Perfect boxed iMac G3 I got for free, Part 4/4

[rkmugen]

Sheepshaver, a PPC emulator, which runs on Windows PC's, Intel Macs... and on PPC Macs (OS X only... it won't work on any PPC version of Linux), is another alternative to "Classic", but you'd need access to a Mac Rom, which might be more trouble than its worth to set up and extract... plus, if you don't have the full 1GB of RAM installed, it will really bog everything down. (i thought it's still worth mentioning...)

[themaritimeman]

@rkmugen Ah yes, I used to play with SheepShaver on Windows. I don't see the point of SheepShaver on a G3 Mac when I can use Classic, though...

[rkmugen]

@themaritimeman Well... Sheepshaver on a G3 Mac, under OSX could be a decent alternative if you didn't *initially* install OS9 and then have upgraded to either Panther or Tiger (on top of OS9). From my understanding, Classic would only be useable if you already have a working OS9 folder on the same drive or on a totally separate partition. If you only have one partition (for OSX), and Classic asks you to install OS9... the OS9 installer won't let you install on that OSX partition.

[themaritimeman]

@rkmugen Ah, I didn't know that! In that case, I suppose I'll slap OS 9 itself back on this thing! I liked to play with it once in a while, anyway.

[rkmugen]

While the obvious out-of-date nature of Flash for PPC (on OS X or even Linux for PPC) is an inescapable issue, I'd still like to recommend TenFourFox as a solid browser alternative to the out-dated version of Safari, and also because the official Firefox is no longer being made for OSX/PPC.

Classilla is made by the same folks that made TenFourFox, and will do a HELL of a lot better job than iCab. It's only a tad faster than iCab however, from personal experience... and I have the same iMac...

[rkmugen]

Try GIMP for graphics, Inkscape for vector graphics, and LibreOffice for word-processing/spreadsheets..­. in place of Photoshop/Illustrator/MS Office respectively. Best part, they're free, they're constantly kept up to date (as of 2012) and work pretty solid on Tiger. But given the age of the G3, expect them to start up rather slow... but after the initial loading time for those apps, they work fine.

You might consider installing Classic to "get at" your OS9 apps without needing to reboot...

[themaritimeman]

@rkmugen I have Microsoft Office 2008 installed now, it seems to run pretty good. I have Classic installed, I just wanted to demonstrate OS 9. OS X is the sole OS on this machine now.

[crogeek]

ATI rage pro was made in Canada - this graph. card is actually 2d/3d one with I believe SD-RAM on it.

[themaritimeman]

@crogeek The Rage 128 Pro was sold all over the world where ATI retailed their products, was also both 2D and 3D accelerated, and also had SDRAM.

The GPU in this is called a Rage 128 Ultra, which I can find no information on by Googling. It appears to have all the same specs as the Rage 128 Pro, so I'm wondering if it is the same chip, renamed for the Macintosh market or something.

[icemansquared]

You could still use it as a fileserver and for jukebox purposes. I wonder if it is capable of internet though.

[themaritimeman]

@icemansquared Well, between my showing of the 56k modem and 10/100 Ethernet ports in Part 2, my statement of upgrading Safari in Part 3, and my statement of going online in Mac OS 9 here, I would say it's definitely Internet capable. lol

I already use the Compaq Presario 5360 as a file server, and I would never allocate my one and only Macintosh to such a job anyway. I'm actually considering taking it with me to university to use with Microsoft Office and such.

[mikee286]

too bad they weren't getting rid of a first gen intel mac. I know my college had a few of their old ones for sale but they were asking like 300$ which is still good but they are heavily i mean heavily warn though from the media and communications department they even had a few g4 cube macs

[Lachlant1984]

That's one of the things I love about the Mac, the speech, i use it all the time, it helps me a lot when reading large amounts of text because I have a vision impairment, I know you can get speech programs for Windows, but the fact it's all included in Mac OS is great for me and others as well, Apple have lots of interesting voices, they're not too bad. OS 9 and OS 10 have quite a few differences in the fine details of the interface, OS 10 is much more organised I think.

[Jivemaster2005]

Tried holding the ALT button while booting? might present you with a boot menu so you can choose which OS to boot from

[themaritimeman]

@Jivemaster2005 Never heard that one; thanks for the tip.

[IBMThinkPadR51]

Cool. I have Mac OS 9.2.2 on my eMac, it also run Mac OS X 10.3.9 'Panther', which runs like crap, because the Hard Drive is full of rubbish. I plan on upgrading to 10.5.8 Leopard, which is the last OS that a PowerPC G4 & G5 can run, G3s can only run up to Mac OS X 10.4.11 'Tiger'

[themaritimeman]

@IBMThinkPadR51 Being the 700 MHz model, 10.5 isn't officially supported on your eMac. In-fact, per Low End Mac, it won't install at all on sub-867 MHz Macs without a modification to the firmware. I also read that 10.5 may have some issues with the screensaver and sleep mode on the eMac.

If you can get past installing it and the bugs, it should run half decent between 512 MB of RAM and nVidia GeForce graphics.

[IBMThinkPadR51]

@themaritimeman I read an article on Low End Mac where you can download a utility called 'LeopardAssist'. What it does is fake out the CPU clock speed to 867 MHz on any machine below 867 MHz and that allows the installer to run. When finished installing, the speed returns to normal and works fine. My eMac should run it fine, although I might bump up the RAM a bit. The sleep and screen saver issues were with I think Power Mac G4s and G4 Cubes. I'm not sure though.