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Tips to make iMac G3 run faster on the Internet?

LOLZpersonok

LOLZpersonok

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 10, 2012
724
18
Calgary, Canada
I have an iMac G3 slot loader with a 350MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. It's a summer of 2000 iMac.

Before I accidentally murdered Mac OS X 10.2 and put OS 9 on it, it used to run oddly quickly on the Internet. Despite a couple incorrectly rendered sites every here and then and the normal slow site, it was much faster than it is now. It was even able to tackle Omegle perfectly fine and functionally.

Now that I have installed Mac OS X 10.2.8 again (alongside OS 9.2) so I could play all of my M4A and M4P music again, it's significantly slower on the Internet now, I have no clue why. Most of the time I can't even get a new stranger on Omegle! Pages load much slower than they did before. It's also not any better under Mac OS 9.2

Can anyone provide me with any optimization tips? Sorry if there is any misspellings or incorrect words. I'm using my iPod right now.
 
LOLZpersonok said:
I have an iMac G3 slot loader with a 350MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. It's a summer of 2000 iMac.

Before I accidentally murdered Mac OS X 10.2 and put OS 9 on it, it used to run oddly quickly on the Internet. Despite a couple incorrectly rendered sites every here and then and the normal slow site, it was much faster than it is now. It was even able to tackle Omegle perfectly fine and functionally.

Now that I have installed Mac OS X 10.2.8 again (alongside OS 9.2) so I could play all of my M4A and M4P music again, it's significantly slower on the Internet now, I have no clue why. Most of the time I can't even get a new stranger on Omegle! Pages load much slower than they did before. It's also not any better under Mac OS 9.2

Can anyone provide me with any optimization tips? Sorry if there is any misspellings or incorrect words. I'm using my iPod right now.
Click to expand...

I would like to add that the internet changes every second and is evolving if this was more than 3 months ago then that is why it feels like night and day.
 
Lil Chillbil said:
I would like to add that the internet changes every second and is evolving if this was more than 3 months ago then that is why it feels like night and day.
Click to expand...

So it is because the internetz has changed in 3 months so that every site is slower. Nah, I don't think so.
 
Lil Chillbil said:
I would like to add that the internet changes every second and is evolving if this was more than 3 months ago then that is why it feels like night and day.
Click to expand...

Internet is the same, it is the websites that changes. For some odd reason now we want to have more heavy web apps. HTML5 was made for make things easier to load, unlike flash... Oh well...
 
AlbertEinstein said:
Browsers man... which were you using on OS 9 and which are you using in 10.2?

Albert
Click to expand...

In OS 9 it's this weird browser called Mozilla or I'm using iCab.

For 10.2 it's Camino. It was waaaay (actually not that much, but still) faster before when it ran OS 10.2 before I erased the hard drive.
 
I'd just keep that thing on OS 9. It's much too slow for anything beyond that, and there's no updated web browser for Jaguar, the operating system you're running now. For web browsing, use Classilla. It's pretty much Mozilla but updated for the web standards of about Firefox 2, with security updates coming out regularly.
 
LOLZpersonok said:
I have an iMac G3 slot loader with a 350MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. It's a summer of 2000 iMac.

Before I accidentally murdered Mac OS X 10.2 and put OS 9 on it, it used to run oddly quickly on the Internet. Despite a couple incorrectly rendered sites every here and then and the normal slow site, it was much faster than it is now. It was even able to tackle Omegle perfectly fine and functionally.

Now that I have installed Mac OS X 10.2.8 again (alongside OS 9.2) so I could play all of my M4A and M4P music again, it's significantly slower on the Internet now, I have no clue why. Most of the time I can't even get a new stranger on Omegle! Pages load much slower than they did before. It's also not any better under Mac OS 9.2

Can anyone provide me with any optimization tips? Sorry if there is any misspellings or incorrect words. I'm using my iPod right now.
Click to expand...

Use classilla for OS 9.

It's really the best browser for those old macs, especially when running on such old software
 
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Amen to those who say use Classilla, its the only browser you should use on OS 9. You can use Classilla in Classic in Jaguar, it may be the most secure browser for Jaguar these days.

Tiger is not completely out of the question even at 350 mhz, it may actually run as well as Jaguar with your 512 MB of RAM. Tiger opens up a ton of modern browser choices. Tenfourfox (will be slow, but pages will render correctly), Omniweb, an even more modern Camino. Just sayin...

