Min Sys Requirements for Mac OSX?

J

jskelly

Registered
Sorry, I've been out of the Mac world for quite some time ... actually, the last Mac I used had OS 7, I think.

Anywho, I saved a Mac G4 from being thrown away today (it just needed to get the OS reloaded, it runs great!)

It has 500+MB RAM, 10GB hard drive, but I don't know how fast the CPU is (if anybody can tell me how to check on OS 9, I would appreciate it), but what I really want to know is what are the minimum system requirements for OS X?

I really want to upgrade, to learn OS X for work and all (plus it's a kick ass looking OS!), but I don't want to stick the $$$ into the OS if I can't run it.

Thanks ahead!
Joe
 
Ahh yes, there it is :)

400 Mhz
576 MB RAM
Backside L2 cache: 1MB
ATI Video Card
ATA Hard Drive
Just updated to OS 9.2.1

Is that enough to run it or no?
It says there that the min system requirements are
PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor.
Built-in FireWire.
At least 256MB of physical RAM.
At least 3.0 GB of available space on your hard drive.

Which I have, but I know what running something at min system requirements can mean, it'll work, but not very good.

And if I do get one, should I get Jaguar, Panther, or Tiger? I know Tiger has the most recent addons and all the new fun stuff.

If I do buy it, I'll get it from AppleRescue!


Thanks again!
Joe
 
I would go for Tiger, it is a G4, so it's pretty good. Tiger also has better coding and updates, so it can run better. But it really depends what you want to do on it to decide what system you should get.
 
tiger NEEDS 256mb ram, runs on 512mb ram, but is perfectly happy with about 600mb ram.

I run tiger on a G3, so you should have no problem on that ol' G4.
 
I run a G4 400 Mhz with 512mb ram as a basic fileserver, and works ok, not fast, but ok. Given the price, I'd up the RAM as far as you can. A 512mb board for my machine (i think its the same as yours) is $78 from the very reputable crucial.com .
 
Awesome! I'm going to order the OS and a memory upgrade in the next few days, hopefully I'll be running OS X next week!

Thanks again for all the help!
Joe
 
I'd go for Panther. 10.3.9 gives you almost the same features (minus Spotlight and Dashboard, basically). Tiger, in my opinion, feels like it's running under "restricted memory conditions" if you have less than 640 MB of RAM, whereas Panther feels just fine with 512 MB RAM. And I'm not talking working big Photoshop files here, merely using the machine with a couple of apps open.
 
Does anyone know if I would be able to download a reinstallation program for mac mini? The problem is I lost the password to log in and now i have to reinstall. Does anyone know a way???
 
joshrodz said:
Does anyone know if I would be able to download a reinstallation program for mac mini? The problem is I lost the password to log in and now i have to reinstall. Does anyone know a way???
Click to expand...

You don't have to reinstall. Just boot of an OS X system install disk and reset the master password from the first install menu items when they first pop up.
 
Thanks so much for that bit of info. Would it be possible to give me a brief step by step on how to do that boot? Im sort of a newbie at macs and dont know how to do it. Thanks again

-Josh
 
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