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hutchingsp · Jul 31, 2005, 10:48 AM

I want something dirt cheap to introduce my mum to Mac, the idea being if she takes, I might get her a "real" one, or I might pass down my iMac G5 and treat myself when the Intel stuff begins to filter through.

All she really does is web surfing, some basic word processing and the odd bit of image scanning and editing.

At present she does all this on an Athlon 1200 PC and at no point has moaned about it being too slow etc.

I've been offered a G3 Rev2 450mhz with 512mb (4x128mb) RAM for £100. It comes with a newer white Apple USB keyboard and some sort of Logitech mouse.

I'm thinking slap in my spare 40gb 7200rpm drive, my DVD reader or CD writer, some of my spare PC133 ram (give a total of 768mb hopefully) and my Belkin 54g card (Broadcom chipset) and hopefully I've got something useable.

I'm thinking Textedit might be enough for Word Processing, I think Open Office might crawl a bit? As for image editing, for the sort of stuff she does maybe Graphics Convertor - really I want her to try a Mac to see if she gets on with it than she does the PC (3 years and knows jack to be blunt!).

Bearing in mind this is my mum I'm talking about, and she's not likely to want to have 500 apps open at once and expose between them, does this sound like a vaguely sensible proposition?

I have these bits lying around in the wardrobe so other than the £100 for the Mac there's no outlay involved.

cheers,
Paul

dreilly1 · Jul 31, 2005, 11:02 AM

I sold my B&W before I got Tiger, but I would think it would run passably for everything she needs.

Be careful, though: those B&W's can only take up to 256 MB of Ram per slot, and they're very picky as to which 256 MB chips they'll take: some configurations only show up as 128 MB. And more memory is the best thing you can do to make OS X snappy on a B&W. Safari in particular is a memory hog.

http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/g3c.shtml has some good info, too.

bowwowman · Jul 31, 2005, 03:53 PM

It will be fine with Tige, the additional RAM and a fast HD. No speed demon by any means, but totally fast enough for mum & her uses...

And BTW, the rev 2 B&W's do NOT suffer the memory problems mentioned by dreilly1, as they contained a different/better memory controller than the rev 1 units .....so dont concern yourself with that issue

tooki · Jul 31, 2005, 11:23 PM

Sorry, bowwowman, you are confused. The memory controller is the same in all B&W units, and dreilly1 is absolutely correct. All B&Ws require low-density (two-sided) 256MB modules, which are also the largest they will accept. (256MB modules with chips only on one side will only be seen as 1/2 size.)

It is the IDE controller for the hard disk that is defective in the Rev 1 B&W G3s.

tooki

bowwowman · Aug 1, 2005, 06:18 PM

yea my bad

was thinking about 1 thing and typed something else...

meant to go back & delete my post but forgot about it.....

discotronic · Aug 1, 2005, 07:38 PM

I think you would be better off going with Panther than you would Tiger. Panther "seems" to run better on an older system like that. From most of the reports that I have seen Tiger is a little slower on older hardware.

Salty · Aug 2, 2005, 03:10 AM

I thought Tiger was only slower on Machines it wasn't supposed to be installed in?

And as for the B&W... I'm typing this on a 333Mhz iMac. It won't be super snappy but it'll be good enough for her. Though personally I'm gona be starting my mom off on a Mac mini

Mac Hammer Fan · Aug 2, 2005, 04:10 AM

Originally Posted by Salty

I thought Tiger was only slower on Machines it wasn't supposed to be installed in?

And as for the B&W... I'm typing this on a 333Mhz iMac. It won't be super snappy but it'll be good enough for her. Though personally I'm gona be starting my mom off on a Mac mini

I run Tiger on a G4 Beige 500 MHz with 768 MB RAM and it is at least as fast as Panther.
I use XPostdacto. The Mac has also an ATI Radeon 7000 and Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA66 and the stability is excellent.
But of course, it's not as fast as a Mac Mini, except for disk access.

thereubster · Aug 2, 2005, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by Mac Hammer Fan

I run Tiger on a G4 Beige 500 MHz with 768 MB RAM and it is at least as fast as Panther.
I use XPostdacto. The Mac has also an ATI Radeon 7000 and Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA66 and the stability is excellent.
But of course, it's not as fast as a Mac Mini, except for disk access.

Mac Hammer Fan, did you have any issues with the Tiger installer and the PCI Radeon 7000? When I tried to install Tiger last night on my G4 Yikes with a Rad7000 PCI, it just sat there doing nothing after i hit "install". I guess the fact it booted at all indicates its probably not the graphics card, OS9.2 installed and runs fine (after a few issues)

bowwowman · Aug 2, 2005, 09:58 PM

Well, I have Tiger running quite snappily on a B&W G4-650/ 1GB/Radeon9200pci/Raptor+Firmtek controller........notta problemo

Your yikes may need a firmware update, or a complete reformat and new install.....

Mac Hammer Fan · Aug 3, 2005, 02:04 PM

Originally Posted by thereubster

Mac Hammer Fan, did you have any issues with the Tiger installer and the PCI Radeon 7000? When I tried to install Tiger last night on my G4 Yikes with a Rad7000 PCI, it just sat there doing nothing after i hit "install". I guess the fact it booted at all indicates its probably not the graphics card, OS9.2 installed and runs fine (after a few issues)

No problem with the Tiger installer. Try PRAM reset and CUDA reset if you have trouble.
The Radeon 7000 PCI was a 64 MB version.
But keep in mind, Tiger is more sensible to RAM than Tiger.
Are you sure all the RAM in your machine is 100% OK? (same speed)

thereubster · Aug 3, 2005, 04:44 PM

hmmm yes it may be the ram, I just got some Apple original PC100 ram last night and tried again installing Tiger, I got further on this time but the installer still quit with errors soon after starting the install. I tried the PRAM reset but am not sure which button is the CUDA reset? I didnt remove the other ram though so I will try doing that, I think the fastest way will be to just CCC my iBook 10.3.8 OS onto the HD, I have a firewire case.
Bowowman, I checked on the Apple support site for firmware updates but I already have the latest one listed.

Mac Hammer Fan · Aug 3, 2005, 04:48 PM

Originally Posted by thereubster

hmmm yes it may be the ram, I just got some Apple original PC100 ram last night and tried again installing Tiger, I got further on this time but the installer still quit with errors soon after starting the install. I tried the PRAM reset but am not sure which button is the CUDA reset? I didnt remove the other ram though so I will try doing that, I think the fastest way will be to just CCC my iBook 10.3.8 OS onto the HD, I have a firewire case.
Bowowman, I checked on the Apple support site for firmware updates but I already have the latest one listed.

You can safely try the two buttons. (CUDA and other one, I don't know what it is)
Beware of mixing RAM with different speed.
Therefore, use Dimm First AId to see if your RAM is correct.
Good luck