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Just got a 600Mhz iMac G3

MattZani

MattZani

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 20, 2008
2,554
104
UK
I Just got an iMac G3, here's the specs i have found out so far.

600Mhz PowerPC 750
256Mb Ram
ATi Rage Pro
40Gb Hard Drive
Snow White
Slot Loading (It mentions DVD in the Sys Pref's, but spat out a DVD i put in)
No Airport (Slot next to ram is empty)

The Case is a tad scuffed, and there is a scratch on the screen, and it didnt come with a Keyboard or Mouse, but it was only £1, and the guy dropped it round.

Any idea of what i can do to upgrade it? What came in the box (Puck or Pro mouse etc.)

Oh, also it seems the front feet are broken off, they seem jagged, and im sure the G3 had a joint coloured front foot (Would be white for mine) so if theres a place or person in the Uk, where i could get a replacement, would be good.

Will post some pics of it soon.
 
yeah, the Ram is covered by a flap, im wondering what else i can do to it.

would be good if i could find someone in the Uk, with a Graphite Case, as it looks soo good :D
 
Ebay or freecycle are possibly your best bet for a new front foot, I'd also bump up the RAM to 1 GB. The GPU is not actually a Rage Pro in those iMacs but a Rage 128 Ultra with 16 megs of VRAM. IIRC the optical drive was a CD RW which is why it spat out your DVD, you can upgrade the internal ones but it's a pain to do, probably better to find a cheap external, same with the HD, keep the internal and get and external firewire which you can switch between machines.
 
Hmm, i was thinking of opening it up to clean up the inside, so i'll look into swapping in a faster Internal HDD (The Current one makes a not so nice clicking noise)

Also, i will be upgrading to Tiger, which should be fine, whats the name of the software that lets you share a KB/M Between 2 Macs? As i dont really need a second KB/M if the ones in my MBP would work fine.

Any way to get the scratch out of the screen? Or is a completely new screen the only way?

Final Q, whats the value on my iMac? Its around £100 on ebay, but thats with KB/M, and i assume slightly better condition. Just wondering if i could maybe turn this into a money maker and pick up an iMac G4 instead....
 
Rodus said:
Ebay or freecycle are possibly your best bet for a new front foot, I'd also bump up the RAM to 1 GB. The GPU is not actually a Rage Pro in those iMacs but a Rage 128 Ultra with 16 megs of VRAM.
Click to expand...

Which is good because there are OS X drivers for it.

Unlike the Rage Pro, where they didn't actually materialise.
 
Here's a bad iPhone pic of it booted up, no keyboard atm, so couldnt do all the updates it needs, but i played around with iTunes and thats how i found the specs out.

n1306290613_285335_8588.jpg
 
dont forget that because its a crt they contain a large static charge. before you can mess around with changing stuff internally (hdds and stuff) you have to be able to remove it.
 
I Know, thats why im not sure if im going to mess with it.

My Friend is interested in buying it, so i may just sell it to him, would mean i could afford the 500Gb Drive i wanted for my MBP... But he wont have the money for a month, so im fiddling with it now, getting Tiger to put on it, then i'll see if i can find some cheap ram to upgrade it with.
 
I have the same computer. I upgraded the noisy old HDD to a laptop 80gb hard drive (for silent operation, and it happened to be laying around) and swapped the CD-RW for a DVD-ROM. It's pretty capable in Tiger with 768mb of RAM and the screen is surprisingly good for a 15" CRT!

Getting the case open isn't TOO difficult. Just don't be afraid to really pry the plastic shell open. Once you get the shell separated, the rest is a piece of cake.
 
I've got one of those. My brother is currently using it as his desktop machine. Its surprisingly fast and definitely blows the older 300-450MHz models out of the water. Its running Tiger with 768mb and he'll play games like Red Faction on it sometimes.
 
Got Some Tiger CD's, but i cant seem to get the iMac to boot from them, they appear on the desktop, and i can install that way, but the previous owner forgot the Admin Password, so i need to boot off the Tiger CD to start the install, and bypass the admin password, any idea's? I Tried holding C on boot, but nothing, it may be my Wireless USB Keyboard, my dad is bringing one back from work tonight, so hopefully....
 
Have you tried booting as normal, inserting the Tiger disc, going to startup disc, selecting Tiger and rebooting?
 
Rodus said:
Have you tried booting as normal, inserting the Tiger disc, going to startup disc, selecting Tiger and rebooting?
Click to expand...

That requires me to know the Admin Password.

My Dad brought home a wired USB Keyboard, and i have started installing, Disc 1 checked itself and found faults, but i clicked ignore, hope it works!
 
The install failed!

So i reburned the .dmg in Disk Util at 10x, and it found no faults, and is checking now, redoing the other 3 CD's aswell, thats 4 CD's Wasted!

Quite scary as i got the grey and black screen telling me to restart, as the HDD OS was Corrupt, had to use Open Firmware to eject the bad disc, but its all going fine now.
 
T-T-T-Triple Post!

Well, finally installed 10.4 onto my iMac, and im now sat here typing on it ^^

Took a while, installing from CD is s-l-o-w, and then i had to download and install the 10.4.11 Combo Update, but everything seems to be fine now.

Think i will upgrade the ram to 1Gb though, as it can start to slow down.... And maybe the HDD if i can get a cheap one, the current one is slow and noisy >.<

Overall, good machine, i've had fun tinkering with it for a few days, still need to clean it up, see if i can get rid of the smokey smell (Any idea's? Im a huge anti-smoker, and its driving me nuts :p)

I Will leave you with the 'About this Mac' Pane.
 

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I use the 700Mhz version of one of these to run my blog site and proxy. It does an incredible job and is quite snappy. I've just ordered a double-sided 512MB to bring it from 768MB to 1GB.