Ken Watanabe on the Lowendmac OS 9 user group list posted that he discovered he could actually stream youtube on his Pismo pretty decently using Classilla in Classic with Tiger, and the mobile youtube site. It launches the video (3gp I think) in OS X's Quicktime. In Tenfourfox in OS X 10.4 this little tick doesn't work. Score one for Classilla! Here is the thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/macos9/7pRonFArJ14

People have put mintPPC 9.3 on machines slower than yours and still report decent speed. Just another option.
 
LOLZpersonok said:
I have an iMac G3 slot loader with a 350MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. It's a summer of 2000 iMac.

Before I accidentally murdered Mac OS X 10.2 and put OS 9 on it, it used to run oddly quickly on the Internet. Despite a couple incorrectly rendered sites every here and then and the normal slow site, it was much faster than it is now. It was even able to tackle Omegle perfectly fine and functionally.

Now that I have installed Mac OS X 10.2.8 again (alongside OS 9.2) so I could play all of my M4A and M4P music again, it's significantly slower on the Internet now, I have no clue why. Most of the time I can't even get a new stranger on Omegle! Pages load much slower than they did before. It's also not any better under Mac OS 9.2

Can anyone provide me with any optimization tips? Sorry if there is any misspellings or incorrect words. I'm using my iPod right now.
Click to expand...

300mhz good luck > Webkit
 
From what I've found, a G3 is very slow on the internet even with a 600mhz processor with TenFourFox but Classilla while outdated, is actually very fast even in 2019 with a 233mhz processor and 64mb of ram.
 
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Appleuser201 said:
From what I've found, a G3 is very slow on the internet even with a 600mhz processor with TenFourFox but Classilla while outdated, is actually very fast even in 2019 with a 233mhz processor and 64mb of ram.
Click to expand...
Put the whole browser cache in a RAM Disk and have Virtual Memory disabled, and it will be even faster. Granted, more than just 64MB RAM would be better. (Max RAM Disk size is 512MB, unless when using 3rd-party applications, which btw work well, too.)

It's ironic, but my Mac mini G4 under native OS 9 is the fastest-browsing COMPUTER I have ever owned, thanks to all this. It also has an SSD in it, just to complete the speed overkill.

Provided you have the RAM, any PPC Mac under OS 9 can achieve the same.
 
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Appleuser201 said:
From what I've found, a G3 is very slow on the internet even with a 600mhz processor with TenFourFox but Classilla while outdated, is actually very fast even in 2019 with a 233mhz processor and 64mb of ram.
Click to expand...
You found it necessary to bump a thread that had been dormant for 6 years to post this?
[doublepost=1566780360][/doublepost]
Jubadub said:
It's ironic, but my Mac mini G4 under native OS 9 is the fastest-browsing COMPUTER I have ever owned, thanks to all this. It also has an SSD in it, just to complete the speed overkill.
Click to expand...

you don't own a core 2 duo or newer with an SSD, then?
 
spyguy10709 said:
You found it necessary to bump a thread that had been dormant for 6 years to post this?
[doublepost=1566780360][/doublepost]

you don't own a core 2 duo or newer with an SSD, then?
Click to expand...

Yes, I found it quite interesting just how nice of a browsing experience Classilla is, (at 233mhz!) even though it is several years outdated. If only more time was spent on Classilla, OS 8.5 and 9 users and users of early OS X (and G3 users) will have a good browsing experience.
 
spyguy10709 said:
you don't own a core 2 duo or newer with an SSD, then?
Click to expand...
I have an i5 2nd gen laptop with an SSD and 8gb RAM with Windows, "macOS" and everything, it's an absolute dream machine (when ignoring the many negative sides, like privacy violation on the hardware level). It does everything I need blazing fast.

But not web browsing like Classilla does under OS 9 whenever the browser cache is involved, naturally. No SSD on this planet, even with NVMe (instead of the slower SATA III) can catch up to RAM speed. No Intel machine can natively boot OS 9, and Mac OS X cannot disable virtual memory (not without dire consequences - if anybody has any experience in constantly using OS X without virtual memory, let me know how that went). Windows doesn't normally allow this, either (again, if someone tried this on Windows, please share the experience with us).

The problem about virtual memory being enabled is that part of the "RAM" is actually a page file or similar located in the disk, which is naturally slower than using actual RAM. We can actually create RAM Disks in all of those systems, too, of course, but cannot be certain only real RAM will be used for it. At least as far as I'm aware.

