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iMac 8E
- Thread starter JamesMike
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How nice. I received a 400 MHz Blueberry iMac G3 as a birthday present, also running 10.3.9.
These do make good machines for Mac OS 9, and it can even be installed on the same partition as Mac OS X so you can boot from either. There's plenty of old software you can download which will work on OS 9.
However, if you want to run newer software, it would be a good idea to update to Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger and maybe upgrade the RAM as well.
Thank you for the advice, will look into getting more memory and will look into the Tiger OS.
I agree with the others. You have a very nice computer. I have one in the same color-in fact it's the only working iMac G3 I have!
Put 1gb of RAM in it and install both Tiger and OS 9(OS 9 may already be on there-check "startup disk"). I mostly run mine in OS 9, but it does do well under Tiger.
I believe that this would have come with an M7803 Pro Keyboard and a black M5769 optical "buttonless" Pro Mouse. At least that's what mine(given to me by the original owner, who only had one Mac, came with) These are both easy and cheap to find, and might be worth hunting down if you want the original combination.
The mouse you have is-of course-a lot more comfortable and a lot more useable(especially in OS X). You will likely find that the keyboard you have is not fully functional in OS 9.
Put 1gb of RAM in it and install both Tiger and OS 9(OS 9 may already be on there-check "startup disk"). I mostly run mine in OS 9, but it does do well under Tiger.
I believe that this would have come with an M7803 Pro Keyboard and a black M5769 optical "buttonless" Pro Mouse. At least that's what mine(given to me by the original owner, who only had one Mac, came with) These are both easy and cheap to find, and might be worth hunting down if you want the original combination.
The mouse you have is-of course-a lot more comfortable and a lot more useable(especially in OS X). You will likely find that the keyboard you have is not fully functional in OS 9.
A very nice gift indeed.
I agree with others that 10.4.11 and 1GB of RAM would do nicely.
I never understood why Apple made the slimmed-down white keyboard incompatible with OS9, so I agree that the slightly larger black keyed keyboard would be a better option.
I wouldn't worry about the mouse. The original black Pro Mouse that it shipped with had a very common problem of breaking the cable where it enters the mouse.
Before going to 10.4.11 make sure the optical drive is a DVD drive and is reading DVDs reliably, or you'll need an external drive of some sort to perform the install.
Did it come with original System Disc set?
I agree with others that 10.4.11 and 1GB of RAM would do nicely.
I never understood why Apple made the slimmed-down white keyboard incompatible with OS9, so I agree that the slightly larger black keyed keyboard would be a better option.
I wouldn't worry about the mouse. The original black Pro Mouse that it shipped with had a very common problem of breaking the cable where it enters the mouse.
Before going to 10.4.11 make sure the optical drive is a DVD drive and is reading DVDs reliably, or you'll need an external drive of some sort to perform the install.
Did it come with original System Disc set?
I did not get the original System Disc set unfortunately. I will stick with logitech wireless mouse. Memory ordered. On the screen there appears to be a Tiger upgrade, thanks everyone for your advice.
I have one of these too. That was a great little Mac. Although the iMac G4 is just a million times sexier (I have one of those as well). If I bought a G3 in 2001 I would have been super pissed in 2002.
More times than I care to count.
I have a USB disk full of my "standard suite" of OS 9(and OS X) software. It takes a couple of hours to get everything I want installed.
The real fun one is booting off USB 1.1. I've done it a couple of times(from a hard drive) on a TiBook, and it takes about 15 minutes to reach a useable Leopard desktop.
Everybody must do this at least once on USB 1.1 with an ATA33 drive - just to see how bad it is.
Other fun is installing MSOffice 4.2 from floppies. 35 disks. Usually falls over about disk 29.
Everybody must do this at least once on USB 1.1 with an ATA33 drive - just to see how bad it is.
Other fun is installing MSOffice 4.2 from floppies. 35 disks. Usually falls over about disk 29.
I did it from a SATA drive, although honestly I don't think the drive speed itself makes much difference as you're still bottlenecked by the USB.
Back in my dark old days of Windows 3.1, I have(not so fond) memories of installing many programs via the proverbial huge stack of floppies.
My dad ran a tax business from home, and the program he used took a long time to move into the modern age. Of course, it was updated tremendously every year due to changing tax laws, but the program was entirely DOS based(and with no mouse support) the last time he bought it in 2006. All the windows were blue background with gray, yellow, and red text accessed by the arrow keys, tab key, or my favorite method of hitting the first letter on the line(it's amazing how fast you can learn to navigate even without a mouse).
In any case, I think that the last year it shipped on floppies(which was around 2002 or 2003) it came on 50 some odd floppy disks. My dad used to make a backup of them on a single LS-120 disk.
Your mention of Windows 3.1 brought back memories of my first laptop which had 3.1 on it I got it in Africa. I brought it out of the closet today and it still turns on and functions, amazing!
Back on topic, the addition of memory to my G3 has enhance the machine and it is working like a champ.
SO the next question is, does it have a DVD drive or CD, CD/RW only - and, does it read and eject?
If it doesn't eject (a common problem with these friction-type clutch eject rollers) I found turning the machine face down and using, ...ahem... "gravity assist" worked around the problem of a stuck disc.