What to do with G3 233 MHz Blue & White PowerPC

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, ssteve wrote:

> Can anyone tell me if it is worth putting OSX 10 on this machine. It
> has 32mB SD RAM and 4GB hard drive. Would it be adequate for at least
> email and web surfing, or should I just get rid of it somehow? Thanks.

Before messing around with *anything*, make sure that the firmware is up
to date (search Apple's site and follow the instructions if updates are
needed). If you go mucking around with this project with out of date
firmware, you can render the machine completely unbootable, either up to
OSX or back to OS9, and the only way out would be a logic board ("mother
board") repair, which may be impossible to find by now at any price. As
long as the firmware has been patched, this shouldn't be a problem, but
verify first so you don't regret it later.

And with that warning out of the way...

OSX is out of the question without a RAM upgrade, and upgrading the RAM
on one of those is a lot of work[1]. It looks like you can get 256mb of
RAM for about $35, and 512mb for $68 [2].

Another limit is that OSX will be really cramped by that 4gb hard drive.
You might want to upgrade it while you have it taken apart for the RAM
upgrade -- you can get a 40gb hard drive for around $40 these days, a
320gb drive for under $100, and a 750gb drive for under $150 [3]. Or you
might know some techies that upgraded a long time ago, and have spare
3.5" IDE drives rattling around in a drawer somewhere for free.

But the biggest limitation, which you can't really get around, is that
the CPU is a 233mhz G3, which is the bare minimum for 10.3/Panther, and
strictly rules out anything newer (Tiger or Leopard). If you can dig up
a copy of Panther -- which could be a challenge at this point, unless
you find it on eBay or similar sources -- it ought to work reasonably
well on that iMac's CPU.

My first Mac was a 266mhz iMac similar to this one, and I bought it
specifically to run the OSX Public Beta when it came out back in 2000.
It worked, but it was dog slow, and made me realize that -- aside from
crashing continually -- OS9 was a pretty pleasant system to use, and
very responsive on that hardware. I'd almost suggest sticking with OS9,
except that the web has evolved so much since then that you'll probably
find that a lot of sites don't work right on OS9 browsers any more. If
you can get a copy of 10.3 and can get the hardware upgraded, it ought
to be fine.



[1] You basically have to gut the computer to add RAM: stand it on the
screen, pull off the bottom panel, remove some cables, pull out the sled
with the core of the computer, then plug the memory in and reassemble
everything. It's not *that* bad if you know what you're doing, &/or you
don't but you're comfortable winging it. But even if you do know what
you're doing, it can take 20 or 30 minutes to do it properly -- this
process got at least 4x as easy/fast to do on *every* Mac that followed.

[2] Data Memory Systems ("Datamem" or "DMS") is pretty good for this
sort of thing -- cheap, reliable, etc. There are others too of course,
but I've generally been happy using DMS for Mac RAM:
http://www.datamemorysystems.com/_apple_info/Apple_Tray_Loading_iMac_233MHz_Memory_1274.asp

[3] Prices are from DMS again, but any 3.5" IDE drive, including one
from a Windows machine, would do for this, as long as you set the
jumpers on the drive correctly before reassembling & booting it.
http://www.datamemorysystems.com/3.5-IDE-Internal-Hard-Drives+-ATA+-EIDE+-PATA-Internal-Drives/C923


--
Chris Devers

ssteve inquired...

>Can anyone tell me if it is worth putting OSX 10 on this machine. It has
>32mB SD RAM and 4GB hard drive. Would it be adequate for at least email
>and web surfing, or should I just get rid of it somehow? Thanks.

I'm very confident you could run OS X on it if you had enought RAM. In
our household I partitioned the hard drive on an iMac G3 (Blueberry) Rev
C into a OS 9 partition and an OS X partition (after loading the
required firmware update for OS X) and it ran. It did the basic
applications. Nothing spectacular. We would boot off the partition for
the OS we wanted to use. You keyed "32mb of RAM" - is that a typo ? That
doesn't sound right and certainly wouldn't be able to handle OS X for
anything.

Now as to whether it's worthwhile: unless you absolutely can't afford to
get a more up to date computer, I'd hang onto the G3 for any classic
applications/games you like and get a more current computer for OS X.
I believe you wouldn't be able to run Leopard on the G3. I was running
Jaguar (OS 10.3) on the iMac G3. I understand Tiger (OS 10.4) would run
on it but I decided it would be unbearable and bought a new Mac. The
iMac needed various upgrades including a larger drive to handle the
size of the loaded OS 10.4.

