Best Vesion of OSX for iBook G3/300 Rev B.

applemaz

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I am going to receive an iBook G3/300 rev B (6 GB HD) soon. It has 320 MB RAM on it and I don't want to add any more.

What I need to know is which version of OSX (10.2 through 10.4) will run best on this machine? I own legal copies of OS 9, 10.2 and 10.3 which I am currently not using and am licensed for up to three 10.4 installs. It currently has OS 9 only on it. I am not concerned about the additional programs which come with each version of OSX, I just need to know from a purely speed point of view, which would be best to run.

Before I install OSX, I also need to know if there is a way to back up the iBook as is, since I don't have any of the original CD's and want to retain the apps that come installed on the iBook which are not part of Mac OSX.

I have a PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz and an external 120 GB USB 2.0 HD, but it isn't partitioned and I have my G5's HD backed up on the external drive. I'd prefer a way to make an image of the iBook's drive and save it as a file on my external HD, but if I cannot, I guess I could wipe my external HD, partition it and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my G5 to one partition and my iBook to the other partition (though I'm not sure if this will work using CCC).

My iBook has an airport card so it can access my network and I could share the external USB drive attached to my G5 (I hope) so that the iBook can copy files to it.

If anyone has a better solution, let me know. I really wish I could somehow remake the iBook G3/300 install CD's. I really only need to retain the apps installed at the factory which are not a part of the OS install.
 
You can make an image (using disk copy) of the hard drive as is, just store it on the G5's drive for the time being.

I would say 10.3 is your best bet, 10.4 requires more power and memory. Eitherway, its not going to be pretty, but it should be at least usuable. I have used a B&W G3 350Mhz with 512MB of ram on 10.3 and it was great, I wouldn't expect as much out of a laptop though.
 
You can always put Tiger on it and see how it performs and then go to an alternatiev previous version if needed.
 
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