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Just got a 600Mhz iMac G3

MacTech68 said:
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.
Click to expand...

Ok, i thought the Mobo was inside with the CRT, but i guess not, but if i want to put a cooling fan in there, i'll have to go into the CRT area, and same for the Cathode.

Once you confirm the RAM works, i'll definitely order 1Gb.

This the one you ordered?

http://cgi.ebay.com/MICRON-1GB-2x51...14913QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1713.m153.l1262
and other than price, this seems identical...?
http://cgi.ebay.com/1GB-2x512MB-PC1...66898QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1713.m153.l1262

Will also be buying a new CMOS Battery, as thats dead, and will need to head over to a Custom PC forum to find out about Lighting this thing up.
 
Forgot to add something VERY important.

When looking at that eBay seller's RAM, make sure you get this one:

Under "Technical Specifications"

"Module Size:512MB SDRAM DIMM Double Sided 16Chips 32X8 Low Density"

As I've just discovered (doh!) the 64x8 will not work. 🙁

If you want 2 512MB modules, then Item number: 220357793070 is your best bet. (GBP 20.44)

There are others there. Go into his "store" and search "32x8" in titles & descriptions.

Sorry for the bad advice. 🙁

I shall now go and kick myself very hard. 🙁

Ahh well, I have an older Windoze XP machine here I can use it in.

The price is still pretty good. Here in Australia this RAM retails for AU$108 EACH (GBP 48.74 each) plus shipping
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Ranch Wagon
 
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I put a cooling fan in mine,right above the power supply. Hooked it up to the extra HD 12 volt lead. To get in side the Crt you have to take the bottom off and then the front around the tube off and its a 😱 to do it, then the back half unscrews and comes off.
 
Mac SK said:
I put a cooling fan in mine,right above the power supply. Hooked it up to the extra HD 12 volt lead. To get in side the Crt you have to take the bottom off and then the front around the tube off and its a 😱 to do it, then the back half unscrews and comes off.
Click to expand...

Yup. If you've not pulled one apart before, as I said in a previous post, doing a google search for ""imac_summer01.pdf" can be a HUGE advantage. 😀

I used to hate pulling these apart just to re-solder dry joints on the Analog board's FlyBack Transformer for intermittent screen issues. Mind you, once you've done it 20 times, you get pretty quick at it.
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Concord
 
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Took it apart last night, only the bottom part, gave it a clean out, removed the broken feet, and had a look at the HDD, its a Seagate 7200Rpm Drive.... So im not sure i would see a speed increase upgrading to a new Drive, but i will for more space, and quieter operation.

It Also has 2 128Mb Aftermarket Ram, not Paired, one is Generic, another is Kingston (I Think) I Also checked to see the battery type, and will need some money for that aswell!

I'll be fitting a Quiet 120mm Fan to the Heatsink CRT kind of area in the top of the case, so i can get the air moving, and will be adding a string of LED's as Cathodes Cannot Pulse, still not sure how to make them react with the Power LED, as that wont have enough Amperage to power all the LED's...
 
Hey great machine. I've taken them apart a million times and they are work horses. The 600 and 700mhz are the best of the bunch.

Sounds like you do need a new hard drive if it was clicking. And if you can find a cd/dvd optical drive it should help, too. I have a kingston 256mb chip that came out of an iMac G3 I'd sell to you cheap but the price to UK is probably too much. Personally, I'd add the full ram and get a 120gb 7200 hard drive (there is a 128gb limit on hd space on that iMac -- not a great idea imho to get a bigger hard drive) and a dvd/cd player (the G4 Cubes use the same optical drive, fyi). Because these machines have firewire and because they usually just sat on someone's desk for years, they will out live us all and be useful with the firewire...

Try to get another 512 chip. You can always pull the hard drive and ram if you decide you don't want to go with your cheap iMac G3. P.S. Daystar use to make a G4 upgrade for these machines... see if you can find that CPU upgrade somewhere.

Another P.S. disable dashboard on Tiger and it will run even faster. I find it incredible that, as a previous poster here noted, that Word 2001 runs faster on our old PPC machines than it does on our new intel Macs... but its true. I'm using Word 2001 on my G5 and my new Macbook. Try to find an older copy.
 
California said:
Hey great machine. I've taken them apart a million times and they are work horses. The 600 and 700mhz are the best of the bunch.

Sounds like you do need a new hard drive if it was clicking. And if you can find a cd/dvd optical drive it should help, too. I have a kingston 256mb chip that came out of an iMac G3 I'd sell to you cheap but the price to UK is probably too much. Personally, I'd add the full ram and get a 120gb 7200 hard drive (there is a 128gb limit on hd space on that iMac -- not a great idea imho to get a bigger hard drive) and a dvd/cd player (the G4 Cubes use the same optical drive, fyi). Because these machines have firewire and because they usually just sat on someone's desk for years, they will out live us all and be useful with the firewire...

