Can I install OSX on a 233mhz Imac

[Shadowarrior]

I just bought a second hand 233mhz iMac, i've never used Macintosh before but i am trying to get into it, and mostly i like the look of MacosX, now can i install it on my imac with 196mb of ram and 4gb of hard disc and very important will my Usb HP 8200 Cd-R (with toast 5.01) work, Thanx a lot

[Zarembo]

I installed the beta on my kid's 233 iMac. It was awfully slow, but it did work. After that experience I never did install the OS X release. I thought it would be too slow. If I just had that machine, I'd try it.

It has to be better than the beta. My advice add more ram, its cheap, see if you can upgrade the processor. Better yet, if you enjoy the iMac experience, get a new used iMac with a warranty, you'll be much happier about the speed of the overall system.

[terran74]

Hello there,

I actually just posted some responses about this on another post. It was in the thread regarding 10.1 on a Rev a iMac. Do a search for my previous posts to see the details.

To answer your question though. Yes you can. It will install and run on your iMac just fine. It will be a tad bit slow though but not an unusable machine for internet or simple word processing.

Here are some upgrade tips:

You have a decent amount of RAM on it.

You may wish to upgrade your hard drive. The amount of space you have should be enough for MacOS X but if you plan on using this machine alot, you might fill up your remaining drive space pretty quickly. It all depends on which components you install, like printing support, MacOS Classic, and Developer tools.

If you should decide to upgrade the drive be warned that it can be a bit of a task to install a new drive. Its no impossible by any means but it does require taking the iMac apart. Took me about an hour to do mine.

Make sure you have about 6MB of Vram for the video card. If yours was the Rev a iMac is came with 2Mb upgradable to 6Mb, rev b came with 6Mb.

There are other upgrade routes such as a faster processor but these are the easy ones you can do for now.

That should be it, hope this helps.

[Zarembo]

A good reply. Get a faster hard drive too. 7200 or 8400 rpm. That should speed things up too!

[ZeroGJavaInstallers]

I have a Bondi imac, and Mac OS X 10.1 works fine on it. I have 196 megabytes of RAM, and 10.1 is MUCH faster than 10.0.

Be careful with the boot drive size though, and as the 10.1 read me will tell you, on a 233, the Mac OS X partition should be completely within the first 8 gigabytes of the HD.

On the HD that shipped with the system, this is no problem. If you have swapped out the HD, for something larger, then you are stuck, and have to do some repartioning. This can be tricking and time consuming.

If you get a new hard drive, just be sure to make at least 2 partitions, and have the first one be smaller than 8 gigs.

[Shadowarrior]

Thanx a lot to everybody who replied to this post, i appreciate. I still have a problem with my HP 8200 usb, Mac os X.1 doesn't recognize it. I had it up and runnig with os 9.2 (toast 5.01) but now nothing it simply doesn't work. Please help me