what could i use an imac g3 for today?

[firelighter487]

i have an imac g3 lying around that i haven't used in about 2 years. it has macos 9 on it.

the specs are (i think):
400mhz g3
2mb gpu
32mb ram
80gb hdd

i don't know if it still works but i assume so.

what could i do with it?

 

[borgranta]

If you find ancient Mac games you may be able to run them on it.

 

[0248294]

It'd make for a nice little jukebox. Fit in a moderately large sized HDD in, or stream over the network if possible, and enjoy. The speakers on the second-gen iMac G3s are very nice, but do unfortunately suffer from foam rot. But even then, a nice pair of small speakers like the Harman Kardon Soundsticks would fit it nicely.

 

[MBAir2010]

You can watch the World Cup on it..........
Someone is selling a maroon one on Craigslist for $200 bucks

 

[weckart]

A cat bed.



This is about the only Mac that I would countenance gutting due to the awful, awful screen it was blighted with.

 

[MBAir2010]

A cat bed.

View attachment 768580

This is about the only Mac that I would countenance gutting due to the awful, awful screen it was blighted with.

You should buy that maroon one for a matching Litter box!

 

[firelighter487]

This is about the only Mac that I would countenance gutting due to the awful, awful screen it was blighted with.

you mean that specific model? mine is a tray load model, not a slot load.
[doublepost=1530481441][/doublepost]

Someone is selling a maroon one on Craigslist for $200 bucks

i bought mine for €10 a few years ago....

 

[weckart]

you mean that specific model? mine is a tray load model, not a slot load.

i bought mine for €10 a few years ago....

Two years ago you couldn't give these away in the UK. They were going unsold on eBay for £5 or even free on Gumtree. Nobody wanted to deal with CRTs. Now look how fashionable retrocomputing has become with prices to match.

Slot or tray makes no difference, the CRT is very low quality in both. Even the eMac disappointed due to the lack of VRAM. It was a 17" that couldn't output 1280x1024 without major flickering. A shame because the rest of the design stood out among a sea of beige boxes at the time.

 

[MBAir2010]

you mean that specific model? mine is a tray load model, not a slot load.
[doublepost=1530481441][/doublepost]
i bought mine for €10 a few years ago....

The seller thinks because there is an Apple logo, it hasta be worth that much.
I gave my blue one away in 2011 with CS3
The igloo G4 is resting downstairs waiting for a motherboard

 

[firelighter487]

Two years ago you couldn't give these away in the UK. They were going unsold on eBay for £5 or even free on Gumtree. Nobody wanted to deal with CRTs. Now look how fashionable retrocomputing has become with prices to match.

Slot or tray makes no difference, the CRT is very low quality in both. Even the eMac disappointed due to the lack of VRAM. It was a 17" that couldn't output 1280x1024 without major flickering. A shame because the rest of the design stood out among a sea of beige boxes at the time.

i don't mind CRT's at all. i still watch VHS on a massive widescreen CRT.. from what i remember i thought the CRT on the imac i have looked fine. it was very usable.. but i didn't run it at max resolution so maybe that's why.

 

[bunnspecial]

Two years ago you couldn't give these away in the UK. They were going unsold on eBay for £5 or even free on Gumtree. Nobody wanted to deal with CRTs. Now look how fashionable retrocomputing has become with prices to match.

All I can say is I wished I lived in the UK.

At least here in the US, I've been given a few but have also had to pay up for some of the more unusual colors. I'm still keeping my eyes open for a Flower Power and Blue Dalamation.

In particular, I've noticed that the "5 Flavor" tray loaders also seem to bring strong prices.

Also, the 1.42ghz eMac makes a nice little G4 AIO. They at least use an aperture grille CRT, and the 1.42 has a Core Image GPU.

 

[weckart]

i don't mind CRT's at all. i still watch VHS on a massive widescreen CRT.. from what i remember i thought the CRT on the imac i have looked fine. it was very usable.. but i didn't run it at max resolution so maybe that's why.

