Tiger on an iMac G3/333
Posted on January 1, 2006
Filed Under Apple, Computing |
The wife recently brought home a purple iMac G3/333 that was surplus from work.
So I say to myself, “what a great email checking/jukeboxen :)”. The original system is OS 8.6, and I would like to install Tiger, OS X 10.4. Unfortunately Tiger will not install on this system, as it is not supported. No problem, just use XPostFacto, but first you need to upgrade to at least OS9. So find a older version of a Mac OS9 or OS X and install it. In my case, I installed OS X 10.3. After the OS install, install XPostFacto following its simple instructions. Pop in the Tiger install CDs and you are good to go.
The box has a 6GB hard drive and 96MB of RAM. It runs apps quicker than i expected, just don’t open too much at once because when the system swaps you can hear it - and it takes several seconds. I tried to install Front Row, but the system cannot handle the graphics requirements of Front Row and all i get is a black screen with a small white box in the middle. I can use the keyboard to control FR, and it works when you get into submenus of iTunes or Videos.
So now the pretty purple iMac controls my sound system, which is controlled via Remote Desktop from my iBook. My iTunes Library is shared so I end up playing music from my iBook without the overhead of running iTunes. Once I get a working WiFi adapter for it, I’ll move it and it can be used to check email or watch video in the kitchen too.
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I found myself in a similar position about a year ago, 17″ powerbook as my main workhorse but i really wanted to find a use for my tangerine imac 333, just to justify the big space it takes up on the desk! My advice, open it up, pop a bigger HD in, i put in 120gb, 7200rpm, it makes a lot of difference, i’ve had no problems with heat. With the extra space you can use it as a great fileserver/backup. Whilst it’s apart upgrade the non-user accessible ram, my imac now has 256MB. I installed Tiger by editing the osinstall.mpkg on Tiger CD1 and removing the functions that limit installations to unsupported machines and the hardware checks.