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So I bought another iMac G4...

ryannel2003

ryannel2003

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 30, 2005
1,815
388
Greenville, NC
About 3 years ago I had an 17" iMac G4 800MHz and I loved it. Ever since I first laid eyes on my first iMac G4 way back in 2004 I had always wanted one. I sold that computer after a year because it just wasn't in good cosmetic shape and was super slow, even when I upgraded the RAM and replaced the dying hard drive. That brings me to last week when I was browsing eBay and came across a 17" 1.25GHz model for $75. I didn't hesitate and bought it on the spot. When I received it (with the original box, no less) I was in awe all over again. This machine is in fantastic shape with only a slight pressure mark on the screen. As an added bonus it has an Airport Extreme card installed along with 1.25GB of RAM. It's running Jaguar 10.2.7 so as of right now it's useless on the internet until my Leopard DVD arrives. My plans for this machine include acquiring a good bluetooth dongle so I can buy a good mouse, upgrade the hard drive in the future to something newer and quieter and add another 1GB stick so I can max it out at 2GB. I figure it will be a good basic web browsing machine and music server.



 
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These are such beautiful machines. I've got a 1GHz 17" and the 20" 1.25 and I still use both. These were the pinnacle of Apple design for desktops IMO.
 
Hrududu said:
These are such beautiful machines. I've got a 1GHz 17" and the 20" 1.25 and I still use both. These were the pinnacle of Apple design for desktops IMO.
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Absolutely. I wish Apple would bring this design back; it's so much nicer to look at and use compared to the current models.
 
Love G4 iMacs. Best design ever. Had mine for 12/13 years now. Still going strong.
 
I'm curious to know what you guys recommend as far as upgrades for this machine? I know within the next few months I'll need to replace the hard drive and while I do that I'm going to upgrade the memory to 2GB. Any other recommendations? I ended up finding a Tiger disk and I installed that last night and it actually browses the internet much better than expected but it's slow on certain sites and especially on the new forum layout they have here. I have Safari, Camino and TenFourFox installed as browsers with the latter running the best by far.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I like using this machine a lot more than my new rMBP hahaha.
 
roadbloc said:
An SSD will make it fly.
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I was thinking about one of those. Any recommendations? I don't need more than 100GB of space. I saw a SATA to IDE connector on Amazon that is supposed to work well. I'll start looking around for a good one. Thanks!

I also just ordered a D-Link DBT 120 Bluetooth module for the wireless Mighty Mouse I bought. I'm thinking of upgrading the optical drive as well. The current one is kinda noisy.
 
ryannel2003 said:
Absolutely. I wish Apple would bring this design back; it's so much nicer to look at and use compared to the current models.
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With current technology *they* could but the iMac G4 used 20W external speakers to have that iconic design, doubtful Tim Cook would go backwards unless aiming at some kind of iMac anniversary model with a downwards firing speaker array stick. In my opinion iMac sound after 2011 hasn't been the same, they opted for a "Bose" inspired tubular speaker system to squeeze/push more mids... they just lack both highs & lows.
 
ryannel2003 said:
I was thinking about one of those. Any recommendations? I don't need more than 100GB of space. I saw a SATA to IDE connector on Amazon that is supposed to work well. I'll start looking around for a good one. Thanks!

I also just ordered a D-Link DBT 120 Bluetooth module for the wireless Mighty Mouse I bought. I'm thinking of upgrading the optical drive as well. The current one is kinda noisy.
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let us know which optical you decide on.
 
gooser said:
let us know which optical you decide on.
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I was looking on OWC and saw a nice looking LG drive for $40 I believe. I might go that route but I'm not 100% sure yet.

Altemose said:
@ryannel2003 I would recommend using TenFourFox solely and following eyoungren's tweak guide.
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I looked at the tweak guide yesterday and did some of the improvements and it made a world of difference already. It's still a bit laggy especially when typing replies on the forum, but much better than it was.
 
ryannel2003 said:
I was looking on OWC and saw a nice looking LG drive for $40 I believe. I might go that route but I'm not 100% sure yet.



I looked at the tweak guide yesterday and did some of the improvements and it made a world of difference already. It's still a bit laggy especially when typing replies on the forum, but much better than it was.
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read the specs closely. i believe it will read cd's and dvd's just fine but you won't be able to burn with this drive.
 
ryannel2003 said:
I looked at the tweak guide yesterday and did some of the improvements and it made a world of difference already. It's still a bit laggy especially when typing replies on the forum, but much better than it was.
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Did you do all of his tweaks? Also, install Bluhell Firewall and go to my last post in the thread. I added two tweaks there as well that make a lot of difference! Finally, eyoungren advised me that the rich text editor on MacRumors is a bit slower and resource hungry but can be disabled in Preferences.
 
jbarley said:
If this is the Optical Drive in question, then the specs both read and write look just fine.
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Yup that's the one.

Altemose said:
Did you do all of his tweaks? Also, install Bluhell Firewall and go to my last post in the thread. I added two tweaks there as well that make a lot of difference! Finally, eyoungren advised me that the rich text editor on MacRumors is a bit slower and resource hungry but can be disabled in Preferences.
Click to expand...

I just installed all the things he suggested and not anything else only because I wasn't sure where to access all the other preferences. I guess you just type them out? Also thanks for the heads up on the forum. I'm going to make that change right now.
 
I see it now. At the bottom of the info page in red it states it will not burn any media if connected through IDE. I might just skip upgrading as I won't be doing much burning anyway.
 
Just ordered a 1GB stick of memory for the internal slot and a SATA to IDE adapter for the SSD i'll be purchasing at the end of the week. Looking forward to the upgrades!
 
Just received my BT Mighty Mouse, BT Adapter and my Leopard DVD. Running great so far and my setup is so much cleaner with the new mouse:

 
And here I thought the iMac was some new thing that actually seems like a very tempting computer to own. lol

Nice.
 



Today was the day... the old iMac got a 2GB RAM upgrade, new PRAM battery, new Sandisk 120GB SSD and a good internal cleaning as it was full of dust. Everything went pretty smoothly and it's still installing Leopard now so i'll wait to see how everything goes when its done. Looking forward to using this machine a lot more.
 
ryannel2003 said:



Today was the day... the old iMac got a 2GB RAM upgrade, new PRAM battery, new Sandisk 120GB SSD and a good internal cleaning as it was full of dust. Everything went pretty smoothly and it's still installing Leopard now so i'll wait to see how everything goes when its done. Looking forward to using this machine a lot more.
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It really is a beautiful machine, i'm very jealous right now. i've been looking for one for awhile. Your's looks like it's in perfect condition XD
 
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