The CRTs used give a fuzzy display. Even by the standards of budget CRTs back in the day they were very, very disappointing to say nothing of the very curved screen, which was retro even then.

I'm still keeping my eyes open for a Flower Power and Blue Dalamation.

Also, the 1.42ghz eMac makes a nice little G4 AIO. They at least use an aperture grille CRT, and the 1.42 has a Core Image GPU.

I had moved from a 15" Sony Trinitron to a 19" Illyama when I looked at buying an eMac but was frustrated with the bizarre max resolution of 1152x864 or something like that. It could mirror an odd 1280x960 externally but the CRT couldn't hold the signal internally in any stable manner. It defaulted to 1024x768, which was poor for a 17" display.

As for the Flower Power

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SUPER-RA...9-1-M5521-Rainbow-Flower-WORKING/292622620974

 

[MrAjarix]

i have an imac g3 lying around that i haven't used in about 2 years. it has macos 9 on it.

the specs are (i think):
400mhz g3
2mb gpu
32mb ram
80gb hdd

i don't know if it still works but i assume so.

what could i do with it?

Personally, my reasons for using it are purely nostalgia. What I do with mine is use it with some version of OS 9 and OS X for dual boot. This way, I have both the original OS the machine came with and the latest (OS X 10.4.11 Tiger). I like to use it in the OS 9 partition playing games that came with it such as Bugdom, Nanosaur and Cro Mag Rally. I also play some other games on it such as Pacman, age of empires trial, quake III Arena and more.

Some people use these PowerPC macs as home servers (storing files for their other computers) I believe however, I have not tried that personally. Others install some version of Linux on them made specifically for PPC. When it comes to web browsing no matter whether you are using Linux or the latest OS X with TenFourFox (Mozilla Firefox fork for PPC) you will be able to access most websites however, watching video in your browser via YouTube is sadly a no go (takes ages to load and then is very choppy even at low resolution).

I am currently working on getting mine up and running as it used to be on Mac OS 9.1 for the reasons I stated earlier (Nostalgia) however I can only seem to get it working with OS X and 9.2.2.

With only 32mb of RAM, I think you are likely going to want to avoid OS X however someone else may be able to advice better on that as I have no experience with an iMac of that spec.

Hope you find a good use for it!

P.S. If you do decide to go the nostalgia route, there is a great site called 'macintoshrepository' which hosts files for games, applications, ISO images and much more.

 

[weckart]

P.S. If you do decide to go the nostalgia route, there is a great site called 'macintoshrepository' which hosts files for games, applications, ISO images and much more.

The macintoshrepository just republishes what it filches from the macintoshgarden, which unlike the repository doesn't impose download limits.

 

[MrAjarix]

The macintoshrepository just republishes what it filches from the macintoshgarden, which unlike the repository doesn't impose download limits.

I was not aware of this other website you mentioned. It's just a site that i know of and has worked for me but of course I am sure there are others out there. Personally, I have checked over at this 'macintoshgarden' website and they seem to have no where near the amount of software the repository has and focus on games rather than games + other so I would recommend repository. I do however believe that the more of these sites, the better!

 

[AphoticD]

The macintoshrepository just republishes what it filches from the macintoshgarden, which unlike the repository doesn't impose download limits.

They are both a valuable resource. I like the style of the repo site and it is sometimes easier to find things than on the garden. If they do duplicate each other’s content then that’s all good. The more the merrier.

At least these two websites aren’t trying anything shady on their users like many of these kinds of sites for other platforms.

 

[bobesch]

i have an imac g3 lying around that i haven't used in about 2 years. it has macos 9 on it.

the specs are (i think):
400mhz g3
2mb gpu
32mb ram
80gb hdd
i don't know if it still works but i assume so.
what could i do with it?

I'd only max-out RAM to about 500MB - the rest is fine to run os9 ...

