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markjs

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 3, 2002
71
0
I just wanna get a feel for it, don't care if it's slow, so will it hanlde it?

OS 9 would have been ok except nobody here can help me with it......
 
I just wanna get a feel for it, don't care if it's slow, so will it hanlde it?

OS 9 would have been ok except nobody here can help me with it......

Yes, it can handle having any CD of OS X placed beside the machine and left there for up to 2 hours at a time. After that, it will get a bit stressed.

Seriously, it should be able to handle up to 10.2 without to much trouble. When you go to 10.3 or 4, you're gonna have some serious slowdown issues. Also, upgrading the ram on that machine is a beggar, so you probably don't want to muck with it.

What issues did you have with 9?
 
I found that for the G3 the fastest version was 10.3.9. I'd say with that version you would get ok performance for maybe browsing and very light work. Ultimatly though I would say it wouldn't be worth it. Whatever it is. The ram would be the biggest issue.
 
Well my issue with 9 is here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/307921/

and nobody has been able to answer the question.

I am just wanting to learn mac because I work on computers and it will greatly up my value to my boss if I can handle mac as well as PCs.

Most of all I just want my stupid free cute little purple iMac to work!!!!
 
i'd say 10.3.. thats what i used to run on my g3 imac before i upgraded the ram to a gig. panther ran itunes, camino (firefox) and almost everything else with out too much trouble, and i too had 256 mb ram. 10.2 jaguar would be pretty slow and isnt so much supported anymore, so yeah, go for 10.3 imo. tiger MIGHT run, but with spotlight and dashboard, 256 mb ram really doesnt cut it.
 
Well, you definitely don't want to run Tiger on that. That would be murder. I have two G3 machines and both are running different versions of OS X. My iBook is running Panther, and it works flawlessly. My Power Mac is running Tiger, it runs fair, but I have very little RAM in there. I would say your safe with 10.2 or 10.3. Running Tiger would be a gamble. It may run so badly that you'd give up on it.
 
I just wanna get a feel for it, don't care if it's slow, so will it hanlde it?

OS 9 would have been ok except nobody here can help me with it......

I had Tiger on my 500MHz G3 iMac with 384 MB RAM and the standard 5400 RPM HDD. It was reasonable but not great. If you are low on HD space it will be horrible. I suggest a 7200 RPM hard drive with a little more room so you don't get into space/fragmentation issues. Along with that more RAM is a godsend with Tiger.
 
It should work fine, but a bit slow on 10.3.9, I don't think that you would want to go to 10.4.x though. I run 10.3.9 on a 500mhz G3 iMac with only a little over 128MBs of Ram, and it works fine for iTunes, so it would really depend on what all you want to do with it.
 
Well, you definitely don't want to run Tiger on that. That would be murder.


Tiger runs fine on a 333Mhz G3. OS X has actually become faster with each revision on older machines. You need to bump the RAM up though - 340Mb would be better.
 
will imac run with tiger?

Whooah yeah!!!!
i had been running jag with this 333 imac, and finally got tiger to run with the original drive (wont run on anything over 8 {or7.5} GB) after many attempts at loading with my ibook and a firewire connected to drive,,,,,,,.,thinned out the program with customized install delocalizer and onyx ..............speedier than ever!!!!!!!http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/smile.gif
 
Jaguar
-should handle it fairly well

Panther
-should handle it again

(note, not much experience with those two)

Tiger
-disabling functions like dashboard and the dock and you should be sweet...

although, i strongly recommend hardware upgrades...namely RAM, then hard drive
 
I had 10.3.9 on mine i with no issues.
fully usable for basic stuff, even light gaming.

that machine is now running ubuntu.
 
10.2 is perfectly stable on those imacs. 10.3 takes a long time to install, but will run reasonably reliable, though I do suggest upping your ram if possible (it's not as hard as it seems, but it is time consuming, and if it is tray-loading imac [i.e., no slot], you'll need laptop-style ram, which is pricier). For how it is currently configured, 10.2 should run quite well.
 
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