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Hanul · Feb 3, 2004, 10:24 AM

I bought an iMac from ebay for a friend of mine as her first computer (hey, she is 33 and has discovered the Internet ;-).

The system has a G3 350MHz, 64MB RAM, 7GB HDD, and is running 9.2. I know I have to increase the RAM and I read about a required firmware update, in order to load OS X.

I will get the machine on Friday and I'm preparing a little bit, so installation and such will go smooth.

My questions: Do I have to consider something else? I have two 128MB PC100 SDRAM lying around, but they are ECC. Will the iMac choke on these? Is the firmware upgrade all I have to do to run Panther? Any experience running OS X on 350MHz? The oldest system I had running OS X was a B/W G3 with 450MHZ and 512MB, where Jaguar runs very fine.

Luca Rescigno · Feb 3, 2004, 07:51 PM

You could try OS X, but this is about the lowest system you'd ever want to use for it. It might be better sticking with OS 9, and definitely leave both on there so she can switch between the two if need be. Maybe she'll find OS X's speed to be just fine and use it, or perhaps she'll prefer OS 9's greater responsiveness. It would be a good idea to show her how to switch between the two.

I don't have answers to your RAM and firmware questions, though I will say that you must have at least 256 MB of RAM if you want to run OS X. Any less and it'll slow the system down even more.

dtriska · Feb 3, 2004, 10:09 PM

Here are the specs for the iMac: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43098

Don't use the ECC RAM. Nothing Apple has made in the last five or so years uses ECC RAM, except the newest Xserve.

Firmware upgrades can be found here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117

While this iMac is not the speediest of the bunch, for a person who has only just discovered the Internet, it'll be fast enough. Make sure you bump up the RAM (put another 512 MB in), and install 10.3.

Hanul · Feb 4, 2004, 05:50 AM

Thanks for your input. I know the 350MHz are the absolute low end for running OS X, but essentially she will run two apps: Safari and MS Word. I even thought about shrinking the dock down to these two apps. I have only 256MB for the initial upgrade and I hope this is sufficient in the beginning.

The alternative would have been a PC with a PII 400MHz and 256MB RAM running Windows 2000 - I think she will have more fun with a Mac...

Hanul · Feb 6, 2004, 06:32 PM

I got the iMac and the upgrade and all worked out fine.

Installing the ECC RAM was no problem and it runs without any glitch. Looks like ECC is compatible with non-ECC motherboards and the ECC part is just ignored.

Panther is quite usable as long as not more than 2-3 apps are open. 256MB seem to be sufficient for the tasks of web surfing and word processing.

Expos� runs quirky as does the Dock's Genie effect.

All in all it went as planned. Nice machine

Asystole · Feb 8, 2004, 02:17 AM

If you can bump that RAM up to 512 or 768, you will have a fairly bulletproof machine. Memory matters more than CPU speed on Macintosh computers.

Mr.Clicky · Feb 8, 2004, 04:18 AM

Balderdash (he said humbly), I ran Panther quite happily on a 333 Rev D. iMac with 640MB ram. She'll have more fun with Panther than creaky old OS9

Big Mac · Feb 8, 2004, 04:19 AM

Remember, OS X is certified to run on any G3 machine, and the iMac we're talking about here is 117MHz faster than the first iMac. It's really easy to lose one's perspective and lose appreciation for seemingly obsolete hardware. You should go over to folklore.com and read about what the brilliant original Mac team did with a lowly 68000 processor and 128KBs of RAM.