iMac (old school) questions

[amo]

I've got a few iMac questions for you guys with a DV 400 or 500:

What's the best screen resolution?
How much ram can you put in there?
Is it possible to upgrade the hard drive?
How well does it run OSX?
Do the internal speakers work pretty good? (I don't need anything awesome, just decent-sounding)

Thanks for your replies!

[Charon]

I have iMac DV 400

1024*768 is the best possible.. others look messy (640*768&800*600)
I have ram 128+64=192 Works quite nicely.. OS 9.2.1 (considering to upgradin gto OSX)
i have 9,55 gigs, and i think it is enough
As i said, no OSX yet....
I use an amplifier+speakers ($1500$), so i don't use the comp's internal speakers, but i guess they work just fine. nice quality of sound...Treble is nice, but bass is a lil bit... well you know...awful...

[Kristjan]

Mac OS X runs just fine on my computer, atleast the Finder, OmniWeb and most of the applications. Illustrator and Office are much slower in Mac OS X, compared to their speed in Mac OS 9.x.

The speakers are ok for casual mp3 listening and gaming, nothing more.

I think 512 Mb is the most you can install. (2*256).

It is possible to upgrade the hard drive, but it's a bit tricky to get to it.


Peace!

[marmoset]

Originally posted by amo

How much ram can you put in there?

A gig (two 512MB PC100 or PC133 DIMMS)

Is it possible to upgrade the hard drive?

Some folks have done it, but it's pretty
hairy. Best bet is a Firewire external.

How well does it run OSX?

Obviously it's no G4, but it's fast enough for me to get my stuff done, including a fair amount of compute-intensive compiling from source.

Do the internal speakers work pretty good? (I don't need anything awesome, just decent-sounding)

They're clear sounding, though obviously there is absolutely no low-end (but there's always the optional iSub to fix that...)

[edX]

i think my 400 works great with osx. it is nearly as fast as my girlfriend's 600 (only a few occasional perceived differences). i also get rendering times on complex web pages that are darn close to people with real power setups.

I personally prefer the default resolution as it is easier to read but high resolution works fine as well. you can put a gig of ram in but my 512 works well enough for my nonprofessional use. I notice that i rarely use more than 400 of it.

To get the best performance out of osx, it is important to have the lasted versions of it and os 9 working together.

there is thread somewhere on this site that gives very explicit directions for replacing the internal hd if you want. but really, firewire works so fast in osx that you can't tell the difference from the internal. i run any program from my firewire drives and never even think about it. Firewire compatibility is one of osx's great strengths!!

the speakers are ok, headphones are better. the speakers tend to give some distortion at higher volumes.

[Koelling]

I have no firewire so I replaced the internal hard drive so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. My hard drive is probably smaller than yours will be (mine was 6gig) so you shouldn't have to replace that right away.

[genghiscohen]

Hey, even a fumble-fingers like myself can replace the HD in an "old-fashioned" iMac (slot-loading models). I replaced the stock 6-Gig HD in my 350 MHz blueberry iMac with a Maxtor 40-Gig HD, no sweat.