the 15" model which seems to be the original iMac. Sadly its previous owner reported some Kernal panics and went onto remove the hard drive, so who knows what possible mess is left inside. So far i know its a 700Mhz Model and that the optical disk drive is giving me issues making odd sounds and refusing to close. It refused to boot from my jaguar install on a internal hard drive thats connected VIA USB from IDE but its booting my Os9 disk right now. Ive just booted it up and it seems the previous owner has placed a lovely amount of 1Gb ram in it.

The gentleman also had a nice Emac which i decided to take for parts, but it seems to be working just fine. A Nice 1.25Ghz/1gb ram (upgraded to 2Gb) and a 160Gb hard drive with an airport card. Nice systems.

Hopefully i can figure out the querks in the imac and get her running soon. They both need some cleaning up. Im really excited! Ive always wanted an Imac G4, at least the 1Ghz but hey im happy!

 

[jbarley]

Enjoy your new finds!

 

[Johnny365]

Sweet, I just picked up a 1Ghz eMac with 30GB HDD and the stock 128MB of Ram (it is QUITE SLOW). I plan on upgrading to 1GB Max and putting in an Airport Extreme Wifi card. The OS is 10.3.9 which I plan on leaving. So far, it works nicely. Only problem is the CD/DVD Combo drive won't read discs (automatically ejecting them after a few seconds).

In the end, only paid $30 which was a fair price. These things are heavy.

 

[r6mile]

Well done! I've owned both but eMacs have a special place in my heart

 

[mode11]

Magic Erasers are great for cleaning up iMac G4's - they come up like new.

Sounds like the DVD drive may not be aligned properly with the flap / opening if it won't close smoothly. If it won't read disks, cleaning the lens with rubbing alcohol usually sorts it.

What does this mean: "on a internal hard drive thats connected VIA USB from IDE"? By internal, do you mean a bare 3.5" drive? Connected to a IDE-USB bridge and plugged into an external USB 1.1 port? Didn't know these Macs could boot from USB, thought it was just FireWire. Did you have to do anything in Open Firmware first?

 

[chip1]

G4 running os9.2, I think it would be super fast!

 

[comda]

Sweet, I just picked up a 1Ghz eMac with 30GB HDD and the stock 128MB of Ram (it is QUITE SLOW). I plan on upgrading to 1GB Max and putting in an Airport Extreme Wifi card. The OS is 10.3.9 which I plan on leaving. So far, it works nicely. Only problem is the CD/DVD Combo drive won't read discs (automatically ejecting them after a few seconds).

In the end, only paid $30 which was a fair price. These things are heavy.

mine has only the regular airport.... anyone know if i can put an extreme card in it?
[doublepost=1460952160][/doublepost]

Magic Erasers are great for cleaning up iMac G4's - they come up like new.

Sounds like the DVD drive may not be aligned properly with the flap / opening if it won't close smoothly. If it won't read disks, cleaning the lens with rubbing alcohol usually sorts it.

What does this mean: "on a internal hard drive thats connected VIA USB from IDE"? By internal, do you mean a bare 3.5" drive? Connected to a IDE-USB bridge and plugged into an external USB 1.1 port? Didn't know these Macs could boot from USB, thought it was just FireWire. Did you have to do anything in Open Firmware first?

thanks for the tip. As for the optical Drive, its acting very weird. It will eject, but not go back and its not clipping on the door or anything. Once i booted the machine from my lovely 1.42Ghz Emac and it booted Tiger, through-out use of Leopard, the drive kept making a sound like its reading a disk even though there was nothing inside.

i was trying to boot off a internal hard drive that was connected to the imac Via a IDE > USB. However it was pointed out to me that Jaguar does not boot from a USB.

For now, the machine is sitting on my desk in its slightly dirty, dusty glory. It will take a few weeks for me to make time to insert a drive and clean her up.
[doublepost=1460952281][/doublepost]

G4 running os9.2, I think it would be super fast!

This was actually just booting off a os9Lives disk just to see what ram it has.. I plugged it into my 1.42Ghz emac with a firewire and booting leopard on it from there.

 

[Johnny365]

mine has only the regular airport.... anyone know if i can put an extreme card in it?

As per iFixit:

Apple 630-2883 Original APPLE-MAC Airport 802.11B Wireless Card from the 700 MHz machine through the eMac (ATI Graphics). After that it uses the Apple M8881LL/A AirPort Extreme Card.

In other words, every eMac under 1Ghz uses the older 802.11b (Airport). the 1Ghz and up eMac models use the 802.11b/g (Airport Extreme) cards.

 

[redheeler]

mine has only the regular airport.... anyone know if i can put an extreme card in it?

Not possible as far as I know. AirPort and AirPort Extreme slots are incompatible, and only the 1 GHz and later eMac models came with AirPort Extreme.

 

[comda]

As per iFixit:

Apple 630-2883 Original APPLE-MAC Airport 802.11B Wireless Card from the 700 MHz machine through the eMac (ATI Graphics). After that it uses the Apple M8881LL/A AirPort Extreme Card.

In other words, every eMac under 1Ghz uses the older 802.11b (Airport). the 1Ghz and up eMac models use the 802.11b/g (Airport Extreme) cards.

Shame real shame. Its quite speedy running Leopard, even using the Emac's hard drive through Firewire. Guess ill have to get a nice USB wireless N dongle... ANy suggestions?

 

[Johnny365]

I don't think it's worth it ( to use wireless n) given the limited CPU and OS support for internet related tasks.

 

[comda]

I don't think it's worth it ( to use wireless n) given the limited CPU and OS support for internet related tasks.

Well if its one of those $5 ebay ones i dont mind. Besides really i only would like to use it for Spotify maybe if i get an account.. I know this machine is past its prime.
The 1.42Ghz eMac is able to do just fine actually.

 

[havokalien]

Better to use an airport express base station and cable to it from the iMac. That would be faster.

 

[MagicBoy]

Shame real shame. Its quite speedy running Leopard, even using the Emac's hard drive through Firewire. Guess ill have to get a nice USB wireless N dongle... ANy suggestions?

If you want to go the USB route - http://www.edimax.com/edimax/mercha...dimax/global/wireless_adapters_n150/ew-7811un
Using one on my TiBook. Works, but no ball of fire as the USB 1.0 ports are 12Mbps when falling off a cliff. With a following wind.

You'd get much better performance (and no driver issues) with an external Wireless to Ethernet bridge plugged into the Ethernet port.

 

[Johnny365]

I use this Wireless N dongle and it works fine (as least on the Mac Pro 1,1 running OSX Lion). Same adapter I used on an old desktop PC running Windows XP. Drivers were a little hard to find, but found them in under 20min of Google searching. They are classified as Atheros branded dongles (generic). It installs a Wireless Network Utility that runs as an application (no network icon on the top bar).


Paid less than $15 shipped on Ebay.

 

[havokalien]

still not as easy as airport express and a cable. that wat no extra software to set up.