Hello! I come today with, what most definitely is, a ridiculous question. I have this old iMac G3 500Mhz with 512MB RAM sitting around. I installed the latest version of OpenBSD on it and have been trying to use it for internet browsing, listening to music, and watching videos. This has all been done with little to no success though, with videos not loading and audio card errors. Am I going about this the wrong way and expecting too much from my iMac? I really only need it for music and non-HD videos. Thank you in advance.
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Is it still possible to use the iMac G3?
- Thread starter SaturnOfThePast
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Your iMac is all of two decades old. So....first of all, congratulations for even getting OpenBSD installed on it, many people tank at that. For your needs I suspect you'll be better off with Tiger 10.4.11. For listening to music just use itunes or VLC, you can still manually enter in radio stations into older versions of itunes. For non HD videos, it should still work if you follow Dronecatchers guide for playing video on low end macs. Search the forum here, he is the master of low end audio and video playback on older macs. You can even download some low def youtube videos in PowerPC media center, convert them if needed. There is also a Russian youtube download site that Dronecatcher and others have gotten to work in as far back as Classilla and OS 9. The site is accessible to older browsers and the video downloads are in MPEG-1 and 2, so easily playable in VLC or Quicktime as long as you stay at 360p or below.
Web browsing in Tenfourfox, set to a mobile user agent will be slow but tolerable for simple websites. I'd make sure to have a hosts file or ublock origin installed. If you can tolerate it, Links2 ported to mac os x by alex_free is a damn fine and speedy browser for older machines. You will need X11. It displays inline images, and pages in HTML 1 so all text is justified left, but it makes the web available to older machines, along with frogfind.com and 68k.news. It also gets you around some paywalls, like nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com for instance. I've even used it to download videos from the russian youtube site, and it worked well.
Here are Dronecatchers examples, note his ibook G3 is a little faster than your imac, but with the Tiger backported mplayer you should, emphasis on should, still be able to playback the right videos. Keeping your expectations realistic is key, as is following exactly what Dronecatcher has done.
http://video.2yxa.mobi (Ruskie download site, change the language to en on the bottom of the page for english) EDIT: site is down for me, hopefully that's not a permanent thing......EDIT 2: Whoops my bad, typo. Site IS UP!
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That you got OpenBSD on it is really cool.
See the post above for a lot of tips.
I'd still recommend OS 9 on it, as it will be speedy. You can likely upgrade the RAM some more if you want and maybe even work in a speedier hard drive, but there are lots of limits. One way to think about these old machines is to keep them in some period specific ness. OS9 with some games and apps of that era can be fun to tinker with.
I could even see an iMac G3 as a great novel writing machine stuck in a corner somewhere, but as a web browsing/emailer type machine? I don't know.
See the post above for a lot of tips.
I'd still recommend OS 9 on it, as it will be speedy. You can likely upgrade the RAM some more if you want and maybe even work in a speedier hard drive, but there are lots of limits. One way to think about these old machines is to keep them in some period specific ness. OS9 with some games and apps of that era can be fun to tinker with.
I could even see an iMac G3 as a great novel writing machine stuck in a corner somewhere, but as a web browsing/emailer type machine? I don't know.
I'm able to watch a large variety of SD videos on my iMac G3/350 - which is considerably slower than your machine.
Have a look at this thread in which G3 video playback is discussed. It contains a great number of tips and insights from several members, including @Dronecatcher on getting the best results from G3 Macs in this area.
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It’s no more or less useable than it was when it was new. You can do anything now that you could when it was new, with era correct software.
I think internet has been covered enough in this thread, but I will mention frogfind and 68k.news. Those sites should run in whatever browser you have.
I think internet has been covered enough in this thread, but I will mention frogfind and 68k.news. Those sites should run in whatever browser you have.
