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iMac G3 what are they capable of?

D

dawnraid

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 9, 2007
161
0
Hi,
I can get an old Blue iMac g3 from my school for $20 NZD (about 14-15 USD) im not sure on what its specs are but im pretty sure its slot loading as apposed to tray loading. It dosent come with a power cable but im pretty sure this one Here would work am i correct it looks as though it has those connectors.? Also would it run 10.5, or 10.4, is it possible to upgrade to usb 2.0, and do you think it would be suitable as a torrent box?

Thanks.:)
 
Upgrade the hard drive to a 8mb cache and 7200rpm and max out the ram.
You will be able to run Tiger perfectly. They are great, indestructible lowcost Macs. You'l need sticks of 133 pc 168 pin ram.
 
A 400 mhz g3 with maxed out ram actually runs tiger pretty well. It is ok for basic browsing, word processing, chat and IM. Youtube videos are playing a bit choppy, but it is ok. You wan't be able to do deal with iPhoto and iMovie.
Although I have no personal experience with using it as a torrentserver, I don't think it will be a problem.
 
I have a 600MHZ Graphite running 24/7 as a torrent server and it runs like a champ. My kids have a blue 400MHz in their bedroom as a DVD player but when I'm in there tidying up or escaping the domestic hurly burly I browse, use a shared iTunes library, play FLACs with Cog with no complaints.

I had to get a DVD-ROM drive from eBay as it came with a CD-ROM drive but it's proved well worth the money. Odds on the PRAM battery will have expired but third party examples are only a couple of quid. It was marginally faster with 10.3 but the advantages of Tiger outweighed the minimal loss of speed.

Whether it's worth your while maxing the RAM etc is up to you but you will end up with a design classic which is still a pleasure to use.
 
I have a 600MHz iMac G3 "Snow" 640MB/40GB (which is one of the last G3's) running Panther. It is fine for email, surfing, Microsoft Office 2004, iTunes, and general stuff like that. However it is severely handicapped by its USB-1 ports (not USB-2) which makes it useless for the newer iPods. It is also incapable Quicktime video playback. So yeah, as long as you expect it to only run the software that was available in 2001/2002 you'll be fine. (BTW I still might bump it up to Tiger, just to get access to Safari 3.) :apple:
 
Maxing the ram to 1 gig and maxing the hard drive to fastest specs 7200rpm and 8mb cache (16mb is overkill) will speed up the old iMac G3 considerably.

For basic stuff, this is a great buy. Great switcher machine, too. Great for kids, etc. Love them.
 
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