Hey, Look. This is going to sound really weird but i picked up a used iMac off the side of the road yesterday. This is my first ever mac, so i have a lot to get used to. Its got a PowerPC G3 333MHz processor... Or so i think. As far as i can see, its still in perfect working condition. The only problem ive been having is getting 'SpeakableItems' working. The 'Control Panels=>Sound' microphone tab detects incoming sound but SpeakableItems does not. Anyways, thats not what im after. Pretending money is not an object. What can i do to upgrade this 18.1kg peice of junk? And how would i go about doing it? (The cheaper the better). Ive looked on google but nothing i find makes sence. Some sources say to upgrade the hard drive to a 60 GB 7200rpm IDE. Others say that i cant get any better than a 8 GB 5500rpm ATA hard drive. What the hell is ATA? Never heard of it (Im more of a x86 hardware guy). I read something about it not having 'internal fans so it could prove fatal'. I got this thing for free, im not willing to let it burn my house down. I also read that you can put up to OS X 10.3.9 on it. Im willing to purchace a licence for it (please dont tell me to buy a decent computer. unless of cource its better than this and its under AUD $50 and its either got free postage or its in victoria, australia :P). Thanks in advance.

If you look at Device Manager in your PC you will see a listing for IDE ATA/ATAPI. The ATA portion is for hard drives. The ATAPI is for optical drives. Below is a link with a fuller explanation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc... So, what that means is the hard drives are of the same type in the power PC and your x86 PC. The issue you will run into is the hard drive controller probably has an 8GB limit on drive size. You could possibly install a controller card, I don't know, but you would be spending much more than the unit is worth. How does it run? What do you intend to use it for? Increasing RAM may be an option. Again, I don't know. No experience here with anything Apple in over 15years.

Oh, ok, thanks. I read somewhere that the machine rejects any hard drive over 120 GB in capacity. Yet, I also read that to install OS X on the hard drive it needs to be under 8 GB or over 7. I figure this is referring to partitions. The reliability of any of my information isn’t very high though, so if you want to Correct me, Go ahead. The information helpfully provided by ‘Apple system profiler’ clearly states: Internal ATA 0 > ID=0 [Hard drive] > [IMAC 333] Internal ATA 1 > ID=0 [CD-ROM drive] >No mounted media inserted PCI VIDEO > Built-in display card v Card name : ATY,RagePro_C v Card Model : ATY,GT-C Of course; it wrote it up all nicely and there was more information, but you get the idea. (Just incase this is confusing. The [IMAC 333] Is the name that the HFS+ partition was given… Or so I think anyways.) I figure from what you said, that if I installed a 50-100 GB IDE hard drive and partition it to 7.5 GB partitions it will work directly? Because I’m pretty sure this tangerine g3 333MHz iMac wasn’t the one released with expansion cards – I could be wrong. Please correct me. (Dam, Ill have to buy one, I’ve only got SATA stuff now. But I can pick one up for AUD $30-$50, so its not much of a problem. If this MAC dies ill use it in some other project.) You asked how it runs. Id say it runs pretty well for a computer of its age and status. It beats my 99’ computer 8-2 on a scale of 1-10. Its CPU is kinda slow but I’m not planning on being a serious gamer… Or atleast not with this hunk o’ junk. The ram… Well… I’m not sure ill ever beat it with any of my good comps. A whole 96 meg! Or so it seems. There are two cards in two different places. One of them has a white sticker with a bold ’64 MB’ written on it. Wasn’t sure what it was referring to but I heard that the computers were originally shipped with 32 meg. And ‘About This Computer’ agrees. It says: Built-in Memory: 96MB And below that it says Virtual Memory: 97 MB used on IMAC 333. Not sure what that means. Is it referring to my hard drive? (The hard drive is labeled IMAC 333 Also) So, any ideas on were I can get myself x2 256 MB SO-DIMM PC-100 ram for like AUD$50 inc. P&H or something of the like? Or was mine one of the systems that accept1 GB? (I think that was G5 plus) (Before you answer, could you please check that that is the required type of ram, that was off my head.) a couple more things. The video card apparently sucks. It says ‘VRAM size: 6BM) which I guess would work awesome with my 21" LCD… Not… Although it does have the appropriate VGA port built in to the inside of the back of the computer. (Bit hard to explain. It just looks like 1 massive 18.1kg (27.something lbs. I think) monitor. Is there any way to upgrade this poor excuse of a video card? Or at least do something about it? I heard you could upgrade cache. But I’m yet to know what they actually mean by this. Could someone please further explain? The CPU is about the same size as a sim card. Is it possible to upgrade this? And one last thing. I’m nor sure if I covered this earlier. (This post is two pages on the MS word 98 that came with this iMac as a free gift. On font size 12! It also came with a legal version of photoshop 5 and an entire suite of other programs.) I wish to be able to install OS X on this computer. What version? I don’t care. But this system 9.1 is getting old… 9 years old actually. And its becoming hard to navigate. what do i intend to use it for... Well... Im not 100% sure. I guess just another OS just incase. I have 5 or so computers ranging from late 80s to now each running a different OS. I use them as i need too. Before anyone answers. Could you please keep in mind the bad cooling system in this computer? I’m not sure what genius designed it but it seems to be pumping the heat from the CRT directly into the CPU… and the fact that this is a bit like a low-profile computer makes it a bit hard. It has its own ROM and everything! I mean. How old can you get? Thanks very much for your help EDIT: Just thought id post this too. It might help. Tangerine (Fruit color series) iMac PowerPC G3, 333MHz Processor. Originaly had 32 MB of ram. Released 1999 (april i think) and was discontinued in november of the same year (i think) because of newer models (once again. i think).

some of the older , versions are available as free downloads http://distrowatch.com/index.php?di... larry

RAM, RAM, and more ram is always good. I think you can actually run BeOS on that version. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

I doubt you can run a drive larger than 8GB on there without using an overlay. Does that rig have any USB or 1394 firewire ports. If so, just use an external drive if you need more room. I mentioned RAM too but don't know what it takes. Could be expensive.

Ok. Cool. Thanks. I did eventualy manage to find a place that sells ram; but of cource. Were did the company ship to? AMERICA! Its ok though, cos thats walking distance from my house... It only cost $27 per stick, not including postage. So thats like $36. As for the distro. site you led me to; Thanks, but i have enough linux and unix systems in my house to last me a life time. I want to try and keep this mac. The money issue with buying OS X doesent exist. But i need to try and put it on this computer. Yes, this computer has USB ports. 2 Are built in and there are another 2 on my 'original' apple keyboard. Of cource, the keyboard and mouse both use their own ports leaving me with 2. Im using a plug and play windows mouse at the moment. Surprised it works. The mac one i have seems to be busted. It is one of the old ball mice (through usb??? Wow! mac was ahead!) but one of the spinny things (diagonal) won't work. And, ive placed a few of the keys on the keyboard wrong. (I cleaned 10 years of food scraps from underneith it) So is upgrading the ram all i can do? I know the minimum requirements for OS X is like 128 MB of ram. So yes, ill definatly be upgrading that but isn't there some other things i can do to it? It would probably be about as slow as my 95' (DOS) Laptop would be if it was trying to run Vista 64-bit. And again, could someone please give me a guide on installing OS X (lower than 10.3.9 which i heard was the limit) on this computer. You said if it needs more space, use an external... Not sure if thats a good idea. My external is 120GB (The limit) and its trying to format it each time i insert it... Thanks. PS: What does indexing mean? I put it to sleep last night and came back to Find it was indexing... Never heard of it.