What should I do with this (Indigo?) iMac G3?

[uspcommuter]

Hey Guys and Gals,

Picked up something very interesting at work today. I guess someone did some upgrade to their mac gear. This machine still look like it was new. It is a 400 MHz iMac G3 (Indigo I think) running mac os 9 (at least) with 2 firewires port, 10gb drive, and CD-ROM?. I am really considering using this as a backup computer/web browsing computer for guests. Any suggestions on the things that I should do with this thing interms of upgrade?

-What 10.x.x version should I use to optimize this machine?
-How much Ram?
-Should I replace the HD? (if I can do so)
-Can I add Wifi to this thing? USB I guess?

Thanks for the advices in advance and if you need additional info about the machine to give out your advice...I will provide that as soon as I have time to snoop around the mac.

 

[7254278]

You havent told us how much ram it is but considering you ahve atleast 128mb I would say panther is your best bet. Tiger might be t ram hungry and heavy for your machine and Jaguar is just plain bad in my opinion so I vote panther.

 

[jiv3turkey748]

put at least jaguar on it 256mb should b enough ram for jaguar or panther if your just using it for surfing the web id you put tiger on it 512 would probaly be better(you have to have at least 128 for panther and 256 for tiger) i think the max it can hold is 1gb

it has an airport slot on it(not airport extreme)

you might wand toupgraded the hd mine has 10gb and i only have like 300mb available and all i really have on it is music nd a few pictures

 

[uspcommuter]

Well the imac came with128 mb, but I would consider 1gb since its just a little over $100. I see there are advice of going to panther and tiger (if I am adventurous). Hey jiv3turkey, you have a similar machine...does it make any difference going tiger versus panther? B/c you seem to have similar agenda list as I. I also plan on putting on a few pictures, music, some wordprocessing and surfing. Anyone else want to chime in on their experiences?

Thanks.

 

[Leareth]

go with panther
much better performance that Tiger
It is still a great little machine though...

 

[uspcommuter]

:bump:

 

[Eidorian]

You'll want at least 512 MB of RAM. It's enough for running iTunes and Safari with little lag. I have 10.3.9 running on my PowerMac G3 and it's very smooth. You'll only notice a slight delay in Expose due to the video card. You'll want Panther of course. Make sure to cut back on some of the excessive components when you install Panther. I got Panther to install on an iBook with 10 GB and was able to get everything in under 1.8 GB. Removing unnecessary Printer Drivers and Langauge support is a major space saver.

 

[uspcommuter]

:bump:

Does anyone have experience in installing Tiger on this type of machine? If Tiger doesn't give too much of a boost over panther I might just stick with panther. Please comment b/c I need to make it final soon. Thanks

 

[shadowmoses]

To install Tiger you will need a DVD drive and if your iMac doesnt have one built in i am not sure if you can boot from external sources as i dont think its supports firewire booting, so you will need tiger on CD....

If you have over 256mb RAM Tiger will install fine but be quite slow, i would reccomend tiger over panther i find it to be a superior OS,

ShaDOW