My son and I play games such as StarCraft on the old machine after I
removed the partitions and re-loaded OS 9.

Bottom line: get a more current computer for OS X but you can still
enjoy using the old machine.

Hank

I don't think you can put OS X on that machine even if you wanted to.
Early iMacs weren't capable of running OS X which came out about a
year or so after the first iMacs.

You could try YellowDog Linux for the PPC.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

If you are willing to spend a little money, you can have a quite capable OS-X machine. I have a similar B&W Mac that I upgraded with a 500 MHz G4 processor and upped the RAM to 1 Gb. I added a superdrive and have used iMovie, Toast, Final Cut, and many other apps quite well under OS X 10.4 (which I believe is the latest that it can be upgraded to). Yes, it is very slow compared to modern Macs, but it is perfectly suitable for many common tasks. (I even tried (twice!) adding an extra internal hard drive, but both extra drives failed shortly after installation.)

Hi Ssteve,

We still have one of the B & W G3 Power Macs running well. But it does have a faster G3 CPU from Other World Computing (G3 1000 MHz I think) and various other add-ons. It is our slowest machine but still usable with OS X 10.3. I've not felt any need to saddle it with OS X 10.4.

Don't be tempted to add the G4 CPU upgrade as it does not behave nearly as well as the G3 version.

Cheers,

John Wolff

Hamilton, New Zealand

Well, first off, such a machine that you've described doesn't seem to exist - the first B&W G3 had a 300MHz processor, according to Low End Mac:

<http://lowendmac.com/ppc/blue-white-power-mac-g3.html>

That said, I ran OSX Jaguar and Panther on a Rev.A iMac (Bondi Blue/233MHz G3), but to do it, I had to upgrade the RAM to 160MB. It ran too slowly, to be honest, to use for surfing for anything longer than a moment. Frankly, even an iPhone on EDGE is a faster surfing machine than an G3/233MHz machine running OSX, no matter how much RAM you put in it.

A few other notes: the minimum RAM requirement for OSX is 128MB, so to start, you'd have to upgrade the RAM, the more the merrier: get at least 512MB of RAM in the machine. The 4GB hard drive will be pretty tight. And, given the age of the drive, it'll fail sometime in the near future, so that will need to be upgraded as well.

If you stick with the classic MacOS (8.5 or 9), on the other hand, you can use iCab to surf, and it's much zippier than it will ever be with OSX.

<http://www.icab.de/dl.php>

Another option is to install a version of Linux, which is faster than OSX on older hardware like this. Here's a page where a fellow describes installing XUbuntu 6 on an old iMac (G3/400 w/512MB of RAM):

<http://www.nuketown.com/node/2316>

Actually, on second thought, just scrap the machine. It's not worth the frustration that you'll experience.

It depends on which Mac it is. If it's 233 Mhz, it's not a Blue &
White, it will be beige colored. The Beige PowerMacs have a variety of
quirks and are limited to 10.2. I'd think of that as more of a hobby
project done for fun. The 32 MB RAM means you're probably talking
about a Beige PowerMac.

If it's a Blue & White, it ranges from 300 to 450 MHz. The big
difference is that it has much faster memory/bus performance. Given
adequate memory (say 512 MB or 1GB) you can run 10.4 reasonably well.
I have a similar spec 400 MHz iMac and it runs all of my basics (web,
email, etc) fine. 10.4 has major improvements over 10.2 for me and is
close enough to current that I could see it as a main machine for a
few years.

That said, my experience is that it's much cheaper to buy a used
computer that's already tweaked than it is to buy parts (RAM, etc) to
upgrade a free computer. I'd leave your Mac on MacOS9 (where it still
rocks). If you want an inexpensive MacOSX computer, I'd look on eBay
for G3/G4 500Mhz or So Computer. Often the slot-loading iMacs are the
best deal since there were so many of them.

--
Jonathan Ploudre
If this message seems brief:
http://five.sentenc.es/

Are you sure it has only 32 MB of RAM? Anyhow... I have installed OS X
on some old machines (300mhz and 350 Mhz G3), and it runs *but* you
really need at least 512 MB of RAM in there for it to work at all.

In 4GB of Space you can install OS X, you'll just have to do a custom
install and turn off many of the printer drivers as well as other
options.

