I just bought a iMac G4 - a few questions?

[mulleyjake]

Hey there,

I was fooling around on eBay while drunk and bid on an Apple iMac G4, little did I know that today, I won it. It's from the UK

The iMac has the following specs -
17" Widescreen 1440x900 display
1.0 GHz PowerPC G4
80GB hard drive
256MB RAM

But no OS is installed.

Comes with keyboard and Apple Speakers, but no mouse.

How much would you have paid for this? Will it be easy to install Leopard (it's maximum operating system) on? Will it be easy to upgrade the RAM from 256MB to 2GB and is it worth it?

Thanks guys

 

[skinniezinho]

Hey there,

I was fooling around on eBay while drunk and bid on an Apple iMac G4, little did I know that today, I won it.

The iMac has the following specs -
17" Widescreen 1440x900 display
1.0 GHz PowerPC G4
80GB hard drive
256MB RAM

But no OS is installed.

Comes with keyboard and Apple Speakers, but no mouse.

How much would you have paid for this? Will it be easy to install Leopard (it's maximum operating system) on? Will it be easy to upgrade the RAM from 256MB to 2GB and is it worth it?

Thanks guys

It depends on the country wich you bought it...
In my country I guess it would worth about 100-180eur...
Just buy a leopard dvd and upgrade the ram and you are ready to go.
Go to ifixit to see instructions on how to upgrade ram on your model, it is one of the best upgrades.

 

[mulleyjake]

It depends on the country wich you bought it...
In my country I guess it would worth about 100-180eur...
Just buy a leopard dvd and upgrade the ram and you are ready to go.
Go to ifixit to see instructions on how to upgrade ram on your model, it is one of the best upgrades.

It's from the UK and 100-180eur is the equivalent of £80-£150.. in which case, I got myself a bargain! I'll keep you all guessing though

 

[skinniezinho]

It's from the UK and 100-180eur is the equivalent of £80-£150.. in which case, I got myself a bargain! I'll keep you all guessing though

In uk I guess they are cheaper...I think here if it was about 100-120eur it would go without problems.

 

[mulleyjake]

Okay - thanks

 

[AdrianK]

I'll keep you all guessing though

BAZINGA!

You got a pretty amazing deal there

 

[mulleyjake]

BAZINGA!

You got a pretty amazing deal there

Haha bit cheeky :}

So is £37.00 overall not bad? I'm going to upgrade it to SSD / 2GB RAM / Leopard OS if it works, then use it alongside my i5-2500.

 

[AdrianK]

Haha bit cheeky :}

So is £37.00 overall not bad? I'm going to upgrade it to SSD / 2GB RAM / Leopard OS if it works, then use it alongside my i5-2500.

Well I've never seen a 17" 1GHz iMac in full working order go for <£50 so I'd say so

 

[mulleyjake]

Saying that - it said it had Linux installed and worked, but hasn't been tested because the hard drive was wiped. I might just pay the £37.00 and see what happens.

 

[student_trap]

I think that you did pretty well there. A couple of years ago I bagged a mint g4 iMac with maxed ram and hd, but paid £50 for it and was pretty chuffed. I had to buy the pro speakers separately though, which cost an extra 15 or so iirc.

I'd say go for it. I saw one in a shop in London today that looked pretty beat up going for £300! You got a bargain

 

[mulleyjake]

Well the case is scratched, but I will.. since I'm only young, I only earn £40 per week, so this leaves me with £3 to live on ><

 

[sikkinixx]

Groovy duder. The SO-DIMM ram slot is super easy to install so put 1gb in there for sure. The internal "technician install" DIMM slot is a bit trickier. If you have ever built your own PC it's nothing too tough, just a bit finicky. Might be good to open it and clear all the dust out anyway. ***If you open it, make sure you have thermal paste/compound on hand to reapply afterwards***

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

I've got one of them with Leopard installed and 512MB RAM. Or at least I did until it died. I'd say upgrade the RAM to 1GB and stick Leopard on. Even Tiger benefits from jumping from 256MB to 512MB.

 

[mmomega]

Haha bit cheeky :}

So is £37.00 overall not bad? I'm going to upgrade it to SSD / 2GB RAM / Leopard OS if it works, then use it alongside my i5-2500.

Not sure about the upgrading toSSD since the machine is PATA... i know there are PATA to SATA adaptors but room is a concern + that 133 FSB will limit any SSD down to only about 133MB/s which is basically the speed of a standard HDD.

 

[mulleyjake]

Groovy duder. The SO-DIMM ram slot is super easy to install so put 1gb in there for sure. The internal "technician install" DIMM slot is a bit trickier. If you have ever built your own PC it's nothing too tough, just a bit finicky. Might be good to open it and clear all the dust out anyway. ***If you open it, make sure you have thermal paste/compound on hand to reapply afterwards***

My dad's a computer engineer so I'm sure he'll help me Yeah I'm definitely going to at least upgrade the consumer slot up to 1GB. We have thermal paste lying around the house so I'll reapply it too haha!

I've got one of them with Leopard installed and 512MB RAM. Or at least I did until it died. I'd say upgrade the RAM to 1GB and stick Leopard on. Even Tiger benefits from jumping from 256MB to 512MB.

Will do. I'm going to definitely use Leopard though.

Not sure about the upgrading toSSD since the machine is PATA... i know there are PATA to SATA adaptors but room is a concern + that 133 FSB will limit any SSD down to only about 133MB/s which is basically the speed of a standard HDD.

Ah, thanks for the advice. Looks like I'll have to find an IDE drive in my garage.

 

[666sheep]

Not sure about the upgrading toSSD since the machine is PATA... i know there are PATA to SATA adaptors but room is a concern + that 133 FSB will limit any SSD down to only about 133MB/s which is basically the speed of a standard HDD.

Wrong. You've missed main benefit of SSD. IOPS, sequential 4k read/writes and almost 0 seek time do matter, not the top speed. Did you ever use SSD on ATA bus? I guess you didn't

 

[mmomega]

Wrong. You've missed main benefit of SSD. IOPS, sequential 4k read/writes and almost 0 seek time do matter, not the top speed. Did you ever use SSD on ATA bus? I guess you didn't

I definitely did not.
I can see the purpose or use for a main machine but not as a hobby or extra computer but again nothing wrong with it, just not me.
The G4 is in a spare bedroom that sees guests 3-4 times a year. If whoever uses it wants web pages to load a few tenths of a second faster they can give me the cash and I'll gladly install it for them.

Oh it would be cool and I'd install if I had an extra SSD lying around but I'm not going to buy one specifically for it.


***Watch me have a GD SSD in that thing by the end of the month, dammit***