Hi all! I'm a relatively new member and I recently acquired an old iMac G3 for free. By process of elimination, I've come to the conclusion it's a 450mhz DV+ from summer 2000! At first I thought it was a 400mhz DV but it's got a DVD-ROM and a 20GB hard drive, so it's definitely a DV+

I am now wanting to pimp this baby up by making a huge Mac OS 9 dedicated platform, complete with 1GB of PC100 RAM and a 120GB SSD bridged onto a PATA to SATA converter AAAAND a WiFi bridge plugged into the ethernet port on the side door! Those 8MB of VRAM should be just about enough to play all games ever made for Mac OS 9 and earlier, right?

I've been using SheepShaver for almost 5 years now and I think it's time to move some stuff over to the real machine, but I've got a lot. I was wondering, is it possible to format a USB stick or an external USB drive using SheepShaver? I haven't found how to do that. Normally, when I insert a Mac formatted CD-ROM while SheepShaver is launched, it mounts on the MacOS Finder just fine, but it doesn't do that with USB sticks. What I'm doing at the moment is .sit a (maximum) 1GB archive, copy it to the Windows desktop via the "Computer" icon in SheepShaver, then using Windows I normally copy it to a FAT32 USB stick and then I plug it in the iMac and copy the files on the desktop and then uncompress them. It's long and tedious work, especially the 1GB single file limit that SheepShaver is imposing. How could I format a USB drive in SheepShaver and directly copy 50GB of stuff in there in 1 operation?

I'm planning on preparing the SSD drive while connecting it via USB to SheepShaver, because unforunately the DV+ iMac's internal DVD drive is broken!... so I will not be able to install Mac OS 9 from a CD-ROM as I would normally do

Thanks for reading!

I used to own the DV SE, which was the big brother of this one. I've still got my final backup from it, so I could definitely provide you some setup recommendations. I got rid of mine just as the DVD-ROM drive started to fail.

If you have IEEE1394 in your current computer, you can set the iMac into target disk mode, and mount it remotely on another device over a Firewire link. Otherwise, a direct ethernet connection is a good idea for data transfers.

If you can find an old USB+Firewire enclosure, that would be a good way to transfer data; plug in as USB on your current computer to load the data, and plug in as Firewire on the iMac, which can boot from an external Firewire device, just not USB.

What OS is the beast running? Mine topped out with OS X 10.2 and Mac OS 9.2.2 I believe.

LOL, same problem with this one, DVD-ROM failed... but it's OK, CD/DVD is so outdated IMO. Just like the original iMac put an end to floppy disks for Apple, the airBook put an end to CD/DVD some years back. IMO it's a sh*t technology that only was useful for a handful of years, that's all. It was useful for an even less amount of years than the floppy disks were! I'd call it some kind of "transition tech" CD->DVD->BLUERAY... Magnetic sucked in transfer speeds, was bulky and fragile, but was very afordable, then optic was affordable and offered huge storage capacity back in the days... but to tell the truth solid state was there the whole time... but it was costly and it did not offer good enough capacity for the volume of space it required, but hell it was FAST AND DURABLE... not something magnetic nor optic could ever offer IMO even tough they were cheap technology. Nowadays, SSD is coming back in force and soon mecanical hard drives will be suppressed from the surface of the earth AT LAST! No more stupid scratched disk or de-magnetized floppy nor broken hard drive motor or head crash or bad sectors... *UGH!*



Unfortunately, I do not have another Mac, only vmware with OSX 10.10 in it, but I doubt this could be an option. You're right about ethernet or WiFi transfers, it would be really fast, but this does not solve the issue concerning the new hard drive preparation. I still have to HFS+ format it and install Mac OS 9 on it to be able to put it back in the iMac DV+ and boot it up. From there, yes, I could share a network drive and send stuff like this overnight or something. But the thing is: If somebody could explain to me how to format a USB drive in SheepShaver, I could do the WHOLE THING (format, install OS 9, copy 50GB of files) in a single operation and let it copy for an hour and I would done with the whole thing at once.



From what I saw online, those are ridiculously expensive. I even thought about purchasing a USB to Firewire converter and use a 500GB USB external drive to do this, but I gave up, I found that even that was costly.



It was running Mac OS 9.0 on its 20GB internal hard drive and I successfully upgraded it to 9.2.2 universal by .sit the .iso and copying it using an USB stick then mounting it in the Finder and installing on place. The universal 9.2.2 installer quits the Finder and overwrites the System Folder automatically, pretty neat. With the latest sprockets, OpenGL, etc automatically installed too

I'm NOT installing OSX at all on this iMac DV+. All I want is to install 9.2.2 on a brand new SSD drive that is coming in 2 weeks. I'm a retro Mac OS 9 fan, not a retro OSX fan. The only OSX version I'm MAYBE willing to peek at some day is OSX DP2, which is the only OSX version that actually had remains of the Platinum interface, I just want to try it for a couple hours, but I'll not be sticking with it for obvious reasons.

