[SOLVED] Old Imac

[Rigit]

I have an old Imac G3 I inherited from my son who bought it for who knows why. Being a computer enthusiast I booted this thing up and tried it out. I have ZERO experience with Mac. I like this little thing. Can't say why. This is a tray loading Imac with the powerpc 750 cpu 333mhz. Someone has upgraded the memory to 168MB, a strange amount how do you do that? They also installed Mac OSX 10.3.9 This is still an older version of Mac OSX but it's better than the 8.x it shipped with. I believe this mac was made after 2000 which from what I've read means it can take up to 1GB of memory. If that's true it's very good news because this thing struggles on the web and I think it's because of lack of memory. 333mhz cpu should do web browsing fine. I would like to upgrade the memory once I figure out how to get into this thing safely and maybe upgrade to a later version of OSX but I've read that may not be advisable. I'm looking for some basic information here. Anything you folks think is helpful. This is a hobby endeavor but a serious one.
thanks

 

[Ijack]

There's some details here, with links to additional pages that may help you. According to that information the maximum memory that your Mac can take is 512MB.

I run a G4 Mac Mini, a considerably more powerful processor, with 512MB and I can advise you not to install any version above 10.4 on such a setup. 10.5 crawls (I believe due to a need for more memory) and 10.6 doesn't run on PowerPC Macs. If you can get hold of a copy of 10.4 at a reasonable price then it might be worth a go.

 

[das_stig]

Position the motherboard/drive assembly so that the CD-ROM drive is closest to you.

Near the top of the motherboard is a shiny metal cover. To access the iMac's spare RAM slot, remove this cover by prying the side of the cover open with a flathead screwdriver. The cover's edges are sharp! To avoid injury, don't touch the edges with your hands.

Beneath the cover, you'll spy a white plastic bracket. This is where the RAM goes, 144-pin, PC100 SO-DIMM.

If you have a Rev. A iMac, you'll see a similar empty RAM socket on the left side of the motherboard. This is the video RAM (VRAM) socket. While you're inside your iMac, it's not a bad idea to max out your iMac's VRAM by adding a 4MB SGRAM SO-DIMM.

The original G3's came with 4GB ATA HDD, swap it for a bigger disk, but make sure its a 5400rpm model, faster drives could cause issues.

 

[Rigit]

Position the motherboard/drive assembly so that the CD-ROM drive is closest to you.

Near the top of the motherboard is a shiny metal cover. To access the iMac's spare RAM slot, remove this cover by prying the side of the cover open with a flathead screwdriver. The cover's edges are sharp! To avoid injury, don't touch the edges with your hands.

Beneath the cover, you'll spy a white plastic bracket. This is where the RAM goes, 144-pin, PC100 SO-DIMM.

If you have a Rev. A iMac, you'll see a similar empty RAM socket on the left side of the motherboard. This is the video RAM (VRAM) socket. While you're inside your iMac, it's not a bad idea to max out your iMac's VRAM by adding a 4MB SGRAM SO-DIMM.

The original G3's came with 4GB ATA HDD, swap it for a bigger disk, but make sure its a 5400rpm model, faster drives could cause issues.

Thanks for the info. Just a couple questions. First how do I even get inside the thing to get the the mother board? Also this Imac has a 6GB HD is that ata eide? I've read if you go bigger than 8GB there is an issue with the OS where you must put that in a partition of it's own of 7GB. Is this true? I don't even have a copy of any OS so I will likely have to find one. Right now I'm trying to find a web browser that's lite enough to run but yet functional for todays internet. Safari just wants to crash and I tried Firefox 2.0 but it is a resource hog and it runs slowwww. So right now I'm using ie 5 I think it is.

 

[Ijack]

You could try Opera, which is fairly easy on resources.