Try to get another 512 chip. You can always pull the hard drive and ram if you decide you don't want to go with your cheap iMac G3. P.S. Daystar use to make a G4 upgrade for these machines... see if you can find that CPU upgrade somewhere.

Another P.S. disable dashboard on Tiger and it will run even faster. I find it incredible that, as a previous poster here noted, that Word 2001 runs faster on our old PPC machines than it does on our new intel Macs... but its true. I'm using Word 2001 on my G5 and my new Macbook. Try to find an older copy.
Click to expand...

Wasn't the G4 Upgrade card for a Tray Loading iMac (which also added FireWire) ?

If the slot loader had a G4 Upgrade that would be a "send in the motherboard" upgrade, wouldn't it?

Some of the Seagates that shipped in the later 400 -500Mhz machines had odd-ball firmware that had the drive clocked back to UDMA 33 and I could never switch it. Check the Seagate drive's average access time.

I agree that these never supported 48bit LBA mode (volumes larger than 127GB), but I believe Disk Utility from 10.4 works around this but I wouldn't let OS9 anywhere near it after that. I always tried to fit these with 120GBs, no larger.

Oh, and to the OP, matching RAM really doesn't matter in these machines. There's no interleaving capability on these logic boards. (See Developer Technote).
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Turbo
 
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For the tray load, NewerTechnology made a iMaxpower G4 433mhz and
Powerlogix made a iForce G3 400 and G3 500.
 
Another way to improve performance significantly is by disabling font smoothing. I forget how to do it, but I'm sure it's not hard to find the command on Google. Unsmoothed font looks quite good on the iMac's CRT, and scrolling becomes VERY smooth.
 
I've just got one of these as well. My mum's partner is a school technician and they were chucking them away so I was going to do one up and have a play.

Will this ram work does anyone know?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290417297410&ssPageName=ADME:B:BCA:GB:1123

Was planing on putting 1GB in.

What is there to do with these machines in terms of upgrading and using. I'm thinking of running MAMP on it and have it set up as a server to test websites. Any other ideas?
 
don't worry about overheating , i fitted a 7200rpm 16mb cache harddrive from western digital in mine and no sign of overheating , istat pro says 46celsius for the harddrive , no cpu temp possible as there is no sensor , but it will get hot on the top and that is good as long the bottom stays cool it means the convection cooling works ,had so far no problems with running my 700ghz one for 24/7 they are great little buggers these iMacs
upgrading the harddrive and changing cd/dvd drive is fairly easy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lt7VX6aWs
 
paddyhazard said:
I've just got one of these as well. My mum's partner is a school technician and they were chucking them away so I was going to do one up and have a play.

Will this ram work does anyone know?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290417297410&ssPageName=ADME:B:BCA:GB:1123

Was planing on putting 1GB in.

What is there to do with these machines in terms of upgrading and using. I'm thinking of running MAMP on it and have it set up as a server to test websites. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

I can't find enough info on that RAM module to say. Being older, it probably would work, but if the picture is correct, it might be too tall to physically fit.

I used to run mine (700Mhz) as a proxy server, Apache and it performed very well.

Sadly after running 24x7 for 3 years, it's died an odd death. It's probably a bad capacitor on the Analog Board, but I swapped out the HD and RAM into my G4 733Mhz Digital Audio tower, so I'm not sure yet.

🙁

EDIT: I also always try to get 512MB PC133 modules rather than PC100. Whilst all the slot loaders take PC100, by purchasing PC133, I've been able to fit my two PC133 512MB modules into the G4 733Mhz which only takes PC133.
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iolite vaporizer
 
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Well i won one of the 512 sticks so hopefully that will work when it comes. If not it's only a couple of quid wasted.

What did you do to run it as a proxy server and what are the benefits of that? I'm just looking for other, more practical uses for it instead of a vintage style jukebox and a torrent downloader. If i can run it as a server, one with a very small hardddrive, it might not feel so unappreciated!
 
paddyhazard said:
Well i won one of the 512 sticks so hopefully that will work when it comes. If not it's only a couple of quid wasted.

What did you do to run it as a proxy server and what are the benefits of that? I'm just looking for other, more practical uses for it instead of a vintage style jukebox and a torrent downloader. If i can run it as a server, one with a very small hardddrive, it might not feel so unappreciated!
Click to expand...

I built Squid from source. But you can use SquidMan which is much easier to install for the non-terminal user (and freeware). The current version requires MacOS 10.4 as a minimum but there are earlier versions available that will install on MacOS 10.3.9.
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AMC and Jeep transmissions specifications
 
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I'm looking for a 700 Graphite or Snow. They are hard to find. I keep scouring Ebay to see if one pops. There's one up there now, but it doesn't have a matching KB and mouse, plus I'd have to upgrade the ram.
 
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