quick mac question

Toups · tyranically banal Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Location: Ebon Keep

so I'm using this (old and shitty) imac at work, and it runs slower than a sloth in molasses in january. this mac was made sometime between 01 and 03, so I hear. my coworker seems to think formatting and installing OS X will do wonders for its performance. is he right? can this computer even be upgraded to OS X, or is it likely too slow?

also, uh, how difficult is it to um, "acquire" OS X without great expenditure of capital resources?
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Toups · tyranically banal Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Location: Ebon Keep

also: yes, I have a job now. but it's only part time :(
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Broco · Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: Headquarters

Yeah I once installed OS X on some Macs of that era. But you should first upgrade its RAM to as much as it can take (something like 384Mb to 512Mb), because OS X is RAM hungry and with any less than that you will have constant thrashing. A G3 CPU is fast enough though. What you should probably get is PC133 RAM from Crucial.

Toups · tyranically banal Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Location: Ebon Keep

yeah this mofo only has 64 MB. is RAM for these things expensive or hard to find now?
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Broco · Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: Headquarters

Yeah 64Mb definitely won't cut the mustard.

It's sort of expensive for the amount of RAM you get yeah, but it's not that bad. It's the kind of RAM that was standard in all computers 5 years ago, but isn't manufactured much anymore. E.g. this is probably what you need, though you should check the specs of your precise iMac model to make sure that it will fit. I recommend the brand Crucial in particular because Macs are very picky about the RAM they like apparently and Crucial has a reputation for working well in Macs.

Broco · Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: Headquarters

Oh yeah I just remembered something very important! Installing OS X on an old iMac risks bricking it unless you update the firmware to 4.1.9 first! Seriously, if you so much as boot up on the OS X install disk on the wrong firmware your iMac will be bricked within ten seconds before you've even installed anything, because it tries to go into an illegal video resolution and rebooting doesn't recover from the problem for some reason. This really sucks. Follow the instructions here before you do anything.

(Yeah when this happened to me and I had to go connect an external monitor to unbrick it, that's when I realized Apple's marketing about Macs being bug-free was an outrageous lie. Why does the OS X install disk not check for the firmware revision before doing anything dangerous? Also why does the firmware patcher require OS9.2? This bullshit is inexcusable.)

Broco · Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: Headquarters

At any rate, if you don't want to go through all that, you may find that just the RAM will improve the performance on OS9 sufficiently to satisfy you.

Kappuru · forum bishonen Joined: 05 Dec 2006

os9 fucking sucks, though. osx is very good. let me explain this way.

os9:win3.11 (yes, not even win 95... i'd say os7 was win95 worthy..)
as osx:vista (they wish)
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Mr. Business · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Hiding

Yes, you should definitely upgrade the ram as much as you can first. After that, evaluate your opinion of the performance and upgrade accordingly.
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Taking a break.

elmimmo · Joined: 17 Feb 2007

What color is it. Unless it is Bondy (dirty) Blueit should accept up to 1GB on two sticks of 512 MB of PC133 SDRAM (specs will probably be PC100, but PC133 will work just as well for the same price or even cheaper and same performance). If it is Bondy Blue it is more difficult to determine, but max will be much less.

512MB will give you a decent experience (by decent meaning, the Finder being not as snappy as OS 9, but that aside, miles better in stability and looks), if what you want to do is web surfing, e-mailing, using MS-Word, or browse family photos, etc.

If you want to be able to use Photoshop and the like, well, just because I think one should always have MORE ram that actually needs, I would go 1 GB, but of course you must evaluate how much you want to invest in a relic (I popped it open and switched the 9 GB HDD for one of 120). Still, such software will work with half GB, but if you push it you will feel it (ONLY if you push it so as to run out of RAM).

Depending on the generation you will be able to use iMovie and such. Plain MPEG4 such as DivX, I am afraid are are the edge of the possible, only as long as the videos are not too big, you quit absolutely every other single app, and use something like MPlayer or VLC instead of QuickTime to play (both do not the best user experience, but they consume less than Apple's thing). Forget about H.264 or WM9 even at the smallest size. It will stall the machine and you will have to struggle to be able to "force quit" whatever app is causing the trouble.

Flash websites will be a pain to surf.

FortNinety · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: New York, New York

As already mentioned, get as much ram as you can. OS X requires a bare minimum of 128 mb, or at least used to, back during the 10.0-10.3 days. Tiger might require more, like 256. Though from my day to day use, even twice that much barely suffices.

For an older machine, you can't go wrong with 10.3, aka Panther. It was the first version of OS X where Apple really nailed it. Everything works just great, and I actually prefer it over 10.4, aka Tiger, which does more, but is bloated and wonky. Like many, I'm hoping 10.5 fixes that, but we all know that its not going to work on 80% of the stuff that's out there. But anyway, get Panther if you can.
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