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iMac G3/266 for 4-year Old... Panther?

E

EgbertAttrick

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 25, 2008
234
89
I just picked up a G3 iMac 266 Mhz (Tangerine) for $25 at the flea market... though not working at first, but have finally fixed it. I initially installed 8.5 nd then installed OS 9.

My question is this: What will it take to install a more user-friendly OS in here? Will Panther work? Is that the latest?

Oh, it's 32 MB RAM. Slot-loading.
 
Hi there,
You will need to upgrade the RAM to at least 256MB to use Panther slightly decently. Note you need at least 128 MB of Ram for the installer to work. Performance isn't going to be that great, even for the simplest of kid games but depends what you want to run.

I once had Panther running on a Blueberry 350 Mhz iMac with only 128 MB of Ram…was pretty slow though usable for Clarisworks via Classic, internet etc. I even played a few old games in classic well. Even used an old version of iPhoto on it (version 3 I think), slow but did the job.

Panther is the latest OS you can install on that Mac. (Tiger requires firewire ports and Leopard needs a G4 at least)

EDIT: I thought the 266 Mhz models were tray load?
 
TheReef said:
EDIT: I thought the 266 Mhz models were tray load?
Click to expand...

Likewise.

Do you have one of the iMac specific OS 8.6 or 9 CD's? There were a couple of programs that came with them called Nanosaur and Bugdom. My 6 year old niece liked the bug thing, and also a program called Kid Pix, that also came bundled. Her 8 year old brother liked the Nanosaur game.
 
If it is slot loading it definitely won't be 266MHz. The minimum processor ever put in a slot load was a 350MHz G3 (I believe, it could have been 400MHz).

Panther runs on a 266MHz G3 iMac slot load and not too badly either. It's definitely the best OS X to pick in terms of performance on that hardware (they won't run anything higher, at least not officially anyway). The only downside is the graphics card is not supported, although its not a big issue because the graphics card is next to useless anyway.

The Rev C. (266MHz) tray loader can take up to 512MB RAM. I guess Rev D. (333MHz) is the same.
 
Yeah, it's tray-load. Whoops!

More than anything, he wants to use iTunes, actually!
 
You can run itunes 2 in OS9. That way you don't have to buy more ram unless you feel like it. But, it can run panther. If you want to do web surfing you really need OSX nowadays. I agree that to run panther you should have 2 128 sticks of pc100 in there. Those should be pretty cheap.
 
You can run iTunes 7 in Panther.

But unfortunately you can't use an iPod with Panther, at least not a new one.
 
Panther will be sorta painful on these machines.

At least it was on my 233MHz RevA iMac, with 256MB of RAM and a 7200RPM upgraded HD, and upgraded VRAM.
 
ReanimationLP said:
Panther will be sorta painful on these machines.

At least it was on my 233MHz RevA iMac, with 256MB of RAM and a 7200RPM upgraded HD, and upgraded VRAM.
Click to expand...

It's all relative, for basic tasks (email, web, word processing) it is fine.
 
Where did you go to get that iMac?

I want to purchase one of the colored iMacs G3 just for the exterior. I actually hope to find one that is completely not functioning but looks decent on the outside. I would completely gut it. Do you have any tips on where to look? Thanks.
 
If you haven't done so already, get TuxPaint for your 4-year-old. It's a lovely painting program for small children.

I agree with others, 10.3.9 is the most you can run on a G3 (and it's what I use on my iMac G3 "Graphite"). Don't follow the 'Software Update' advice to go for Quicktime 7.x though - version 6 works better with G3s and 10.3.x

- HB
 
hank-b said:
If you haven't done so already, get TuxPaint for your 4-year-old. It's a lovely painting program for small children.

I agree with others, 10.3.9 is the most you can run on a G3 (and it's what I use on my iMac G3 "Graphite"). Don't follow the 'Software Update' advice to go for Quicktime 7.x though - version 6 works better with G3s and 10.3.x

- HB
Click to expand...

i have tiger on my imac g3 graphite 400mhz fyi.

slow yes but you can run it
 
I'd say you'd be better off with Jaguar or OS 9. Panther might just be a bit too much for this thing to handle.
 
dukebound85 said:
i have tiger on my imac g3 graphite 400mhz fyi.

slow yes but you can run it
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry - I didn't mean to imply that 10.4 wouldn't work on a G3, just that it starts to be a bit of an effort for the poor old G3 to cope with.

- HB
 
FWIW, I put Panther on a 333mhz with 192mb RAM and it ran very decently. The problem is, lots of kids' websites use Flash which will beat the crap out of even a high-end G4.
 
SwoozeC said:
I want to purchase one of the colored iMacs G3 just for the exterior. I actually hope to find one that is completely not functioning but looks decent on the outside. I would completely gut it. Do you have any tips on where to look? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have several. I fix them up for daycares and find problems with some that makes the cases unusable. We can talk.
 
My iMac G4 runs Panther fine on 128mb, but with the smaller CPU, you might want to use Jaguar for the sake of efficiency. Good luck.
 
I have Tiger o my iMac DV 600 MHz 256 MB SDRAM dvd drive and it runs very well, just disable dashboard for more performance. i have many more iMac's that have lower processors they have os 9.2 installed you can listen to music watch dvd etc but it comes with the worst browser Microsoft internet explorer for mac, remember back in 1997 when jobsey told the audience at Boston BOO BOO well how right they were to BOO it is useless, i think if you want to use the iMac daily you need at least a 400MHz running Panther or Tiger if you want you can findd them on ebay all the time
yours
http://www.macintime.co.uk
 
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