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iMac G3 and Powermac G4 monikers...

AlBDamned

AlBDamned

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 14, 2005
2,641
15
Hi All,

This has been confusing me for a while. What is:

An iMac 'Bondi'

A Powermac 'Sawtooth'

A Powerbook 'Pismo'

A Powerbook 'Wall Street'

I get the PM G4 Quicksilver, but I know there's also a similar looking silver one. What's this called? Who actually nicknames these and, how come few of the current line-up are nicknamed similarly?

In the cupboard at home, I've got a fairly late revision G3 iMac, with a light blue and white casing. It's 333mhz (I think), what would this be called?!

Any other names I've missed please feel free to add...!

Thanx!
 
Bondi refers to bondi blue, the color of the original iMac. only the 233 mhz iMacs came in bondi. That covered rev A and Rev B machines.

The others are internal apple code names for the machines. Which ones catch on are a crap shoot, and sometimes they just aren't well known because apple kept a tight lid on things (they've been better about that in recent years as well). Nicknames catch on when they help differentiate. For instance, the old lombard powerbooks were replaced by pismo, which had firewire, etc. Sawtooth replaced Yikes, which was the bastard child of a G3 motherboard and a G4 chip.

a 333 mhz iMac is simply called a rev D tray loading iMac. it doesn't have a special nickname. it wasn't until the slot loaders came out that their internal code name Kihei was ever used, but it never caught on as "slot loader" was a mroe descriptive term to tell it apart from the previous generation.

Everymac.com often lists the nickname in their descriptions of various systems.

Pismo: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/stats/powerbook_g3_400_fw.html

Wallstreet: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/stats/powerbook_g3_292.html

Yikes (and thus a reference to sawtooth): http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_400.html

Personal favorite was the mac that was internally codenamed Sagan, after Carl Sagan. He didn't like it, sued, lost but apple changed the name anyway to codename BHA for butt head astronomer. Sagan sued again for libel, and lost again. Apple later renamed LAW (lawyers are wimps)

There are hundreds of nicknames like these. Every apple product has one, ever OS release as one. Apple tends to follow themes. They had music themes for OS releases for a while (sonata, etc), cat themes for OS X, street names for powerbooks (wallstreet, lombard).

Then there are some that are merely descriptive and not actually code names, like the MDD powermacs (mirror drive door), slot loading iMacs, etc.
 
AlBDamned said:
Hi All,

This has been confusing me for a while. What is:
Click to expand...

An iMac 'Bondi' - Tray load CD-ROM, 233, 266 or 333 MHz -- they dropped the Bondi colour and went to "fruit flavored" colours after the first revs.

A Powermac 'Sawtooth' - first 'real' G4 motherboard, 350 MHz and up, graphite coloured tower. The first AGP graphics slot in a Mac.

As opposed to 'Yikes' which was the first G4 but on the previous Blue and White (B&W) G3 motherboard and was somewhat crippled. There were graphite G4's in 350 and 400 MHz with both 'Yikes' and 'Sawtooth' motherboards, so it is simetime hard to tell. The 'Yikes' ALWAYS has PCI graphics and no AGP.

A Powerbook 'Pismo' - The latest and best of the black G3 Powerbooks, 400 MHz or 500 MHz, Firewire.

A Powerbook 'Wall Street' - Earlier G3 powerbook, (2nd generation I think) no Firewire ports

PM G4 Quicksilver - G4 with silver case, oval optical drive doors.

The "Mirror Drive Door" (MDD) models were the first G4's to have DDR memory (significant improvement over PC133). The early rev. MDD machines were also the last to be able to boot from OS9. Chromed doors over the optical drive bays, and 4 "portholes" on the front.

In the cupboard at home, I've got a fairly late revision G3 iMac, with a light blue and white casing. It's 333mhz (I think), what would this be called?!

Depends on a couple of things. IF it has a tray loading CD ROM, it is the latest of the first generation of iMac G3's - no firewire, 333 MHz, SODIMM RAM

If it has a slot loading CD-ROM, it is the first of the later generation iMac G3's, slot loading CD and DIMM RAM, 350 MHz or 400 MHz.
 
"It says 1632. Is that a year or something.
No its your top score on Pole Position."

Awesome Strider..........

"I hope it's not a deposit bottle"
 
BiggeeC said:
"It says 1632. Is that a year or something.
No its your top score on Pole Position."

Awesome Strider..........

"I hope it's not a deposit bottle"
Click to expand...

hehe, i'm glad you got the reference. Love that movie.
 
Ah - that means, the iMac I have in the cupboard is a:

iMac "500" (FP/BD) - Flower Power/Blue Dalmation. I swear it's only 333mhz though. Needs checking. It's definitely got a slot-load cd drive and I think it may even have an uprated hard drive to 30GB. It was a business machine that I borrowed for about a month and I didn't take too much interest in the tech side of things back then. Runs OSX 10.0.2 quite badly though as only 256mb RAM. God - I'm intrigued now, it just means a clear-out of that cupboard! :eek:

So what are the current G5 iMacs, Powermacs and Alu PB's called?
 
AlBDamned said:
Ah - that means, the iMac I have in the cupboard is a:

iMac "500" (FP/BD) - Flower Power/Blue Dalmation. I swear it's only 333mhz though. Needs checking. It's definitely got a slot-load cd drive and I think it may even have an uprated hard drive to 30GB. It was a business machine that I borrowed for about a month and I didn't take too much interest in the tech side of things back then. Runs OSX 10.0.2 quite badly though as only 256mb RAM. God - I'm intrigued now, it just means a clear-out of that cupboard! :eek:

So what are the current G5 iMacs, Powermacs and Alu PB's called?
Click to expand...


