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Duhziner · Oct 31, 2006, 11:11 AM

What is the easiest/most painless way to upgrade the OS on a beige G3 which is now running 9.2? Also, what problems should I expect to run into?

discotronic · Oct 31, 2006, 11:54 AM

Not sure what problems you will run into with the install.

The beige G3 will only take 10.2 Jaguar without using a program like XPostfacto.

seanc · Oct 31, 2006, 12:31 PM

And OS X will run painfully on a G3.

gururafiki · Oct 31, 2006, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by seanc

And OS X will run painfully on a G3.

That's almost on understatement.

Duhziner · Oct 31, 2006, 01:25 PM

I know its gonna be pokey. Last year a friend of a friend installed 10.3 on my old g3 clamshell and it works fine for my wife's web-browsing, but now my kids want their g3 updated also, and the friend of the friend who updated the clamshell is no longer in the picture. (so much drama...)
Thanks for the info, and keep it coming if there is any more advice or hints.

imitchellg5 · Oct 31, 2006, 03:06 PM

You can put Tiger on it.... if you reallllllllllllllly want to.

Uncle Skeleton · Oct 31, 2006, 03:15 PM

I'm running the latest OS X right now on my 400 mhz G3 pismo at work. Aside from the fact that I'm wasting time at work by reading this thread, I have no problems whatsoever, and it's not painfully slow. I feel like newer versions of OS X have gotten faster on this machine, not slower. Maybe you naysayers just need more RAM.

eyadams · Oct 31, 2006, 04:26 PM

I ran OS X on a Beige G3 for a couple of years. It was slow, but servicable. My rig had some upgrades that I highly recommend if you're going to make a serious go of it, however.

- Upgrade the video card to at least an ATI Rage 128. The onboard video is too slow.
- Upgrade the hard drive. My box came with a 6 gig drive; I upgraded to a 30 gig and partitioned. On those models, you have to install OS X on a partition less than 8 gig, and that partition has to be the first partition on the disk.
- Max out the RAM.
- Get a USB card. If you want to use any modern peripherals at all, you'll need to.

All of these can be done fairly cheaply, but you may find that it's cheaper still to go out and buy a used G4.

If you just want to take a look, it'll work fine. Just slow.

Tuoder · Oct 31, 2006, 06:49 PM

If you ask me, OS 9 is about as good as it gets on a machine like that outside of linux. iCab goes a long way toward making the web expirience better.

That being said, I use Panther on an iMac G3 (400Mhz 256MB of RAM, 30 GB HDD). it is slow, but it gets the job done as a web server, ftp server, and BOINC crunch box.

The other problem is that upgrading a computer like that can be done for a price approaching that of a G4 Mini.

eBay: Mac Mini 1.25 G4 256 MB RAM Superdrive OSX iLife LOOK (item 160045599588 end time Nov-03-06 18:36:09 PST)

That one is $375 buy it now, and I have seen them go for as little as $300.

steve626 · Oct 31, 2006, 08:47 PM

My wife's iMac G3 500 MHz has been doing just fine with 10.2.8 and I just upgraded it to 10.3.9. It's very responsive. My sense is that everything seems even a little bit faster with 10.3.9 than 10.2.8. We had no issues with 10.2.8 (she liked it so much on Jaguar that she didn't want me to upgrade or change anything), I went to Panther so I could keep it up with the latest iTunes and some other software that requires Panther.

This computer has 1 GB of RAM, which I think is crucial to its performing well with OS X, and it also boots into OS 9.2.2 but I think OS 9 runs a bit sluggish compared to OS X -- the exception is that booting into OS 9 seems faster, but I don't typically boot or reboot much anyway. My wife uses this iMac G3 and she typically has several browsers open at once (including Firefox) and simultaneously running Mail and MS-Office applications ... it's all quite responsive and peppy.