[Kenneth]

Yesterday, I saw a garage sale sign a block next to my house, so I decided to check it out. They were all Japanese and trying to sell all of their stuff since they were moving back to Japan. I walked to their house and saw an blueberry 'tray-loaded' iMac sit on the ground with the $50 tag on it. I used to own 2 tray-loaders (233 and 333), then I sold them on eBay few years ago.

Since the owner of the iMac went back to Japan, I couldn't get more details on the iMac. One dude powered it up for me and I saw it was loaded with RedHat Linux. Okay... the iMac worked fine. They handed me a couple CDs, original power cord, KB, and mouse. I didn't know the currene value of the old iMac and it was all in stock config, so I said $45. I went home with that iMac.

Last night, I opened it up and noticed that it's dust free. Looks like, the previous owner didn't use much.

Now, I'm thinking.. what should I really do with the iMac? I didn't have time to install the OS yet. Of course, I don't plan to run OS 8.6 or 9.x on it.

Config;
G3/333
96MB RAM (32 + 64)
6GB HDD
6MB SGRAM
ATI Rage Pro
CD-ROM.

I thought about turning it to a rack mounted iMac.. but how to deal with the VGA-out?

Any advice?

[yikes600]

Umm, Red Hat Linux on PPC?

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by yikes600:
Umm, Red Hat Linux on PPC?

Yes.. it was loaded with Red Hat for PPC.. then they formatted the HD before handed to me.

[Daedalus17]

OSX is much too heavy for that old thing. I would recommend Yellow Dog Linux.

Bittorent:
YDL 4.0 CD1
YDL 4.0 CD2
YDL 4.0 CD3
YDL 4.0 CD4
Direct Downloads:
YDL 4.0 CD1
YDL 4.0 CD2
YDL 4.0 CD3
YDL 4.0 CD4

If Yellow Dog isn't quite your cup of tea then check out PenguinPPC for more choices on the OS to use.

[Kenneth]

Thank you. I would take a look. I may also put MkLinux on my old PowerMac 6100.. that's a different story.

[nbnz]

I run OS X 10.2 on my old iMac 333, only for browsing & email & other light duties. Although I doubt it would run with only 96MB RAM (I have 288MB).

[jamil5454]

Put Linux on that baby and use it as some sort of server. Or you could add a 128 stick of RAM and have a backup OS X machine.

[Krusty]

Definitely use it as a server of some sort. My old iMac DV is currently serving up web pages, FTP, Sushi Server (music) and acts as a fax portal for my home network. My roommate also uses it to browse the web, iChat (AIM), and listen to his (and my) iTunes music libraries via iTunes music sharing as it sits right next to where he sits all day playing his PS 2. That little guy runs 24/7 and carries nearly the entire brunt of net services for our entire network ... keeping the other machines freed up for "normal" individual usage. A 256mb chip for that generation of iMac can be had for as little as $35 shipped ... a dedicated server with a small monitor and 320mb ram for $80 total ... not a bad deal

[Hanul]

OSX is much too heavy for that old thing. I would recommend Yellow Dog Linux.

I got an iMac (Summer 2000, 350MHz) from ebay. I increased the RAM to 256MB and it runs Panther very fine. Ripping in iTunes takes a while (it's around 2,4x), but as long as you don't do heavy multitasking on it, it is ok for web, mail, office, photos and music.

[Jasoco]

Originally posted by nbnz:
I run OS X 10.2 on my old iMac 333, only for browsing & email & other light duties. Although I doubt it would run with only 96MB RAM (I have 288MB).

HA! That is to laugh. I ran OS X 10.3.x on an iMac 333 I bought off eBay for over a month with no problems. It WILL run with 96MB RAM. Albeit, t was only a web server, but it served them web pages like a champion for over 2 months before I retired her.