If you've got a flower power/blue dalmation, thsoe only existed for a single generation, so there's no mistaking which ones they are.

OS X 10.0.x was awful. everymachine runs it terriblely because its a terrible OS. You should run the latest version on it, it will run much better. Though more ram is a good thing. It can take up to 1 gig of ram, and its probably the easiest computer to upgrade the ram ever built.

If its been sitting around, the pram battary may be dead and you might want to replace that.
 
strider42 said:
If you've got a flower power/blue dalmation, thsoe only existed for a single generation, so there's no mistaking which ones they are.

OS X 10.0.x was awful. everymachine runs it terriblely because its a terrible OS. You should run the latest version on it, it will run much better. Though more ram is a good thing. It can take up to 1 gig of ram, and its probably the easiest computer to upgrade the ram ever built.

If its been sitting around, the pram battary may be dead and you might want to replace that.
Click to expand...

It runs so badly using 10.0.2I spared myself from using it too often. I almost got to the cupboard to get it this evening but couldn't be stuffed in the end. I checked on Crucial and it only came up with 256 sticks so, if it takes a gig, does that mean it takes 4x256 only?

I've only got G4/G5 DVD Panther disks at the moment (haven't gone down the Tiger route yet - may wait till 4.2 comes) so getting a CD version and putting a newer OS on it and more RAM will tot up the price a bit.

It won't be my decision really as my Grandmother is going to be the next recipient and I don't know how much she'll want to splash on it (or my mother who is the actual owner of the iMac). My Grandmother is 77 and is desparate to get online and look for holidays and sh*t. I think that could make her one of the oldest Mac Noobs around!!
 
Oh yeah - it's definitely a PF/BD model and it's only been sitting in the cupbooard for about two months or so in that respect it shuld be ok. :)
 
AlBDamned said:
It runs so badly using 10.0.2I spared myself from using it too often. I almost got to the cupboard to get it this evening but couldn't be stuffed in the end. I checked on Crucial and it only came up with 256 sticks so, if it takes a gig, does that mean it takes 4x256 only?
Click to expand...


crucial should list 512 meg modules for a slot loading iMac. check ramseeker.com as well. All slot loaders have two ram slots and use standard PC100 ram (some PC133 ram is backwards compatible), and there are dfiniltey 512 meg ram chips available.

You might have been looking at one of the tray loading machine specs (233-333 mhz) any of the slot loaders on crucials site seem to list 512 megs just fine for me.

Just be sure you really have what you think you have. a 333 mhz machine is a tray loading imac. a flower power/blue dalmation has a pattern printed into the casing and a slot loading drive. The ram slot on a slot loader is located on the underside of the machien under a little door that is easily accessible. tray loaders are more difficult to get to.
 
I dug it out of the cupboard this afternoon. Pic from my dying T610 attached. Only problem is - I can't remember what the password is and I don't have the disc (only got Panther DVDs that came with the Powerbook). The actual OSX 10.0 disc is back at the ranch.
 

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AlBDamned said:
I dug it out of the cupboard this afternoon. Pic from my dying T610 attached. Only problem is - I can't remember what the password is and I don't have the disc (only got Panther DVDs that came with the Powerbook). The actual OSX 10.0 disc is back at the ranch.
Click to expand...

The Blue Dalmation is one of my favorites! :D
 
AlBDamned said:
I dug it out of the cupboard this afternoon. Pic from my dying T610 attached. Only problem is - I can't remember what the password is and I don't have the disc (only got Panther DVDs that came with the Powerbook). The actual OSX 10.0 disc is back at the ranch.
Click to expand...

yup, definiltey blue dalmation and definitely takes up to 1 gig of ram using two 512 meg pc100 ram modules.
 
Bye bye iMac!

Ah well, I gave the iMac a clean install with the OS X 10.0 disc and it works ok. Then tried to install Panther sans DVD (same method to the sticky post: 'installing tiger sans DVD') in the OS X section. Got to the install screen and it said: "Cannot install bundled software". Only option was to close and I got a blue screen of death. Nevermind.

Have handed what I now know to be a Blue Dalmation iMac back to its original owner and it’s already been put away under the stairs!

Strider: I had a look at the spec and it’s definitely a 600MHZ model (256MB RAM). Not bad for a little thing!

Also - is there a nickname for the current G5 iMacs and Towers?
 
Your iMac can definitely run Panther and probably Tiger (processor is capable). It didn't work because you used the disk that came with your Powerbook, which means it is for powerbooks only. You need a retail copy of either Tiger or Panther and then you can use the "sans DVD" method.
 
ITASOR said:
Your iMac can definitely run Panther and probably Tiger (processor is capable). It didn't work because you used the disk that came with your Powerbook, which means it is for powerbooks only. You need a retail copy of either Tiger or Panther and then you can use the "sans DVD" method.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I figured this could be a problem. Annoying though as it got so far and then refused it. No retail copy of Panther available sadly so it's stuck with 10.0. I wouldn't run Tiger on it without adding more RAM. Maybe one to consider for it's potential new owner (my gran!) . I'm not sure she needs 'The world's most advance operating system' anyway... :D
 
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