Dave

On Jun 21, 2008, at 6:25 PM, David Weintraub wrote:

> I don't think you can put OS X on that machine even if you wanted to.
> Early iMacs weren't capable of running OS X which came out about a
> year or so after the first iMacs.
>
> You could try YellowDog Linux for the PPC.

It may be more trouble than it's worth if it's a hardware ROM G3. If
so, you need to boot through a minimal Mac OS 9 using a system
extension called BootX, and you'll need an old version of YDL that
supports that. I ran YDL (2.something, I think) on a beige G3 for a
lot of years until a disk crash that it wasn't worth the bother to
recover from caused me to take the machine to the local computer
recycling site.

Newer G3's may run more modern versions of YDL. There's usually a
list of supported machines somewhere on the YDL site <http://www.yellowdoglinux.com
 >. It's been a while since I had a machine running YDL, though.

>
>
> --
> David Weintraub
> qazwartgmail.com

On 21-Jun-2008, at 16:25, David Weintraub wrote:
> I don't think you can put OS X on that machine even if you wanted to.
> Early iMacs weren't capable of running OS X which came out about a
> year or so after the first iMacs.

Nothing about that statement is in any way, shape, or form true.

_EVERY_ G3 but the original PowerbookG3 can run OS X.

> Mac OS X versions 10.0 or later requires one of the following
> Macintosh computers:
>
> * Power Mac G4 or Macintosh Server G4 (all models)
> * Power Macintosh G3 or Macintosh Server G3 (all models)
> * iMac (all models)
> * iBook (all models)
> * PowerBook (all models later than the original PowerBook G3)

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 6:45 PM, ken2 <kenhallenius.org> wrote:
> Well, first off, such a machine that you've described doesn't seem to exist - the first B&W
> G3 had a 300MHz processor, according to Low End Mac

Here's a description of the very machine:

<http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_ab.html>

Officially, these machines don't support OS X, and you really can't
and more than 64 megs of memory onto the mother board. To get OS X on
this system, you'd have to replace the mother board, add memory and
upgrade the hard drive which is a lot of effort on a machine that's 10
years old and can be bought for a bit more than $100. Officially, the
first iMacs that supported OS X were the 333 Mhz machines.

The 233 "Bondi Blue" iMacs were the very first iMacs came out about a
year before Mac OS X came out and were pretty much a desperate attempt
by Jobs to keep Apple alive long enough to get Mac OS X out.

The machines attracted a lot of attention because of the all in one
design and color, but were really nothing revolutionary. Still, it was
enough to let people know there was some life still left in Apple. I
bought about $1000 of Apple stock right before Steve introduced the
iMac, and then thought of myself as a financial genius when I sold
that stock for about $5,000. If I held onto it, it'd be work over
$1,500,000 today.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

On 22-Jun-2008, at 00:47, David Weintraub wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 6:45 PM, ken2 <kenhallenius.org> wrote:
>> Well, first off, such a machine that you've described doesn't seem
>> to exist - the first B&W
>> G3 had a 300MHz processor, according to Low End Mac
>
> Here's a description of the very machine:
>
> <http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_ab.html>

First off, that's an imac. Second of all, it's not "Blue and White"

> Officially, these machines don't support OS X,

Third off, that is not true. The very page you linked to, but did not
read, says "Details: This system cannot run versions of MacOS X more
recent than 10.3.9."

> and you really can't
> and more than 64 megs of memory onto the mother board. To get OS X on
> this system, you'd have to replace the mother board, add memory and
> upgrade the hard drive which is a lot of effort on a machine that's 10
> years old and can be bought for a bit more than $100. Officially, the
> first iMacs that supported OS X were the 333 Mhz machines.

No, that is 100% wrong. ALLL iMac models can run OS X. ALL. Every
single one.

And yes, I did in fact have OS X on a Bondi iMac with, as I recall
128MB of RAM (10.0/10.1), upgraded to 384 (10.2) later on (the maximum
for the Rev A iMac I had). The majority of Bondi iMacs where Rev. B
and could be upgraded to 512MB. Not only can the original iMac run OS
X, it can run 10.3.9. It isn't until 10.4's restriction for "included
Firewire" that the Bondi iMac got shut out.

> The 233 "Bondi Blue" iMacs were the very first iMacs came out about a
> year before Mac OS X

About 3 years (May 1998 v March 2001)

> came out and were pretty much a desperate attempt by Jobs to keep
> Apple alive long enough to get Mac OS X out.

'Desperate' attempt? Apple most successful computer since the
Apple //? Revisionist much?