And this my favorite/basic os9 install to make the iMac-G3 a nice connected workstation:
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/g3-workstation-jpg.768470/

1) Basic Web/IMAP-mail: Classilla
(then connect to the internet and go to macintoshgarden to find the rest)
2) Upgrade to os 9.2x
3) webDAV: Goliath1.x (to exchange files through cloud/webDAV)
4) FileSharing (AFP): Transmit1.7, Fetch4 (FTP only with OSX-10.5 or earlier or OSX-10.5-Server as a virutual machine within VMware Fusion)
5) File handling: StuffIt5.5 (to expand archives), Toast5 (to mount disk-image-files)
6) Office: MS Office '98 or '01; AppleWorks6, NisusWriter
7) PDF: Acrobat5, AcrobatReader5, PDFWriter4
8) ScreenSharing (VNC): VNCthing
9) VirtualWindows: VirtualPC 3-6 with WindowsXP-SP2-Fundamentals with RDP-Client-6x to connect to Windows-Machines up to Server2008; or Win2k to run some critical Windows-Progs
10) Graphic: AppleWorks6; Photoshop7
etc etc ...

Get connected:
- ScreenSharing with all your Macs (VNCthing) or PC (virtual WinXP/RDP-Client)
- Move files between os9 and Macs/PC via IMAP-email (Classilla) or webDAV (Goliath)
Get productive on os9 with any legacy app, then print to PDF (Chooser: Adobe PDFwriter4 etc) and share the PDF to any other machine via webDAV/email.

 

[firelighter487]

I'd only max-out RAM to about 500MB - the rest is fine to run os9 ...

And this my favorite/basic os9 install to make the iMac-G3 a nice connected workstation:
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/g3-workstation-jpg.768470/

1) Basic Web/IMAP-mail: Classilla
(then connect to the internet and go to macintoshgarden to find the rest)
2) Upgrade to os 9.2x
3) webDAV: Goliath1.x (to exchange files through cloud/webDAV)
4) FileSharing (AFP): Transmit1.7, Fetch4 (FTP only with OSX-10.5 or earlier or OSX-10.5-Server as a virutual machine within VMware Fusion)
5) File handling: StuffIt5.5 (to expand archives), Toast5 (to mount disk-image-files)
6) Office: MS Office '98 or '01; AppleWorks6, NisusWriter
7) PDF: Acrobat5, AcrobatReader5, PDFWriter4
8) ScreenSharing (VNC): VNCthing
9) VirtualWindows: VirtualPC 3-6 with WindowsXP-SP2-Fundamentals with RDP-Client-6x to connect to Windows-Machines up to Server2008; or Win2k to run some critical Windows-Progs
10) Graphic: AppleWorks6; Photoshop7
etc etc ...

Get connected:
- ScreenSharing with all your Macs (VNCthing) or PC (virtual WinXP/RDP-Client)
- Move files between os9 and Macs/PC via IMAP-email (Classilla) or webDAV (Goliath)
Get productive on os9 with any legacy app, then print to PDF (Chooser: Adobe PDFwriter4 etc) and share the PDF to any other machine via webDAV/email.

a lot of that is based on internet connectivity.. is it safe to hook up such an old system to the internet? won't it get loads of viruses and stuff?

 

[redheeler]

a lot of that is based on internet connectivity.. is it safe to hook up such an old system to the internet? won't it get loads of viruses and stuff?

You won't find many (if any) attacks targeted at Mac OS 9 or PowerPC versions of Mac OS X, simply because the number of users on those old OS versions is so tiny. Just avoid putting sensitive info on there as a precaution and you'll be fine.

 

[bobesch]

a lot of that is based on internet connectivity.. is it safe to hook up such an old system to the internet? won't it get loads of viruses and stuff?

Well, most of the stuff could be run without being connected to the internet but only being connected within the local network. When it comes to webDAV, I don't know, how that connection could be hacked. And os9 presumably nowadays isn't a real target for malware ...
But I wouldn't dare to go online with VirtualPC/Win.

 

[z970]

But I wouldn't dare to go online with VirtualPC/Win.

I would.