[oldglide]

I have a 233 mhz G3 that I want to upgrade. It currently is running OS 8.5. 1) Can I install OS X over 8.5 without doing anything special? If so, what do I have to do? 2) How big of a HDD can I put in without partitions? 3) Can I install OS X on a new blank HDD. Thanks in advance for the help.

[mduell]

2) 137GB the way the manufacturers mark them, 128GB the way the OS sees it (10^9 vs 2^30 as "giga", respectively). So 120GB or 160GB is a good drive size to buy.
3) Yes.

[Eriamjh]

On a 233 iMac, OSX must be on a partition that is less than 8GB big and it must be the FIRST (or top) partition on the drive). The drive cannot be bigger than 128GB otherwise as bigger will be wasted and inacessible.

You need to upgrade the firmwaare, but I think you know that.

[Dave B]

{War And Peace novella alert}

I have an original iMac rev. A that I upgraded with a 80 GB 7500 RPM hard drive,
384 MB of RAM, an MCE CD-RW drive––and get this––TIGER OS 10.4
(by using CD version, hacking an installer file, and burning new CD #1).

That being said, after having used that machine extensively, I strongly offer the following suggestion:

Get rid of that iMac, and get a very inexpensive 400 Mhz iMac DV (or better) instead.

Here's why:

• Having to limit the boot-drive to slightly less than 8 GB (as noted above) is a PITA.
  This only applies to the tray-loading iMacs, rev. A-D. Slot-loaders have no such limitation.

• You can inexpensively install up to 1 GB RAM using standard DIMMS, as opposed to being
  limited to 512 MB using special, expensive 16-chip SODIMMS (64 bit only for 256MB sticks).

• Having firewire is a HUGE advantage. At this point I could never live without it.
  (iPod up to 4th gen, DV camera, firewire card-reader, bootable backups, target mode, ect)

• The iMac DV will play DVD's, the earlier iMacs will not.

• The front-side bus speed is 100 Mhz, original has 66 Mhz.

• iMac DV will run Tiger doing a standard install since it has built-in firewire.

• iMac DV can use Airport using original card and adaptor.

In my neck of the woods (SF Bay Area) an iMac DV can be had for as little for $100.00.
In fact, a friend of mine found a 450 Mhz one on the sidewalk with a FREE sign on it;
other working units have been found in dumpsters. At the time I was upgrading the 233 Mhz,
the DV iMacs were still fetching $400.00 on Ebay and Craigslist. But check the prices now!
I constantly see 500 or 600 Mhz iMacs with CD-RW going for $200.00 or less.

Now here's the deal with my iMac DV: I bought a Tangerine one on Craigslist for $120 a year and half ago.
I replaced the 10 GB hard drive with a 160 GB Seagate ($39.95 from Comp USA after rebates),
and installed a single 256 RAM stick ($23 online) to go with the original 64 MB, for a total of 320 MB.
Guess what? This thing runs Tiger suprisingly well, even with this paltry amount.
Much, much, MUCH better than the 233 Mhz iMac with 384 MB. One day when I'm (really) bored,
I might take video of them booting up side-by side, and running other simple tasks.

The point of all this rambling (pre-coffee at that, if you can believe it), is that the prices
of old iMacs are SO much lower than just a couple years ago; people are practically giving
them away. Yet they still have that irresistable charm. If you're actually going to use one,
you will be immeasurably happier with at least a imac DV, in my most humble opinion.

{/War And Peace novella alert}

[GabrieL^]

i wouldnt "get rid of that iMac" its the first one ever made. just keep it around as a collector piece and get a slot loading iMac G3. check on craigslist.com in your area.

[Dave B]

Originally Posted by GabrieL^

i wouldnt "get rid of that iMac" its the first one ever made. just keep it around as a collector piece and get a slot loading iMac G3. check on craigslist.com in your area.

LOL!

Your "collector piece" iMac can be found on CL for as little as $25.00 (or free) at the moment. ;-)

However, I shouldn't have said "get rid of it". A friend or family member could be very happy
with it––just not you. ;-). My friends got a free iMac tray-loading 266 Mhz grape model.
I told them to get a 256 RAM stick. They are running Panther with 288 MB RAM, and
it's good enough for web-surfing and e-mail. Keep in mind that this is on the original
6 GB drive. To maximize space, I did a Custom Install, and left out the 1 GB+ of printer-
drivers, and hundreds of MB of language translations.

From personal experience I can tell you that you want to keep at least 10 GB of HD space
free for OS X; it uses much of this for virtual memory, no matter how much RAM you have.
This probably explains why the 233 Mhz iMac with its 8 GB boot partition is so much slower
than the 400 Mhz iMac DV with its 160 GB boot drive––it can't all be attributed to Mhz alone, IMO.
Plus, installing a 7500 RPM HD gives a good performance increase over the stock 4200 drive.

BTW, whatever you do, you MUST update the firmware before installing OS X!

[Eriamjh]

Originally Posted by Dave B

Get rid of that iMac, and get a very inexpensive 400 Mhz iMac DV (or better) instead.

I have a 233 with a 60GB 7200rpm HDD, 512MB ram, etc. It is dog slow running Panther. I use it to play iTunes in the garage.