Of course, if we find a way to 100% ensure none of a mounted RAM Disk would be allocated in virtual RAM, it solves this problem entirely. There's ramBuntious 2.0.1 and the like to try. (Then again, I suspect that one is PPC only, so no Intel solution there yet, but there must be one out there.)
 
Appleuser201 said:
Yes, I found it quite interesting just how nice of a browsing experience Classilla is, (at 233mhz!) even though it is several years outdated. If only more time was spent on Classilla, OS 8.5 and 9 users and users of early OS X (and G3 users) will have a good browsing experience.
Click to expand...
Maybe you're new to forum culture? generally you'd just create a new post on the topic than resurrect one from a long time ago... Certainly a very good bit of knowledge to share just an interesting way to go about sharing it.
 
Jubadub said:
I have an i5 2nd gen laptop with an SSD and 8gb RAM with Windows, "macOS" and everything, it's an absolute dream machine (when ignoring the many negative sides, like privacy violation on the hardware level). It does everything I need blazing fast.

But not web browsing like Classilla does under OS 9 whenever the browser cache is involved, naturally. No SSD on this planet, even with NVMe (instead of the slower SATA III) can catch up to RAM speed. No Intel machine can natively boot OS 9, and Mac OS X cannot disable virtual memory (not without dire consequences - if anybody has any experience in constantly using OS X without virtual memory, let me know how that went). Windows doesn't normally allow this, either (again, if someone tried this on Windows, please share the experience with us).

The problem about virtual memory being enabled is that part of the "RAM" is actually a page file or similar located in the disk, which is naturally slower than using actual RAM. We can actually create RAM Disks in all of those systems, too, of course, but cannot be certain only real RAM will be used for it. At least as far as I'm aware.

Of course, if we find a way to 100% ensure none of a mounted RAM Disk would be allocated in virtual RAM, it solves this problem entirely. There's ramBuntious 2.0.1 and the like to try. (Then again, I suspect that one is PPC only, so no Intel solution there yet, but there must be one out there.)
Click to expand...

frankly speaking, I'd love to know what sites you're browsing that a 1.25ghz dual G4 (fastest classic mac) on OS 9 outperforms a modern rendering engine on a machine with ample ram and SSD, even accounting for the Mac's architectural design
 
spyguy10709 said:
frankly speaking, I'd love to know what sites you're browsing that a 1.25ghz dual G4 (fastest classic mac) on OS 9 outperforms a modern rendering engine on a machine with ample ram and SSD, even accounting for the Mac's architectural design
Click to expand...
Any website whose content has been cached. The less partial and the more complete the caching, the bigger the difference. So the answer to "which website" is "all websites that are repeatedly accessed", meaning any website one uses regularly, as long as Classilla can render it (so no use for, say, YouTube, but great for web forums like "Macintosh Garden" and "MacOS9Lives!").

The fastest OS 9.2.2 bootable Macs today are dual 1.42 GHz MDDs IIRC (forgot if officially or not), though there're also 3rd party CPU upgrades and overclocking to consider, as well as single processor performance, case in which we got 1.5 GHz on the Mac mini G4 and the few 1.67 GHz G4s out there. The fastest I have come across is a guy's MDD at MacOS9Lives! who has a Sonnet-upgraded 1.8GHz G4 which, in turn, got stably overclocked to 2GHz (but OS 9 in his setup only detects 1 of the two processors of his MDD, because of the Sonnet upgrade). Not too shabby, I'd say.
 
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Jubadub said:
Any website whose content has been cached. The less partial and the more complete the caching, the bigger the difference. So the answer to "which website" is "all websites that are repeatedly accessed", meaning any website one uses regularly, as long as Classilla can render it (so no use for, say, YouTube, but great for web forums like "Macintosh Garden" and "MacOS9Lives!").

The fastest OS 9.2.2 bootable Macs today are dual 1.42 GHz MDDs IIRC (forgot if officially or not), though there're also 3rd party CPU upgrades and overclocking to consider, as well as single processor performance, case in which we got 1.5 GHz on the Mac mini G4 and the few 1.67 GHz G4s out there. The fastest I have come across is a guy's MDD at MacOS9Lives! who has a Sonnet-upgraded 1.8GHz G4 which, in turn, got stably overclocked to 2GHz (but OS 9 in his setup only detects 1 of the two processors of his MDD, because of the Sonnet upgrade). Not too shabby, I'd say.
Click to expand...

I've actually found YouTube to be a lot easier on Mac OS 9 then on an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1
 
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