What to do with a used iMac G3/333 (tray model)?

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:34 am

Backstory:
I was taking out the garbage a few weeks back and noticed that my neighbor across the street left his iMac G3/333 (tray model) outside his house for the garbage/recycle collectors to pick up. I went up to him and asked him about it and after a quick talk, he let me have it for free and even included the power cord! (no keyboard, no mouse)

Specs

G3/333
OS 9.2.2
64 MB RAM
6 GB HDD
CD-ROM (not CD-R/CD-RW)

Working Condition:
So yeah, I fired it up and everything works. But since the date keeps going back to "1956" after each reboot, it will be needing a new battery, which i can easily get at a local RadioShack. I checked the system profiler and it seems that the Firmware has already been updated to "3.0.F3" (iMac Firmware Update v1.2) so i believe it is OS X-capable in that regard.

Where I am today with this thing:
Well, to be honest, I haven't done much with it, but I am thinking of using it as a back-up workstation for me to do some very light Photoshop work or generic internet browsing (YouTube; iTunes)... or maybe I could install a flavor of Ubuntu/Xubuntu on it... I don't know.

So far, i have -NOT- spent any money on it yet as I want to know if anybody else here knows what the performance of a G3 iMac/333 would feel like when visiting a site like YouTube under OS X. I am considering purchasing the Sonnet Harmoni G3/600MHz upgrade for it if enough of you can tell me if you consider the upgraded performance adequate enough for watching stuff on YouTube. (if i went with OS X, obviously i'll be looking around for install CDs of Tiger 10.4; not the DVD version).

Just to compare,I have a PowerMac 6100/60 which i upgraded to a G3/500 and maxed-out the ram to 136 MB and even got it the A/V nubus card. But with the motherboard's bottleneck of roughly 5MB/s (according to www.Kan.org/6100), viewing stuff on YouTube, even on a broadband connection isn't all that stellar..... it's still painfully slow.

I have an extra 30 GB Ultra ATA hard drive (5400 rpm) in working condition lying around from another computer that died on me. I'm thinking of installing that in the iMac.

I also currently have a home network, shared between my Vista desktop, my sister's WinXP laptop, my network printer, and my old PowerMac 6100. Is it possible to connect (daisy-chain) a second router to my first router to further separate my 6100 and iMac from the Windows computers? See this pic for the layout i'm thinking of.

Recap of my questions:
1) Will the original iMac G3/333 with 512 MB of RAM (maxed out) and with OS X be enough to view YouTube smoothly?

2) What if I purchased the 600 MHz G3 upgrade?

3) With regards to the network layout I'm hoping to set up, could i daisy-chain my routers as shown in the above picture?

Thanks, ahead of time!!

symbolic X · Post by **symbolic X** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:55 pm

For question 1, not only that will depend on the hw/sw installed, but it can also depend on the correct versions of Flash and video codecs that OS X is carrying. What is your version of OS X planning to be? But watch out though. The higher the version (Tiger/Leopard), the slower it could be.

Post by **Cat_7** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:46 pm

And for the networking part:

I guess you can put the router for the macs behind another router. If you use DHCP, you could distribute a static address to the second router and let that router distribute ip-addresses through DHCP to the macs on a different ip-subnet.

What I don't know is if some services on the macs might have problems with the two-fold address translation before the internet is reached.

But why would you want to separate the systems with two routers?
You can separate the machines by reserving ip-adressess based on the MAC address of the network cards through DHCP as well.

Best,
Cat_7

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:09 pm

Well, i'd like to go up to Tiger 10.4.11 if I could... i mean, is the performance really that much different between Panther (10.3.9) and Tiger(10.4.11)? Like for example, couldn't i just turn off all the extra bells and whistles (widgets, etc.) and just be left with a "LEAN, MEAN CAT"?

As for Adobe Flash (which YouTube and other video sites obviously use), Adobe states on their site that the latest version of Flash requires an absolute minimum of 500MHz processor for Macs. (it's kind of not fair that they only require 450MHz for Windows users... lol)

Btw, Leopard 10.5.x won't work with the iMac G3, according to some websites I've researched; so 10.5.x is out of the picture.