SO... all that said, let's focus on the issue: How to mount a USB stick or drive in SheepShaver to be able to format it. I'll tell you what also: When I plug in a FAT32 USB stick in the iMac DV+ it can format it, but NOT initialize it, so I cannot change the partition table and make it HFS, it can only be formated as FAT32 again on the iMac DV+ which really sucks. The point is to be able to copy files directly on it to make this faster, because FAT32 is PC so ANY file I put on the USB stick at the moment has to be .sit beforehand, really a pain to transfer thousands of files.


--- EDIT: I just had a crazy idea. If I unplugged the DVD-ROM drive from the iMac DV+ and connected the SSD drive (with the PATA to SATA converter) in place of the DVD-ROM IDE cable, would the iMac boot up and see/use both hard drives? This would solve the other half of the issue and let me format it + install Mac OS 9 on it, right? I think if this worked tough, I'd be F***'ed to copy files by attaching it to my PC, because since it won't be possible to mount it then (because it will be formated as HFS+ at this point) I would then not be able to copy files to it I guess. But at least I can still do the files copying using a FAT32 USB stick. I could for instance have StuffIt produce a sh*tload of exactly 0.999GB file parts for a couple hours, then come back and copy all those part files to the FAT32 USB stick, then copy them on the iMac DV+ hard drive (SSD) and then extract them all (letting it sit there for hours doing this job lol)... it might not be too crazy, any better ideas anybody?

--- EDIT #2: I just had yet ANOTHER crazy idea. Since I will have a PATA to SATA converter handy in 2 weeks, I could also use a DVD-RAM drive from a PC and plug it in place of the defective DVD-ROM drive in the iMac DV+ no? Would that work or are there only a couple "Apple-approved" DVD drive brands and anything else won't work?

re: crazy ideas:

What I used to do for backups was pop off the case, unplug the DVD cable, and plug it into a spare SATA drive. Then I'd boot everything up with the iMac sitting on its head. Worked great for backup/restore

Your other ideas should work, although you'll likely need Roxio Toast to recognize the DVD-RAM drive.

You could also just replace the slot loading drive with another DVD-R+W drive; there's lots around that would fit in the chassis.

OR, replace the DVD drive with an SD card reader, and feed SD cards through the slot on the front :D

You could even take the slot bezel off and have a docking bay for an SSD sit there, but that wouldn't look as classy.

[edit] No matter what you do, you'll still run up against HFS+ if you want to boot off the partition. If you do multiple partitions, one HFS+ for booting and a bunch of 4GB FAT32 partitions, that should work.

I do not want to end up with *ANY* FAT32 partition at all; I want it 100% HFS+. So what I think I'll do since you just acknowledged it was possible to plug in the SSD drive in place of the DVD-ROM drive on the IDE cable (given I'm using the PATA to SATA converter of course) then the whole problem is solved! I'll keep my working hard drive in there with Mac OS 9 booting correctly already. I'll just put the SSD in place of the DVD drive on the IDE ribbon cable, boot the machine, format the SSD as HFS+ and even proceed to install Mac OS 9.2.2 universal on that drive, select it as the boot device, turn the iMac off, unplug the other hard drive and voila! No?

For the file transfers over LAN, I just (lol stupid me) figured I could simply launch a Hotline Server on the iMac DV+ and use Hotline Connect from inside SheepShaver to connect to my LAN IP and blast off the files at an unbeatable transfer speed of!!! *DRUMS ROLLING*!!!....... 120k/s....... on LAN....... not WAN....... LAN. Disappointed a little, but hey! No more .sit tons of files, no more copying out of SheepShaver, and on a USB stick using Windows, and off the USB stick using Mac OS 9 and extracting tons of .sit files.... yay!

Reminds me of when I wanted to transfer data from a Color Classic to my iMac DV SE -- the CC was SCSI/ADB, and the iMac was IDE/USB. They had only ONE communication method in common: modem. So I opened up ZTerm on both machines, created a null-modem cable (2nd and 3rd wires flipped), and voila... resumable data transfer at 57.6kbps. I think it took about two weeks to transfer the contents of my 520MB HDD and all Zip disks :\

lollllllll...... but that SATISFACTION you obtained by realizing this experience was priceless I guess

The other satisfaction was that I was able to almost completely re-create that CC as a Basilisk II image Among other things, it still runs a Hotline server when it's up (which it isn't much these days).

I was going to suggest using Zip-It instead of Stuffit and hopefully get a better compression ratio. (Zip-It is tricky sometimes, but as long as it's being used on both ends, it shouldn't cause problems.)

Can I ask where you got your half-size AAs? I was just thinking I was going to need one of those if I ever wanted to get my Powermac to do something again (assuming the old battery hasn't already exploded). Seems they're $13 locally.

