[kinik]

Hi everyone, im a newbie to the mac world. i have few questions regarding to my imac G3 233ghz, if anyone could help would be great.
I will have my imac in a couple of weeks, its a lime green 233 G3 . not sure about HDD and ram. But im planning to get it upgrade with some parts. Have anyone tried the Sonnet Harmoni G3 600Mhz processor upgrade? also i will get 512mb ram (can i get more than that on the board?), a new HDD (are normal IDE HDD work on mac computer?) and finally looking at getting a MCE slot loading CD-RW drive to upgrade my tray loading CD rom.
Im doing all these upgrade becoz i luv the appearance of imac G3.
finally, what OS is best for the upgraded machine? thanks

[MichiganRich]

You're mental.

[Psychonaut]

I believe you may be mistaken in regards to the processor speed and the lime green colour you mentioned. The original, tray-loading iMacs (Revision A and B) had a 233mhz G3, but were bondi blue. The revisions C and D came in 5 different colours, one of them being lime green, but had 266mhz G3s.

Your options in upgrading it can be different depending on which revision it is. But...

The exact amount a Rev. A-D iMac can be upgraded varies from unit to unit. We have field reports of some models accepting 256 MB modules in both memory socket and reaching 512 MB -- and other reports of early iMacs that won't work at all with 256 MB modules. There appears to be no way to know in advance whether a particular iMac will work with a certain sized memory module.

--- from LowEndMac.com

Install as much memory as possible!

I would also suggest buying a 4mb video memory upgrade from eBay. I recently recieved one I bought for my Beige G3, and it was pretty cheap: $4 ending price plus $4 shipping. Search results for "iMac VRAM"

[kinik]

thanks psychonaut, i just discover that its a imac G3 400mhz green slot load DVD rom machine, came with a 13gb hdd and 256mb ram. will you know much about this machine? is VRAM required for this machine? and about the ram capacity, i hope it can handle up to 1gb ram.

[Will C]

Hi Kinik,
I have one of those machines (which I am about ot sell - anyone interested in London/SE UK???). It has worked really well for me since new - I really liked it - I upgraded when I wanted to do more processor intensive stuff.
Yes it will handle 1GB, try 2x 512MB PC100/PC133 DIMMs. It has 8MB VRAM but that is not (AFAIK) expandable. It is also fairly easy to upgrade the HD, but don't bother putting in a drive over 137GB (IIRC) as it is unable to address anything larger - I had a 120GB 7200rpm drive for several years (now in a firewire case) which worked reall well.

HTH

[davidflas]

I have one of these iMacs in the Grape Color. It is far more capable than the original iMac. It can even drive a second display. Download a copy of SwitchResX and you won't be stuck with mirroring the internal display. I would also recommend maxing the RAM, I buy mine from Datamem. I've been buying memory from them since 1997 and have only had one bad module which they immediately replaced, with no hassle. MCE even sells a DVD recorder upgrade for this model. The integrated video card has 8MB of VRAM and can't be upgraded. The good news is that this model has 2 built-in firewire ports in addition to two USB 1.1 ports. It also has built-in ethernet and WIFI capability. Hope this info helps, welcome to the Mac world!