Ciao Saturn,
I have a 700mhz CXE one with the ATI rage 128 pro/16 vram, 1GB ram, 128 SSD HD (fully upgraded). Go for double partition Tiger 10.4.11/mac os 9.2. On the MacOS X install VLC, LibreOffice, TenFourFox and you can browse the web, listen to music, play low res videos, do office stuffs. Together with the mac os 9 you have also a perfect old game machine (duke nukem 3d, Tomb Raider games, Diablo 1&2, Baldurs Gate 1&2, etc.).
Hope it helps 😉.
Cheers from Italy.
I have a 700mhz CXE one with the ATI rage 128 pro/16 vram, 1GB ram, 128 SSD HD (fully upgraded). Go for double partition Tiger 10.4.11/mac os 9.2. On the MacOS X install VLC, LibreOffice, TenFourFox and you can browse the web, listen to music, play low res videos, do office stuffs. Together with the mac os 9 you have also a perfect old game machine (duke nukem 3d, Tomb Raider games, Diablo 1&2, Baldurs Gate 1&2, etc.).
Hope it helps 😉.
Cheers from Italy.
Attachments
Update: Site is down too, here where I am temporarily living in the States, given its in Russia, I would say from Lviv it would be accessable. Also, in answer to this:
There is also a Russian youtube download site that Dronecatcher and others have gotten to work in as far back as Classilla and OS 9. The site is accessible to older browsers and the video downloads are in MPEG-1 and 2, so easily playable in VLC or Quicktime as long as you stay at 360p or below.
Don't even try to use 9.3.4b as you will get all sorts of errors. Seems, the site works well with 9.3.3 classila with no issues. Just thought I'd pass that along for the OP. 9.3.4b I would call a rush job and is really alpha updated software. 9.3.3 is more stable and loads more webpages with little issues, including the Russian site.
No, not ridiculous at all but quite sophisticated!
I'd stay with os9 and Tiger - it's great fun!
If your speakers suffer from foam rot, there's cheap replacement.
For WLAN get a WLAN-Ethernet bridge (works on os9 and Tiger)
os9 is fun to explore and it surprisingly does offer a lot of options to connect with your current network and to do serious stuff.
Here the links to links to other links ...
The G3 Workstation Wiki!
Is your G3 feeling its age? Is it just taking up space? Why not turn it into a WORKSTATION? No internet allowed, because the web is just nasty to our old trusty G3s. :( Well, mostly no internet allowed, as none at all may prove impossible until later. Models to look for: Power Macintosh...
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Email Client and Applications for Mac OS9
Thanks folks for all support! Here's a little picture show, how my KeyLime-MacOS9-project is progressing. Many thanks also to Macintosh Garden as a keeper of invaluable precious of abandoned software. The USB-Port of the Clamshell sports enough power to run the "ASUS 3G MOBILE Wireless Router...
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Need G3 Recommendations
That Vonets thing runs like a charm with os9. Starting as a novice 3y ago I really became fond of os9. It does offer a lot of options to communicate with OSX and (elder) Windows. Here my favorite tools for networking, Cloud, Internet and Office-apps: - NetPresenz (FTP-Server) - Transmit...
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So Macintosh Repository Works On IE5 W/ Mac OS 9
Wow, that's great! After Software Restore of os9 there's always Internet-Explorer and Netscape Navigater preinstalled, and the key to a full install of my favorite stuff is based on Classilla, Stuffit-Expander (pre-installed) and Toast5 to get access to archives and images... So this way to get...
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iMac G3 DV Compact Flash Hard Drive upgrade
You need this for the iMac to "see" past 128 GB - only partitioning the first 128 GB and forgoing the rest should be fine. http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/speedtools-ata-hi-cap-driver
forums.macrumors.com
But: forget about web-browsing, video-streaming, dropbox, iCloud etc. (except you use some tricks and workarounds like file-sharing, webDAV, VNC/ScreenSharing...)
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I really wish outlook express 5 would work.. classila's email works, but I like Outlook Express a lot better - I have under gmail use insecure apps(There was a time when all apps were insecure). Mulberry for some reason doesn't work either.
