iMac G3 Upgrade Guide

A complete instructional guide to upgrading the RAM, Hard Drive, Logic Board and OS on an iMac G3. If you own or are planning on owning an iMac, this how to guide will show you everything you need to know to get it up and running.

RAM:
Your iMac will accept up to 1GB of 168-pin PC100 or PC133. I purchase my RAM here: http://bit.ly/ejpvLk

Hard Drive:
An iMac will take any 3.5" IDE hard drive. It will see up to 120GB of storage, any drive larger than that will be seen as a 120GB model. I would recommend any of these three:
Seagate Barracuda: http://bit.ly/dK2tXu
Maxtor Diamondmax8: http://bit.ly/h1XqQb
Western Digital Blue 80GB (NEW) : http://bit.ly/anieSN


Logic Board:
A slot loading iMac will run as fast as 700MHz, however these boards are very rare. A 600MHz is the fastest one your probably going to be able to find.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• iMac
• G3
• upgrade
• instructions
• memory
• hard
• drive
• logic
• board
• mac
• os
• tiger

[partha9797]

I am about to buy a Imac g3, and upgrade the ram to 1024 mb (2x512mb), will this ok to watch youtube videos?

Thanks

[appleinfl]

@partha9797 No, you'll never get a youtube video to play smoothly on a G3.

[superdevonator]

would it be possible to gut this thing, and build your own computer, using this as a case? I was wanting to have a semi-beefy imac g3, and a semi-beefy ibook g3. By semi-beefy, I mean, say, 1 gig of ram for each, 1gigahertz processor, maybe 64megs of vram, dvd, etc. Would it be possible to do that? I really love the looks of these computers, but don't like the performance.

[appleinfl]

@superdevonator It's been done before, google imac g3 mod.

[SquiglySquigly]

Would it be a good idea to upgrade to snow leopard?

[appleinfl]

@SquiglySquigly a G3 won't go past 10.4.

[ProductionsNate]

What about the logicboard???



[sonic1st1]

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[compamac]

You have great videos

[RainbowLove74]

I have an imac 3G 600MHZ with 512mbs of ram and 40gb Hd with two firewire ports,my question is about the ram,do I hvae to buy a certain brand of pc100/133 ?

[dharmaboy75]

just curious. Would a Solid State HD make this thing snappier?

[maccollectorZ]

I have an iMac G4 (1GHZ, DVD-ROM drive, and 256 MB RAM) And I tried to upgrade it to Tiger from Panther, but it gave me an error message. Something like: Certain files cannot be copied onto the computer from the disc. I have done other Tiger installations with this disc, and it is fine. I'm just wondering about the G4 iMac, and why it won't go through the installation. Can you help?

[maccollectorZ]

I have a Ruby iMac that needs a firmware update to install Panther. I don't see a link at the bottom as to how to upgrade the firmware. Can you help?

[RichardJRoper]

HaH! Finally some very useful information! I wish I'd found this a few months ago!