I thought you'd never ask. 
This thread may be of use to other people thinking of upgrading but who are novices like me and scared of just "having a go".
My first venture into the world of Mac started with a G3 Blue and White that I bought on eBay for £11.51 (Item #170167913134) with a stated spec of G3, 400MHz, 128 RAM,12GB HDD and a CD. I was very fortunate in that the one I received had a DVD player, not a CD. It seems that the seller had over 40 of these for sale, some with CD and some with DVD. It was just the luck of the draw that I got a DVD one. The easy bit was to then buy 3 x 128 mg memory sticks for a total of £9.50 inc postage to give me a total of 512 meg of RAM.
I was a bit stuck then until I could find a way to get it running on OS X. I could simply have gone out and bought a brand new copy of Tiger for £50 but you have to remember I'm doing this on a tight budget. I scoured eBay and eventually settled on buying a Panther DVD advertised as being the RETAIL version with black disks and a silver "X". After 2 weeks wait (seller in France) 2 grey disks arrived, EMac restore disk1 and EMac restore disk 2 ..... Gutted.
Not being one to give up easily, I put the first disk in the drive and restarted the Mac while holding down the "C" key and it fired up and to my complete surprise loaded OS X Panther with no problem whatsoever. BTW, I have no idea what the second disk was for because all it contained were instructions on how to use disk 1.
I then did a check on the latest software updates and downloaded, installed everything that was available.
The next thing to try and sort out was a way to connect to the internet without having an ethernet cable trailing across the floor in the living room. I had a Belkin pci wireless card from my dead windows box so I shoved that in and low and behold, it worked. It took me a few minutes to suss out how to set it up as an Airport card (even though it isn't an airport card) and I was away.
So, from humble beginnings and a total outlay of about £40 I now have a G3 running @ 400 MHz, 512 RAM, Wi-Fi and OSX 10.3.9. OH, I nearly forgot. The total cost may be even less because I have started a Paypal dispute because the disks were not as advertised. I sent 3 mails to the seller over 3 days but got no response from him.
**Does the Happy Bunny dance**
This thread may be of use to other people thinking of upgrading but who are novices like me and scared of just "having a go".
My first venture into the world of Mac started with a G3 Blue and White that I bought on eBay for £11.51 (Item #170167913134) with a stated spec of G3, 400MHz, 128 RAM,12GB HDD and a CD. I was very fortunate in that the one I received had a DVD player, not a CD. It seems that the seller had over 40 of these for sale, some with CD and some with DVD. It was just the luck of the draw that I got a DVD one. The easy bit was to then buy 3 x 128 mg memory sticks for a total of £9.50 inc postage to give me a total of 512 meg of RAM.
I was a bit stuck then until I could find a way to get it running on OS X. I could simply have gone out and bought a brand new copy of Tiger for £50 but you have to remember I'm doing this on a tight budget. I scoured eBay and eventually settled on buying a Panther DVD advertised as being the RETAIL version with black disks and a silver "X". After 2 weeks wait (seller in France) 2 grey disks arrived, EMac restore disk1 and EMac restore disk 2 ..... Gutted.
Not being one to give up easily, I put the first disk in the drive and restarted the Mac while holding down the "C" key and it fired up and to my complete surprise loaded OS X Panther with no problem whatsoever. BTW, I have no idea what the second disk was for because all it contained were instructions on how to use disk 1.
I then did a check on the latest software updates and downloaded, installed everything that was available.
The next thing to try and sort out was a way to connect to the internet without having an ethernet cable trailing across the floor in the living room. I had a Belkin pci wireless card from my dead windows box so I shoved that in and low and behold, it worked. It took me a few minutes to suss out how to set it up as an Airport card (even though it isn't an airport card) and I was away.
So, from humble beginnings and a total outlay of about £40 I now have a G3 running @ 400 MHz, 512 RAM, Wi-Fi and OSX 10.3.9. OH, I nearly forgot. The total cost may be even less because I have started a Paypal dispute because the disks were not as advertised. I sent 3 mails to the seller over 3 days but got no response from him.
**Does the Happy Bunny dance**