Hey! Sorry for the late reply, I haven't received any email notification... ?:P Yeah those batteries cost an arm! The one in that DV+ iMac dated back from 2006 and it was still OK (didn't leak). I got my half sized AA batteries online and the best deal I could get is two SAFT branded half sized AA for 10.69$ including shipping at my place by Sweden Post. I got them here but the price increased since then: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2pcs-lot ... 69905.html

Also, that motherboard is from a non-smoker place so it's still shiny clean. I cleaned the outside of the shell with soap and also cleaned the keyboard a key at a time lol and it looks brand new now!

I'm STILL waiting for the WiFi bridge over ethernet and my two 512MB RAM sticks, god China is slow sometimes! It's been almost 2 months now... BUT my 120GB SSD is installed using the PATA->SATA converter. It snuggly fits inside the case and the computer works fine! I installed Timbuktu Pro 2000 on it 2 weeks ago and believe or not, I found an old Timbukutu Pro version for Windows 98 and it still works on my 64-bits Windows 7 computer (after flagging every .exe programs in compatibility mode for XP lol) and it connects perfectly with the iMac! I can remotely transfer files at faster speeds than Hotline over LAN and I can remotely control it!

Oh dear. "The truth is out there". SSDs ARE very good, and extremely fast, it's true. However, there are myths abounding that they are both better than old school hard drives, and will inevitably replace them.

(1) They have a limited life span (maximum number of writes) which is less than the theoretical lifespan of a hard drive, as long as the latter doesn't fail mechanically ... which many do of course.
(2) They do develop bad sectors - which become permanently dead - just like hard drives.
(3) Unlike hard drives, you can't do "secure erase" on a SSD due to the way they handle writes. The only way to obliterate data on them is to manually overwrite the entire remaining blank space by filling it with other data yourself. That's if you need secure erase of course.

The way around the lack of secure erase is to never write cleartext to the SSD in the first place -- always write only encrypted data. If you're only using the SSD on a single platform, use that platform's default disk encryption. If you want to share between OS platforms, create a VeraCrypt image and store it on the SSD, and mount that image locally to store data.

Since encrypted data is essentially random data, you're doing a "secure erase" every time you modify any data on an encrypted volume.

The other downside, of course, is that you also can't recover any data from such a device. Make sure you have a working backup solution instead.

I just did what you did kinda! I found one of these in the trash at a warehouse and the workers said I could take it. I thought it was an iMac G3 as well but after checking the serial code on apples website it is an iMac DV+!

What should I do with it? Also if you have any experience can you help me with these questions?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250117985

Basically, its locked out of internet explorer with an error code so unless someone can help me with that I might have to Factory Reset the iMac DV+ but Idk if I'll find a CD

CD's I've found on ebay are Mac OS 9.0.4 (for DV, DVSE but not DV+ in the title) but I think apple support said the DV+ came with 9.0.3 and im worried you might need that exact one to reinstall it.

If you could help me with the CD problem and also check my apple discussion I'd greatly appreciate it!

The iMac DV+ came with either 9.0.3 or 9.0.4. If you do not have the original installation CD for that iMac, you can use an installation CD of a later version (like 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.2, with white label with yellow "9".). Important is that the CD is a general retail CD, not a CD that is specific for a different Mac model (with grey label).

Which MacOS/OSX version(s) does this iMac run now? It can run up to MacOSX 10.3.9, if it has a 400MHz or faster processor it can even run ip to MacOSX 10.4.11.

A fresh installation will, of course, remove all additionally installed software.

Just says 9.2, the install disks i found on ebay were 9.0.4, apple support said it shipped with 9.0.3. So if I got a 9.0.4 I'd be fine? Also im confused about the mac model label bit you wrote.

Heres the link to the CD, would this work? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/222987681815

Hi! What you want is Mac OS 9.2.2 universal, it works on any G3 Mac, just grab it here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1307-mac-os-9-2-2-universal-2002-edition-

If you want it factory reset with the exact setup/apps it came with near the year 2000, then you will want this Mac OS 9.1 CD bundle (2) instead: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/20773-691-3097-a-imac-software-install-mac-os-v9-1-disc-v1-3-cd-

If your CD drive is defective (may VERY WELL be the case with those early iMacs after 15+ years!) then fear not! You can boot any G3 Mac from an USB stick instead by making use of PowerPC Open Firmware capabilities. Read here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/115-how-to-boot-ppc-powermacs-g3-g4-g5-from-a-usb-stick-or-drive-

If you have no idea what you're doing and additionally want to learn how to "burn" a disk image (such as Mac OS 9 install CD) onto an USB stick, then read here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/125-how-to-burn-or-write-or-clone-a-bootable-powerpc-disk-image-onto-an-usb-stick-in-windows

Hope it helps!

This didn't help at all because this is a reply and a thread about DV+'s when you're talking about G3's?

And idk if it came with microsoft office or not, I doubt it.

- The iMac DV+ has a PowerPC 750 processor, wich is a G3.

- It is not possible to do a clean new system installation and keep the installed Microsoft Office.