Imac G3 questions

[mstrroissy]

I guess I wasn't trying to suggest that this was the end all be all of installs, I was trying to show my elation at seeminly getting around a PITA stipulation for install. This is especially true when dealing with only 10 gigs of storage. There absolutely has to be a way to install it on bigger drives...none of my normal machines have under 100 gigs...so how does Apple install the os? And I never thought this method would cause errors....the software updater worked fine and downloaded all the appropriate drivers, and patches for the IMac g3. What issues should I anticipate? I think I am going to love it here.....LOADS OF GREAT INFO...thanks all!!!

Oh and I just looked at the drive properties and I have taken a screenshot of the system profiler and disk info...

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by sinclair_tm

without an apple keyboard, this is hard to do . so click once on the drive icon in the finder, and then goto the menu file>get info. now that window with the disk size will come up. right clicking on the icon should also give you the option to get info, but i don't remember, its been too long since i've used a classic booted mac.

True, but if you read my previous post I had mentioned which keyboards and mouses he could use so that he could do a Command-I (which was mentioned in the second post I made). Yes, the Windows keyboards don't have a Command key, but usually the layout is on par. I believe it would end up being the Windows key if using a Windows keyboard, but don't quote me on that as it's been a while since I've done that.

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by mstrroissy

I guess I wasn't trying to suggest that this was the end all be all of installs, I was trying to show my elation at seeminly getting around a PITA stipulation for install. This is especially true when dealing with only 10 gigs of storage. There absolutely has to be a way to install it on bigger drives...none of my normal machines have under 100 gigs...so how does Apple install the os? And I never thought this method would cause errors....the software updater worked fine and downloaded all the appropriate drivers, and patches for the IMac g3. What issues should I anticipate? I think I am going to love it here.....LOADS OF GREAT INFO...thanks all!!!

Oh and I just looked at the drive properties and I have taken a screenshot of the system profiler and disk info...

sinclair_tm does have a point though. Sometimes workarounds like that end up biting you in the fanny sometime in the future, especially since OS X would think that it was installed on a PowerBook. But it won't be known until something happens.

You have to understand that it's more an issue of the hardware on the older G3 iMacs since initially they didn't really run OS X when they were introduced (OS 9 was still the main OS and with post-y2k iMacs, OS X was still in "beta mode" until about 10.2). So for this reason, they weren't designed to meet the requirements of OS X. This is why there were firmware updates to allow OS X to install properly. Unfortunately, not everything can be taken care of (like the ATA controller on the iMac), which is why the stipulation for the first 8 GB of the hard drive to be used for OS X was there for earlier models. THis is also why some larger hard drives won't work either since the ATA controller can only access up to a certain capacity.

This isn't much different from the way PCs running Linux used to require that the first 1024 blocks of the hard drive be used for Linux. Of course, now BIOS is more up to date and computers and Linux have advanced way beyond this limitation that it's only a bad memory....not unlike the newer Macs and OS X versions that don't have this limitation.

[brandN]

I have 6GB of ram, 350 MHZ and 198 roughly of ram. Is this enough to install panther 10.3.9?

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by brandN

I have 6GB of ram, 350 MHZ and 198 roughly of ram. Is this enough to install panther 10.3.9?

So you have a 6 GB hard drive, and 198 MB of RAM. If I were you, I would see about updating the RAM to AT LEAST 256 MB. That iMac uses standard PC-100 memory, so if you have an old Pentium II/III PC that has a 100 MHz front-side-bus laying around that's not being used, you can use the RAM from that. You can even use PC-133 memory modules but you have to make sure that they are backwards compatible with systems that use PC-100 (some newer PC-133 modules have abandoned the backwards compatibility to make the memory cheaper).

As for the hard drive, see about getting the highest capacity hard drive supported by that iMac. Check Low End Mac for the specs on your iMac and how much capacity it can support for hard drives.

Hope this helps.

[brandN]

Ok, so I upgraded my Imac G3 to 256 MB with Vitrual Memory at 200 MB. Is this good enough now to install Panther? I have a 6 GB Hard Drive, is that good enough? Or do I really need to get a bigger one? Will any hard drive do? or does it have to be an Apple Hard Drive. I am getting me an Apple Keyboard and Mouse for about $20 bucks on ebay to match too. My goal is to have a Imac G3 running 10.3.9. So, thanks for all your help it's really, really appreciated.

[brandN]

Will installing Panther with a new Harddrive with no OS on it be ok? I'm really wanting to get rid of the original owners info. Can you go from OS 9.2 to OS 10.3.9. Or do you have you buy each OS 10.0 10.1 10.2 then 10.3? How does it work?

[eric2006]

Originally Posted by brandN

Will installing Panther with a new Harddrive with no OS on it be ok? I'm really wanting to get rid of the original owners info. Can you go from OS 9.2 to OS 10.3.9. Or do you have you buy each OS 10.0 10.1 10.2 then 10.3? How does it work?

You only need a CD to install OS X, a working system is not required. You have to buy every first-digit upgrade. You can get 10.3 disks on eBay, for a lot less than they originally sold for.