G3 iMac: how to format drive and upgrade to OSX?

[b_electro]

I just bouught a G3 iMac DV running OS 9.0.4 for $10, for a broke friend with a broken PC ;-) I want to format the drive (completely erase everything) and install OSX v10.2. I tried to install OSX the other night but I think the drive is so slow it never got anywhere, even overnight.

This box is 400MHz and only has 64MB RAM- will I need more to run OSX? Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Thanx,
B

[camgangrel21]

you need 512 mb of ram to run OS X any flaver right. you can get away with 120 MB but it will be dog as slow. But if your friend was run XP then he may not even see the slow down at 120 MB. ;-)

[Mikuro]

128MB is the bare minimum for OS X. Any less and it might not even boot. You could stick a 256MB stick in there, for a total of 320MB, and be pretty happy. I used a similar model iMac with 192MB for years, and it worked, but it clearly wanted more, so I'd recommend buying a 256MB stick at least.

Be sure you install all the latest firmware updates before attempting to install OS X. Failure to do so could result in a dead little iMac.

[b_electro]

Nice- thanks for the advice. I probably have a stick or 2 of something lying around here...Now how do I reformat the drive?

Thanks,
B

[Mikuro]

I forget exactly how it is on the Jaguar install CD, but there should be an option called "erase and install", or something like that. There might also be an option to open Disk Utility (or maybe it was called Disk Copy in Jaguar) in one of the menus. Format the drive as HFS+ (AKA "Mac OS Extended"). If the OS 9 partition is HFS+ (it probably is), you should be able to install OS X right on top of it.