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Tiger on a G3 333MHz iMac?

lamina

lamina

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 9, 2006
1,757
69
Niagara
My friend just acquired a G3 iMac. It's got a G3 at 333MHz with 128mb of RAM. Think Tiger will run? If not, where can I get Panther?

Is there a way for me to boot from my USB hard drive with an install image on it, and install directly to the iMac? I've done it with my PowerBook, but I'm wondering if it will work the same for the iMac.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

PS: No FireWire.
 
lamina said:
My friend just acquired a G3 iMac. It's got a G3 at 333MHz with 128mb of RAM. Think Tiger will run? If not, where can I get Panther?

Is there a way for me to boot from my USB hard drive with an install image on it, and install directly to the iMac? I've done it with my PowerBook, but I'm wondering if it will work the same for the iMac.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

PS: No FireWire.
Click to expand...

Get Panther. You can't "offically" install Tiger on Tray-loaders, and for a good reason.. You'd probably throw it across the room.

And as for the External Hard Drive, you mays well not even bother because it's USB 1.0. That'd be like trying to download pr0n on dial-up..

You can find Panther on eBay for really cheap.. it'd be pretty expensive anywhere else.
 
I thought no PPC Mac could boot from USB...?
Did your PowerBook boot from a USB drive, or maybe FireWire?

But, Tiger needs:
System requirements
You must have a Macintosh computer with:
• a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
• a DVD drive
• built-in FireWire
• at least 256 MB of RAM
• a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported
by your computer
• at least 3 GB of disk space available, or 4 GB if you install the developer tools
Click to expand...

There is a CD version of Tiger out there, but I'm not sure you can boot your iMac from it.

Try to get Panther from eBay orso, that would be the cheapest bet.
 
If the RAM gets an upgrade to at least 256mb it will run OK.as in usable.
I had it on my Bondi blue imac until I put ubuntu on it and breathed new life into an old machine.
 
spinne1 said:
Having run both Panther and Tiger on a similar era computer, I can say that there was for me no noticeable difference in performance between Panther and Tiger--both were slow as molasses.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... well I've only run Panther on a 333 mHz Mac and it was certainly like molasses, so I guess I assumed Tiger would be even worse. Thanks for the clarification!
 
If you do run Tiger, search for an install DisableTigerFeatures to disable Spotlight and Dashboard, that should speed things up at least a little, but in all honesty, that machine will not run any form of OS X acceptable as it is now. You definitely need to upgrade the RAM, and even then it will be a really poor experience.
 
My 333 mHz G3 Powerbook (Lombard) did a decent job with 10.3 all things considered. I was even able to do some photoshop CS work on the road. Not fast by any stretch, but respectable for a 7.5 year old machine!

But yeah, max out that RAM.
 
Well, I bought Panther from a local Apple reseller for cheap, and it's running great on this G3. I can't believe it!

Aside from no Dashboard or Spotlight, this is just like Tiger. What an amazing OS. I'm very pleased, even with the 160MB of RAM.

Thanks for the advice.
 
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