Hi there,
I was just looking for tips about using an old (but almost new) iMac G3 800Mhz 640MB Sdram. That is very frustrating to see that almost nothing works anylonger. Sure, it is old stuff ...but why cant I buy a Mac and keep using as long as it is not broken? I do not want NEW features, just those old ones that I paid for! :-( :-( I know I know... but I just wanted to tell my experience. Guess what. I just keep that ibook for MUSIC. It works GREAT connected with iFire and those ball shaped speakers. The sound is quite good. I loaded plenty of classical music on iTunes that I play with the random selection... I have several other newer MACs... but just for the music the old iBook is OK
I was just looking for tips about using an old (but almost new) iMac G3 800Mhz 640MB Sdram. That is very frustrating to see that almost nothing works anylonger. Sure, it is old stuff ...but why cant I buy a Mac and keep using as long as it is not broken? I do not want NEW features, just those old ones that I paid for! :-( :-( I know I know... but I just wanted to tell my experience. Guess what. I just keep that ibook for MUSIC. It works GREAT connected with iFire and those ball shaped speakers. The sound is quite good. I loaded plenty of classical music on iTunes that I play with the random selection... I have several other newer MACs... but just for the music the old iBook is OK
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What do you want to do? Identify that then search on the forum. There really are so many things it can still do a list would be a bit silly.
A G3 iMac can be used for what you want it to do, for instance Dronecatcher made an app several months back which allows Youtube to be played on a G3, even in OS 9 through one of Russia's servers. Strangly, Ukrainians like myself can't access the Russian movie server you used. 2nd, a G3 can be used for simple stuff and games. Me personally, I consider G3 inferior, but a G4 also is without the altivec. Sadly, nothing really was ever made, except for Adobe stuff and video stuff for altivec. If altivec speeds up the performance, more should have been made for it. G3 does not have altivec, though I too have a G3 PowerBook Pismo, though I hardly use it since I have a G4 550 Pismo.
Not at all a ridiculous question; my PowerPC Macs are my day-to-day computers and they don't leave me wanting for really anything; not even video games since they've been getting steadily worse since about 2012 or so. I don't have experience with a G3 at that speed, but I do have a Power Macintosh G4 at about 50MHz slower than that running both Mac OS 9 and 10.4.11 and it actually isn't too terrible at those things. Granted, TenFourFox's rendering engine is years out of date at this point and many websites don't load correctly, and YouTube via a browser window is definitely off the table, but you can work around them. For YouTube videos, if I remember the process it just involves dragging a YouTube link onto the PPCMC icon, though I could be wrong. For web browsing, 10.4Fx (or really, the InterWebPPC fork now) isn't ideal, but it's about the best option on a G3 unless someone spends the time to port over a more up to date browser and write a Javascript compiler for it. And honestly, it's fine for 90% of what you need to do. I was able to render the web page to a college I used to be looking into going to without any noticeable faults at all, and it's a relatively modern site. Phoronix (both articles and the forum), the Raptor CS web page, the Social Security Administration web page, NationStates, Reddit, and fanfiction.net all also loaded just fine when I tested them.
You might get some mileage out of using Linux compatibility to run the Arctic Fox browser. I haven't yet tried using it, because I don't have access to any PPC Linux machines (my iMac G5 is stored away right now), but it's a port of Pale Moon 27.9, which should be more than capable of rendering basically anything worth rendering.
You might get some mileage out of using Linux compatibility to run the Arctic Fox browser. I haven't yet tried using it, because I don't have access to any PPC Linux machines (my iMac G5 is stored away right now), but it's a port of Pale Moon 27.9, which should be more than capable of rendering basically anything worth rendering.
I've had times where things haven't quite looked right (a lot of the times caused by a typeface, usually symbol set, that hasn't loaded or super JS laden pages) but A. I use exclusively 4:3 screens (no matter how old the computer actually is), B. daily driver use has led me to websites that I really shouldn't have expected to work, and C. I have no idea what I'm actually doing, so it could easily be my fault.