Macs at work / imac ruby

[lewie109]

Hello Everyone!!
My mom owns her own business. She is looking for a new computer cash register. She was looking at the ones Dell makes and I want her to get a mac. I would like to get her a 15'' iMac, then we need some POS (Point of Sale) software, cash drawer then a receipt printer. How does The Apple Store do it, anyone know? Surely this stuff is available for Mac.

Also I have a iMac ruby 400 Mhz, 192 Ram,6 gig hd. My ruby takes for ever to start up. When it first starts up for the day it does the ? system screen then after 30 minutes to a hour it will finally start making the normal roaring noise of the hard drive spinning. What is making it slow at start up? I did upgrade it to 10.2.8 and partitioned the HD. I have a Maxtor 30 Gig HD in the box that is windows formated but it says on the box that it can be formated for Mac. How can I format it and make it work in the ruby?


Thanks
Lewie

 

[psycoswimmer]

Apple doesn't make a 15" iMac, unless you mean the old iMac G4s.

About the G3, this happened (similar) on another thread. Is the hard drive extremely small? If you have, for example, a 20 GB hard drive, how are you partitioning that?

 

[lewie109]

Apple doesn't make a 15" iMac, unless you mean the old iMac G4s.

About the G3, this happened (similar) on another thread. Is the hard drive extremely small? If you have, for example, a 20 GB hard drive, how are you partitioning that?

Sorry that is my mistake. I mean a 17'' Intel iMac.

As for my ruby I have a 6 gig and I have partitioned it in half. If i was to put my 30 GB in, Would I have to partition?

 

[Makosuke]

As far as the 30GB hard drive in the Ruby iMac, it will work jut fine--if you install it and boot from a CD, you can use disk utility to format it and (if you want) partition it.

Although I'm a bit surprised if it's really a Ruby one (as opposed to Strawberry), since I thought those didn't ship with anything smaller than a 10GB drive. Either way, as long as it's not a really early one, partitioning isn't necessary (the early ones won't install OSX on any partition larger than 8GB).

I'm not sure about the huge delay at startup, but that is NOT normal at all. It sounds like either the hard drive is failing, or you've got a PRAM problem. If you've already tried zapping the PRAM, reselecting the hard drive as the startup drive, and doing an open firmware reset, it might be worth replacing the motherboard battery and see if that helps.

 

[lewie109]

As far as the 30GB hard drive in the Ruby iMac, it will work jut fine--if you install it and boot from a CD, you can use disk utility to format it and (if you want) partition it.

Although I'm a bit surprised if it's really a Ruby one (as opposed to Strawberry), since I thought those didn't ship with anything smaller than a 10GB drive. Either way, as long as it's not a really early one, partitioning isn't necessary (the early ones won't install OSX on any partition larger than 8GB).

I'm not sure about the huge delay at startup, but that is NOT normal at all. It sounds like either the hard drive is failing, or you've got a PRAM problem. If you've already tried zapping the PRAM, reselecting the hard drive as the startup drive, and doing an open firmware reset, it might be worth replacing the motherboard battery and see if that helps.

Thanks so I can pop in my system 10 cd and do firmware reset?

 

[lewie109]

Did anybody find anything about a Mac cash register?

 

[polevault139]

There is a local buisness in my town that uses a G5 iMac as their cash register. I would find out what program they use for you if you want just ask or PM me. But if I do it wont be for another week as I am leaving for a cruise to the Bahamas in five hours.

 

[lewie109]

There is a local buisness in my town that uses a G5 iMac as their cash register. I would find out what program they use for you if you want just ask or PM me. But if I do it wont be for another week as I am leaving for a cruise to the Bahamas in five hours.

Ok That would be cool! Thanks. Have a fun time at the Bahamas!

 

[MartyMoe]

Open Firmware

Thanks so I can pop in my system 10 cd and do firmware reset?

Actually, you don't need the CD for clearing the firmware settings-- that reset is done by starting up and then holding down the keys:
Command-Option-O-F

And that should take you into Open Firmware ,and to a > prompt. From there, you type the following:

>reset-nvram

and it will say ok

then type

>reset-all


And then it will restart. Using the CD is really for running first aid on the OS X software, nothing to do with firmware here. Still, in this case, I would definitely say that is a good idea; after you have done the reset-nvram and the reset-all thing, choose to start up from the CD, choose Disk Utility from the menu bar, and run Disk First Aid to Repair Permissions and Verify the drive.

I was going to say make sure the Mac HD is selected in the System Preferences, but someone beat me to it!

After that, make sure you get your stuff backed up onto another drive, another location, and then you might want to think about a reinstall. I use a Ruby that went south on me from disk corruption (not hardware) and needed DiskWarrior to rescue it. Runs fine now, but if you get your stuff saved you might be able to reinstall OS cleanly and avoid this altogether.