> The machines attracted a lot of attention because of the all in one
> design and color, but were really nothing revolutionary.

Erm. You have a much different recollection. The iMac is the machine
that made USB and that killed the floppy. That alone made it
revolutionary.

I bought about $1000 of Apple stock right before Steve introduced the iMac, and then thought of myself as a financial genius when I sold that stock for about $5,000. If I held onto it, it'd be work over $1,500,000 today.

If it assuages your financial conscience at all, you actually didn't "lose" as much as you may think. $1000 invested in Apple on 1/1/1998 (before the iMac was introduced on May 5, 1998) is "only" worth $44,381.40 today, not quite the $1,500,000 you quoted:

<http://hallenius.org/pics/aapl010198.png>

And if you'd invested in 1996, before Steve came back, you'd actually have gained "only" $22,448.60!

(*Calculations courtesy of the "What if I had invested?" tool on Sharebuilder.com.)

suthepmac.com wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 22, 2008, at 1:47 PM, David Weintraub wrote:

> seems to be some confusion here with nomenclature;
>
> my B+W G3 was a tower, 300 MHz, and i have run every version of OSX
> since the Beta on it up until Tiger -
>
> i could not, however, get OSX to run on my kids iMac (which happened
> to be Blue + White but was never called a B+W G3)
>
Since we're talking about an old B&W tower you might have the issue of the original models which had problems with the IDE drive interface. It turned out to have serious data corruption issues with drives other than the original under OS9 and likely most any drive under OS X.

David

At 3:05 PM -0700 6/22/08, suthepmac.com wrote:

>--snip--
>
>seems to be some confusion here with nomenclature;
>
>
>my B+W G3 was a tower, 300 MHz, and i have run every version of OSX
>since the Beta on it up until Tiger -
>
>
>i could not, however, get OSX to run on my kids iMac (which happened
>to be Blue + White but was never called a B+W G3)
>

The confusion happened because it says 233 MHz in the subject line of
original post and 233 was an iMac speed.

<http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/stats/powermac_g3_300_bl.html>
seems to be the correct Mac.

My personal opinion is don't invest any money in a 9 year old box.
Some other part may be getting old as in getting ready to fail. Its
better to save your money to buy a newer Mac. By newer, used G4 or G5
or early Intel Macs would be quite an upgrade while being cheaper
than the current Macs.

Besides the 300MHz G3, it also has 1GB max RAM, slow USB 1, no
support for drives over 128GB, support status=obsolete, slow ATA/33
drive bus.

Yes, it can officially run Tiger if you add RAM and a bigger HD altho
it may feel more like walking Tiger than running it. Handling plain
text e-mail should be fine. Complex websites or overly fancy e-mail
often require latest browsers or clients to display properly and
those work best on faster Macs.

I just replaced a G4 dual GHz Mac--which was a lot faster than your
G3--with a current model and speed increase is very, very noticeable.
Please note that MHz/GHz comparisons are not directly comparable
because each new generation--G3 to G4 to G5 to Intel--was much faster
at running code than a simple MHz/GHz comparison would suggest.

--Jim

ssteve schrieb:

> or should I just get rid of it somehow?

in that case, http://www.freecycle.org always is a good address for
beloved old stuff that's too precious to throw away or recycle -- why
not give it a loving new home? It won't cost you a cent cause it's
only per


BTW my Eudora search has told me me that Freecycle was mentioned here
in 2007 already :-)


[Or see the article I wrote. -Adam]

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9100>


--
Thomas Rohde
tombonobo.com

You're Quite Correct. 9.2.2 is the best you can do:

<http://www.topix.net/world/canada/2008/06/freecycle-craigs-list-are-e-mail-based-networks-to-help-users-exchange-free-goods>

He probably means an iMac rather than a mini-tower, but incidentally the Gossamer 233MHz beige minitower did have some color: a Bondi-blue button on the top to release the side panel.

I'm not sure which Mac ssteve actually has, but he might try going to <http://support.apple.com/specs/> and entering the serial number in the search field.

As for running Mac OS X on an older Mac, I had Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) running on a PowerBook G3 Series "Bronze Keyboard" (amazing how Apple names its products sometimes) with a 333Mhz G3, 384MB of RAM and a 30GB hard drive. As I remember, Mac OS X 10.3 was usable on this Mac, but noticeably slower than 10.4 (Tiger) runs on my PowerBook G4 (1.33GHz, 1.25GB, 250GB) for example.