iMac G3, Need to format a fat32 hard drive to mac, but from a PC, any help?

[DavidFulero]

I know that sounds complicated lol, let me simplify.
I found a guy on craigslist giving away imac g3s for free, the problem is that they don't have hard drives or memory. I need to know if there is any way that I can format a sata hard drive to mac using a PC. I have a friend who has a powermac g4 that I can use, but I'd really rather do it from home if I can.
Any advice?

 

[Hellhammer]

I'm not 100% sure but I think MacDrive can do that

 

[Chuck Fadanoid]

1. The iMac G3 uses IDE drives, not SATA!

2. It's not so hard to get into a CRT G3 iMac and change the hard drive (and even easier to add RAM), you can probably find a service manual online somewhere.

3. Once you fit the hard drive and have RAM, you can format using a retail copy of OSX (I have 10.3 installed on mine).

 

[DavidFulero]

MacDrive seemed to work, but I can't move things on the pc to the mac hard drive. I did find a screwdriver I need to open my iMac G4, does it fit more than one hard drive? My gf has the disks for either panther or tiger, i'm not sure. Can I use those? And, last question I promise is hfs+ a valid format for os 9?
I should have mentioned that I was trying to boot os 9, not X.
My G4 runs tiger, but the G3 has so little ram/processor speed, that it would probably suck in classic mode.

 

[Chuck Fadanoid]

What I would do is:

- Find an old IDE drive (up to 120GB)
- Install IDE drive in G3.
- Make sure G3 has at least 64MB RAM (preferably more)
- Find an old OS 9 install disk (I doubt that the Panther or Tiger disks contain an OS 9 disk)
- Boot off install disk
- Format drive
- Install OS 9

any files you want to copy from windows, copy them over the network to the G3 or burn them to disk.

The G3 is only designed for one hard drive, but I believe it's possible to remove its Optical Disk Drive and install another one on that IDE cable, but I've never done that myself and from what I remember is not so straightforward.

An iMac G3 running OS 9 is 'snappier' than any machine I've used running OS X.

 

[Hellhammer]

MacDrive seemed to work, but I can't move things on the pc to the mac hard drive. I did find a screwdriver I need to open my iMac G4, does it fit more than one hard drive? My gf has the disks for either panther or tiger, i'm not sure. Can I use those? And, last question I promise is hfs+ a valid format for os 9?
I should have mentioned that I was trying to boot os 9, not X.
My G4 runs tiger, but the G3 has so little ram/processor speed, that it would probably suck in classic mode.

Yea, all Mac OSs since 8.1 (I think) use HFS+. Do what Chuck recommended, it easiest