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Turquoise iMac G3

R

RobinHood5

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2012
157
0
I'm possibly going to pick up a working original iMac g3 turquoise. I found it on Craigslist for $20. Is this a good deal? I mainly want this for the heck of it but I guess I would be interested in what someone can do with one of these. I bought my first Mac a few months ago (27" iMac 2011) so I thought it would be cool to get the original. Should I get it?
 
That's about the most I'd pay for one. They aren't very usable in today's world. But with patience you can still get stuff done on them.
 
If this is truly a original iMac G3 with a tray loading drive then more than likely it will have a bad flyback transformer if it has not already been replaced (This is part of what makes the monitor work) one way you can tell if you have a bad flyback is you will hear a hissing noise from it when off. If your only going to use the computer very little i don't think it will be a issue as long as you unplug it when off:(. but if your going to use it every day or so i would look for a slot loading iMac they don't seem to have as meany bad flybacks:)
 
Like Jessica Lares said, they're not exactly quiet. If its really an original or even a later tray loader, I'd just run 9.2.2 on it with Classilla and Office 2001. I'd probably not run Mac OS X on a G3 unless its 333MHz or faster with 320MB of RAM or more.
 
peeaanuut said:
fish tank!!!! Bed for your cat!!
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I've seriously thought about making an aquarium out of it. The other think I thought would be cool would be to just light up the rear shell with blue LEDs and leave it to sit somewhere.
 
 
YanniDepp said:
The original ones had fans in, didn't they?

The later revisions didn't, any they're really quiet if you put a new hard drive in them. Remember, they can't go above 128GB!
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It's not the fans if they're in there. It's the CPU itself. My Power Mac G5/G3 beige desktop/iBook Clamshell all do the same thing, while my iMac G4 doesn't seem to have that issue. The iMac G3 however is very, very noticeable, so it sits under my desk and never gets used.
 
The thing in slot loading G3 iMacs that makes the only source of noise audible to humans is the hard drive. If you were to put a SSD in one, it'd be silent. Instead of wasting money on an SSD that'll run on a ATA/33 bus, just put in a CompactFlash card with an IDE adapter. You won't need a very fast CF card to max out the iMac's ATA/33 bus.
 
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