[iREZ]

I would love to get an old iMac and turn it into my media storage machine. I've been thinking bout getting an external drive for my PB (40 gigs is getting cramped for me), but it would cost about $120-$150 for a 150gig drive, but if I could find an old iMac and throw in a 80 gig HD for backup and media files, I could totally see it being a machine I'd use every once in a while for transferring vids, music and the occasional web surfing. Nice find.

[Kenneth]

Right...I assume the Ethernet port is working, a file server would be nice since I'm about to empty up my hard drive and movie it from my PowerMac to that iMac.

In the meantime, I found a 64mb SO-DIMM RAM module hiding in the drawer. I hope it will fit in the bottom RAM slot.

[babywriter2]

For general desktop use, I would recommend Ubuntu Linux ... I installed it on my rev B iBook about a month ago and am happy with it. It runs much faster than OS X 10.2 (even with 320 MB of memory) - much more responsive, and the system can be tweaked in lots of interesting ways.

However, if you're not comfortable tweaking settings manually - i.e., in the terminal, just slap on a recent version of OS X. IMHO, OS X is much easier to set up than Linux as a web or media server - the front end tools for things like mySQL are free or low-cost and work well.

[seanhbanks]

Originally posted by Hanul:
I got an iMac (Summer 2000, 350MHz) from ebay. I increased the RAM to 256MB and it runs Panther very fine. Ripping in iTunes takes a while (it's around 2,4x), but as long as you don't do heavy multitasking on it, it is ok for web, mail, office, photos and music.

I bought my 333Mhz iMac in 1998, upgraded it to 256MB when OS X PB came out, and it's been running just fine from 10.2 onward. Getting more responsive with every system update, actually.

"OS X is much too heavy for that old thing."
It really isn't.

[jamil5454]

While there are other distros of PPC Linux, Debian is the most popular and actively developed. Linux would run very fast on that machine, even with 96mb of RAM. OS X will run too, but if you already have an OS X machine, why not Linux? I've got a useful Linux web/ftp server set up on a 386 with 16mb RAM. Does what I need it to.

[discotronic]

Originally posted by Daedalus17:
OSX is much too heavy for that old thing. I would recommend Yellow Dog Linux.

Yellow Dog runs like crap on older hardware with the new release. Version 3 would be the best bet.

OSX 10.3 will run better than Yellow Dog IMO.

[finboy]

The Rev. D iMacs make great servers, IMHO, because they have FANS. The next few revs after that had heat issues.

When I heard that the next iMac was going to be fanless (back then) I went out and bought a Strawberry. That day.

You can also upgrade the processor to 500 or 600 fairly cheaply. Sonnet even offers a 600 with a Firewire port.

It's a good machine. Have fun.

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by finboy:
You can also upgrade the processor to 500 or 600 fairly cheaply. Sonnet even offers a 600 with a Firewire port.

That's what I got for my iMac Rev. A. I upgraded it to G3/500 w/FireWire port and before that I had the Formac iProTVRAID card on it.

Right now, I'm downloading YDL 4.0.

[buffalolee]

You can always upgrade that to an iMac G4 500MHz from technowarehousellc.com. That's what I did, and now it makes a great home computer for Internet, e-mail, watch movie trailers, and online board games @ yahoo.com.

[Kyros]

Something like that needs to happen to me except with a clamshell. Recently I have been suddenly struck with how awesome the thing looks, and I did a little research on prices and specs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the last model came in graphite, was 466 mHz (thought they only went up to 366) and have a dvd drive. I was less impressed with prices floating around on the net though. Even ebay rarely went below 500 dollars, and other sites for around 600. Stupid collector's item status. At least I got myself a cube for a decent price.

Apple really needs to do something like a retro line of computers. Make them limited edition because less people will want them than the 'normal' computers, and to really entice the fanatics. I mean seriously, a clamshell with a g4 processor, normal battery (if it fits anyway), 1024X768 compatible screen and superdrive.

It's kind of strange I like them so much now, when they came out I thought they were ugly as hell. I guess I'm just a little tired of the white iBooks. As much as I like the minimalist design, it's starting to look a little boring.