Certainly putting a 7200RPM 8MB cache HD into it would help but these only go as fast as 100Mbs on the IDE interface IIRC.

Be careful taking the case apart. Two reasons. I saw many attempts to pull these slot-loaders apart that left screw driver marks all over the place. This is not necessary at all if you know the correct procedure. I'd write it here but it's difficult to explain in words. The file to look for is "imac_summer01.pdf" :D

The second reason is that some of the plastic especially the light grey plastic around the CRT becomes very brittle with age (although you don't need to go that far to replace the HD or CD/DVD drive.

Just a tip, when you tilt the bottom housing to remove it, be prepared to hear a very nasty sounding crack. There are two tabs along the front edge of the bottom case. You may need to 'pivot' the bottom case along it's front edge with a considerable jerk to release them. Don't panic if the two tabs on the grey plastic break. The two screws on the bottom case near the front hold the case together quite well. Good Luck!

:)

EDIT: Oh, you might want to test for poor RAM connectivity. Boot into a CD (rather than the HD). once settled, move your mouse, and rock each RAM chip from side to side. If the mouse freezes, you'll need to clean the RAM module edge fingers and the sockets. Medi-wipes are great for this.
Also, the best RAM test I can recommend is still Memtest (no longer free) or it's free GUI cousin Rember.
 
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Those are still very useful!

I have the old 450 DV Mhz model and it is still good for playing Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, Star Trek Voyager, Age of Empires, and Nuke Dukem. I installed only OS 9. OSX is too slow. Oh, and it runs Microsoft Word 2001 faster than an Intel based Mac running Word 2008.
 
Seems RAM is still very expensive (Similar to Upgrading my MBP to 4Gb!) So i may leave it unless i find a good deal, i will do the HDD Soon as thats around £40 for a Quieter, Faster, Bigger Drive, but i cant justify £40 on 1Gb RAM.

I May also upgrade to a DVD/CDRW Drive, but im not sure if there is a real point.
 
MattZani said:
Seems RAM is still very expensive (Similar to Upgrading my MBP to 4Gb!) So i may leave it unless i find a good deal, i will do the HDD Soon as thats around ?40 for a Quieter, Faster, Bigger Drive, but i cant justify ?40 on 1Gb RAM.

I May also upgrade to a DVD/CDRW Drive, but im not sure if there is a real point.
Click to expand...

I took a risk and bought a 512MB PC133 double sided (advertised as new) from a Hong Kong eBay seller for AU$13.20 with free postage. ($8.65 US Dollar) (GBP 5.96)

Still waiting for it to arrive. The Double sided (16 chip) is usually more expensive but allows older machines like the G3 Blue&White, PCI G4 and others to see the full 512MB. Single sided 512MB RAM in those older machines only shows up as 256MB.

I'm not sure if the 600 & 700Mhz slot loaders work with single sided 512MB or not. IIRC they should.
 
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MacTech68 said:
I took a risk and bought a 512MB PC133 double sided (advertised as new) from a Hong Kong eBay seller for AU$13.20 with free postage. ($8.65 US Dollar) (GBP 5.96)

Still waiting for it to arrive. The Double sided (16 chip) is usually more expensive but allows older machines like the G3 Blue&White, PCI G4 and others to see the full 512MB. Single sided 512MB RAM in those older machines only shows up as 256MB.

I'm not sure if the 600 & 700Mhz slot loaders work with single sided 512MB or not. IIRC they should.
Click to expand...

Link? If it works i'll jump on that deal!

Im also considering a small overclock, maybe to 1Ghz, as i've heard people reaching 1.3Ghz and it being stable!

Might see if i can find a Faster Slot Loading CDRW or even DVD/CDRW, as this one is 2x when ripping a CD.... >.>
 
MattZani said:
Link? If it works i'll jump on that deal!

Im also considering a small overclock, maybe to 1Ghz, as i've heard people reaching 1.3Ghz and it being stable!

Might see if i can find a Faster Slot Loading CDRW or even DVD/CDRW, as this one is 2x when ripping a CD.... >.>
Click to expand...

Sure:

http://myworld.ebay.com/memory_superman/

Like I said though, it hasn't arrived yet and in my 20 years buying memory wholesale, you do get the occasional DOA module.

Regarding overclocking, I'd never expect to take a CPU much more than 10% higher. Though you might want to look at the CPU chip itself since I recall some of the 600Mhz machines made AFTER they discontinued the 700Mhz (when they introduced the Flat panel iMac G4) used a 700Mhz CPU clocked at 600Mhz. Heat is a real killer in these machines since there is no fan. If you add a 7200 RPM drive, that's more heat. Try checking how warm a CD is after it's been in the machine for a while.

However, YMMV. Good luck!
 
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I'll look into it, as i have to go into the main case to reach the CPU :S And if i did it, i would place atleast one 120mm Fan inside, to atleast circulate air.

I Was also thinking of some Cold Cathodes, as mine is white, and see if i could hook them upto the Power Button, so when asleep the lights would pulse, not sure if Cathodes like Pulsing though, as theyre a gas....
 
MattZani said:
I'll look into it, as i have to go into the main case to reach the CPU :S And if i did it, i would place atleast one 120mm Fan inside, to atleast circulate air.

I Was also thinking of some Cold Cathodes, as mine is white, and see if i could hook them upto the Power Button, so when asleep the lights would pulse, not sure if Cathodes like Pulsing though, as theyre a gas....
Click to expand...

You only need to remove the bottom case and shield to get at the motherboard. The CPU is soldered to the top-side (with the machine upright). and is held against the aluminium chassis to act as a heatsink.

The only "mod" I've done is to replace the white power LED with a blue one, just because it was there. ;)

EDIT: best place for a fan is underneath the carry handle blowing air out the top of the machine.
 
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