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:32 pm

Cat_7 wrote:And for the networking part:

I guess you can put the router for the macs behind another router. If you use DHCP, you could distribute a static address to the second router and let that router distribute ip-addresses through DHCP to the macs on a different ip-subnet.

What I don't know is if some services on the macs might have problems with the two-fold address translation before the internet is reached.

But why would you want to separate the systems with two routers?
You can separate the machines by reserving ip-adressess based on the MAC address of the network cards through DHCP as well.

Best,
Cat_7

That's what I thought... thanks.

Well, the router I have has only 4 ports. Currently, 3 are being used: PC, Mac, and Network printer. I plan on adding a network storage device to simplify my family's data/media storage needs (it would be physically kept in the same room as my Vista PC). So the cable that is currently fed to my 6100 would instead be further split between it and the iMac; both of which are in a different room all the way on the other side of my home.

It was a pain to run a network cable through the walls and neither of my two Macs have any viable wireless options to access the internet so this is the best I could come up with. blah!!

symbolic X · Post by **symbolic X** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:01 am

I would be surprised if an old iMac G3 would be tricked into using Leopard. Nothing else, I would be surprised if I saw hardware switched out where it would fit well into an iMac and run Leopard.

Whatever you do, don't "emulate" Leopard on a G3!

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:37 am

hahaha... emulate Leopard on a G3!

well... to be honest, if i really wanted leopard, I'd just go out and get me a Mac Mini or something... but I got this iMac for pretty much nothing, so i figured that if i can modernize this Mac for cheap and get decent performance on at least YouTube, then of course i'd be extremely happy!

Stephen Coates · Post by **Stephen Coates** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:57 am

As for YouTube, I had a PowerMac G3 with a 500MHz G4 upgrade and a Radeon 7000 graphics card and youtube didn't have a very good frame rate. You'd probably see about 3 frames per second. It is much better on my 500MHz PentiumIII where is runs pretty well (but not perfectly).

This was in both OS9 and OSX so I don't think it will be too good on the iMac.

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 4:40 pm

Stephen Coates wrote:As for YouTube, I had a PowerMac G3 with a 500MHz G4 upgrade and a Radeon 7000 graphics card and youtube didn't have a very good frame rate. You'd probably see about 3 frames per second. It is much better on my 500MHz PentiumIII where is runs pretty well (but not perfectly).

This was in both OS9 and OSX so I don't think it will be too good on the iMac.

NOOOO!!!!!

Bah!! oh well... if it can at least handle Google maps, then it's not a total loss...

symbolic X · Post by **symbolic X** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:04 pm

Maybe there are older versions that might pick up a few extra frames per second, but good luck finding those.

Stephen Coates · Post by **Stephen Coates** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:05 pm

I used Flash 7 on my PowerMac, and that's the lowest version supported by YouTube as far as I'm aware.

t3h · Post by **t3h** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:36 am

Interesting about the FLV framerate becuase I had a 500MHZ G3 PowerBook, and it was playing YouTube mostly watchably (~15fps)...

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:19 pm

~15 fps?! really? So if i got the 600 MHz upgrade, it'd probably feel like it's around 20-25 fps then, right? If so, then I can probably live with that. Thanks everyone! 8)

kikkoman · Post by **kikkoman** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:46 am

I don't mean to dig up an old post, but I thought that this new update would serve as a helpful piece of advice to anyone who wants to network their Macs and PCs together, but have the opportunity to put their Macs in one room and PCs in a completely different room.

Room 1 (my bedroom): Vista PC, printer, expected NAS (network storage drive).

Room 2 (sister's bedroom): XP laptop

Room 3 (other side of the house; about 30-50 ft away (using a 50 ft network cable): iMac G3, Power Mac 6100

Update: In lieu of a "ROUTER-behind a-ROUTER" scheme, I simply added an inexpensive, "unmanaged" 5-port switch between the two Macs and the router. This means that I still have one extra port on my router for a NAS (network storage drive) and two remaining ports on the 5-port switch for a future iMac or two. The beauty of using a switch instead of a second router is that I didn't have to deal with any IP address configuration on either of the Macs. Both Macs were set with DHCP and connecting to the internet was an easy and seamless experience (just about as "plug-and-play" as you can get).

I was also able to still set IP reservation on the router for the two Macs.... SWEET!

The switch I'm using is the DES-1105 by D-Link.