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Ye Olden iMac of +1 Butt Kicking
This past Saturday I woke up early and drove my girlfriend to the Kitsap county Rotary big ass charity garage sale and while she was off looking at old 70's clothes and stuff I checked out the computers and found a 1999 Apple iMac and was able to buy it for fifty bucks.
I have always liked the original iMac and the colorful gum drop design is an icon of modern computer design and I allways wanted one. This sucker is powered by a 266 MHz G3 CPU with 32 Megs of RAM, a tray CD-ROM drive, USB 1.1 and a 6-gig hard drive. It is powered by Mac OS 8.5 and it was freshly formatted by the folks the donated it to the garage sale. It is just plain cool and it just screams cyber-cafe from the year two thousand. This is when they started to make the five fruit colors of the iMac. These days they only come in white. It is a crying shame. It has the hockey puck mouse and keyboard with black keys.
I called around the Apple stores looking for some RAM and an upgrade to the OS and I was miffed that Apple does not stock the old versions of the OS for legacy computers. I am talking about a computer from 1999 not 1984 here. I could understand that they did not stock System 6 any more but damn I just wanted OS 9.2. I found an online retailer called Mac Sales that carried a wide selection of parts and software for older Macs. I ordered a CD of Mac OS 9.2 and a 128 Meg stick of RAM. I can't wait to upgrade and pimp out this bad boy. The irony is that I am putting $60 bucks worth of upgrades into a $50 computer but you know what. I have allways wanted and old-school iMac.
Now it is technically possible for me to install Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3 on it eventually but I would need to upgrade the ROM and I would have to upgrade to Mac OS 9.x first to install the necessary ROM upgrade. I need to decide if I am going to stick with OS 9.2 or if I can get my hand on a CD upgrade disk of Mac OS 10.2 or 10.3. My iBook came with a copy of 10.3 but that is on DVD so the CD-ROM drive is not going to cut it. I was able to track down a copy of Mozilla 1.2.1 for Mac OS Classic since it came with Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 for Mac. I have been using my thumb drive to move files to and from my iBook and my olden iMac.
Now I don't really need this iMac but it was a bargain and damn it I have allways wanted one. Ahh the halcyon days of 1999. It seamed like anything was possible back then and computers were more colorful and more round and transparent. This is the Mac that saved Apple damn it! I can't wait to install some classic game emulators on it and run some of my old Mac games.
Now I might be tempted to get rid of my old Mac SE sitting in the back of my closet.
( Yes that is my thumb over on the left. )
Jake at April 18, 2006 
Nerd
Comments
I would stick with OS 9. You will get more use out of it. OS X on an old G3...uhg. Won't run well, and if it does, nothing else will. Besides, OS 9 is still a great OS.
Posted by: Shawn L ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.8bitjoystick.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 18, 2006 6:21 AM
keep it old-school buddy!!
I also have a Mac SE :)
Cheers,
r.
Posted by: roberto at April 18, 2006 9:08 AM
Two words.
Ubuntu PowerPC.
sweeeeeeet. Maybe I'll go look for a $50 iMac.
Posted by: Scott at April 18, 2006 12:24 PM
Congrats Jake, I used to have a Lime and Graphite iMac, and the original iMac is the greatest computer of all time - it truly changed how computers are designed. Enjoy your Bondi - I miss my old iMacs!
Posted by: Jason Whitman at April 18, 2006 8:07 PM
Make a fish tank out of it! Nice little mac.
Posted by: Brando at April 19, 2006 6:38 AM
As a all in one computer those iMacs were great, but man they were hell to fix. I used to work on them back in the day at a CompUSA tech shop and they were one of the worst computers to actually tear apart and fix, mainly because everything is jammed in to them so funky. Don't get me wrong I always really liked them, I just hated tearing one apart.
The capacitor on the back of the tube always had to be discharged before I could work on the internals. There was a tool they provided that you stuck down in back and had grounded to a discharge mat to bleed it off in one zap.
I used to have a lime shell I was going to mod in to a fishtank, but it got broken when we moved to our new house. :(
Posted by: Kevin at April 20, 2006 9:07 AM
the only good use for that thing is a fish tank. I mean, then you got cool hipster retro furniture type s....
Posted by: ShotgunSteve at April 20, 2006 3:21 PM
I actually picked one of the bondi blue imacs (same specs) a couple years ago and did the same thing. I added 128MB ram and wanted to upgrade the os. I installed OSX 10.2 (Jaguar I think) and it's been running fine for me with one issue.
Whenever it boots, It goes straight to a firmware prompt. At which point I just type 'mac-boot' and it boots up like normal. I'd encourage you to give it a shot.
Posted by: Benzo at April 23, 2006 6:57 AM
I really do like the older tube iMacs. I have a Graphite one and it just chugs on 10.4 (probably because I need to increase the RAM from 256MB).
Posted by: ravuya at April 26, 2006 10:04 AM
I see you've made the most common error and run the USB cables through the handle on the door. There is actually spaces down by the hinge where the cables are supposed to run through.
Posted by: Jeff at April 29, 2006 4:56 PM
Sweet! I want to get a copy of os9 and run it in a emulator.
Posted by: tgcujo at May 2, 2006 8:04 PM
Jake: If you are still there. I love imac's I had two. Now I have a gray OS 9.2 and lately it has been running real slow and it keeps coming up that I need more memory. My sons keep telling me to forget it and get a new computer. But for what I do, which is write children's books and save my illustrations...I want to just upgrade this one, so I have more memory. I like it and am familiar with how it works... here's the rub. I don't know the first thing about the tech end of what to do. Could you let me know what I have to order and where to order it and what I have to do? Kind Regards Linda Doty
Posted by: Anonymous at July 29, 2007 8:44 PM
i have the EXACT computer but just this past summer
we gave up and got the new mac.
the os 9 was beginning to fail. lol
never the less, it's still a great computer, just as good as
any other.
Posted by: kara at March 3, 2008 1:23 PM
