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Mac Daniel'sAdvice

Dan Knight - 2004.09.07

Apple introduced the original iMac in May 1998, and it was firstavailable for sale on August 15, 1998. Some stores held midnight salesto take advantage of the pent-up demand.

Six years is a long time in the computer industry, and the questionof the day is whether a machine that felt pretty speedy running Mac OS8.1 can perform comfortably using Mac OS X.

iMac Basics

The old G3 iMacs had a 15' CRT display, relatively slow hard drives,and had a tray-loading CD-ROM mechanism. The tray-loading iMac wasnever shipped with a DVD or CD-RW drive, let alone a Combo drive.However, there are third-party CD-RW drivesavailable for the tray-loaders for as little as US$135.

The hard drive is a standard IDE mechanism, and you can installdrives up to 120 GB in size. A fast drive with a large buffer is alwaysnice, but keep in mind that throughput is limited to 16.7 Mbps.

The early iMacs used USB as their only expansion port and were notdesigned for processor upgrades. There are several third-party CPUupgrades available, and Sonnet's HARMONi models even as a FireWireport.

UPDATE: The Sonnet HARMONi card was incompatible withearly versions of Mac OS X 10.4. The FireWire port would tie up 100% ofCPU resources. This problem was fixed in version 10.4.7 (if notearlier). If you have a HARMONi card that's had this issue, be awarethat updating to 10.4.7 or newer should fix it.

There were four different tray-loading iMacs. All tray-loadingmodels shipped with just 32 MB of RAM and include a 24x CD-ROM driveand a v.90 modem. Here's a quick overview:

• Revision A:Bondi, 233 MHz G3, 4 GB 4400 rpm hard drive standard. Supports 192 MBRAM, possibly more. 2 MB video RAM, expandable to 6 MB. ATIRage IIc video chipset. Mezzanineslot. First iMac with IrDA support.Requires Mac OS 8.1 or later.
• Revision B:Bondi, 233 MHz G3, 4 GB 4400 rpm hard drive standard. Supports 192 MBRAM, possibly more. 6 MB video RAM. ATI Rage Pro video chipset.Mezzanine slot. Last iMac with IrDA support. Requires Mac OS 8.5 orlater (8.6 or later recommended).
• Revision C:Five colors, 266 MHz G3, 6 GB 4400 rpm hard drive standard. Supports384 MB RAM, possibly more. 6 MB video RAM. ATI Rage Pro Turbovideo chipset. No Mezzanine slot. Requires Mac OS 8.5 or later (8.6 orlater recommended).
• Revision D:Five colors, 333 MHz G3, 6 GB 4400 rpm hard drive standard. Supports384 MB RAM, possibly more. 6 MB video RAM. ATI Rage Pro Turbovideo chipset. No Mezzanine slot. Requires Mac OS 8.5 or later (8.6 orlater recommended).

iMac Drawbacks

These old, tray-loading iMacs can run Mac OS X. We have a pair ofRev. D models at home with 10.3. They're no speed demons, but they'refunctional. And they point out some of the issues you'll deal withusing OS X on a tray-loading iMac.

The first issue is memory expansion.Although you can run OS X with as little as 128 MB of RAM, youwon't be happy doing so. OS X will use your Mac's hard drive tocreate virtual memory when it runs out of RAM, and that's severalorders of magnitude slower than memory chips.

One of our iMac 333s has 320 MB total RAM (a 64 MB module in theshort slot, 256 MB in the long one) and runs OS X prettycomfortably. The other one won't see more than 128 MB in the long sloteven if we plug in a 256 MB module. So that iMac has only 192 MB, andit's noticeably slower running OS X because it has to depend onvirtual memory so often.

The second big tray-loading iMac problem is shared with the WallStreet PowerBooks andbeige G3 Power Macs -any drive over 8 GB must be partitioned, the first partition mustbe smaller than 8 GB, and these models will only boot fromOS X if it's installed on the first partition.

Our iMac with 320 MB of RAM has an older, slower hard drive. The onewith 192 MB RAM has a high speed 20 GB* drive split into three equalpartitions of about 6 GiB apiece - install OS X, add severalapplications, and 6-8 GiB becomes restrictive in a real hurry.

On the other hand, the faster hard drive does offer faster dataaccess, virtual memory is much faster than with the older, slower drivein the other iMac, and that gives each of our iMacs roughly equaloverall performance in OS X.

Processor Upgrades

If you've already got the iMac, already have plenty of RAM, andalready have a decently large, fast hard drive, you might be able tojustify $250-369 for a processor upgrade.Maybe.

With all of the other limitations of the tray-loading iMac, don'tbuy one with the intention of adding a processor upgrade. If you haveone and choose that route, consider one unique feature of the Sonnetofferings - they add a FireWire port along with a 500 or 600 MHz CPU.Unless you do a lot of graphics or video work, the higher cost of a G4probably isn't justified.

OS X Suggestions

It's possible to pick up any of the tray-loading iMacs for underUS$200 (plus shipping) if youshop around, but the newer slot-loading iMacs start at about US$30more (350 MHz slot vs. 333 MHz tray), don't have the 8 GB issue oftray loaders, and support up a 1 GB of RAM. If you're buying aused iMac to run OS X, I'd suggest you skip right past thetray-loaders and choose a slot-loading model.

If you already have a tray-loading iMac and want to run OS X onit, step one is to maximize RAM. Many iMacs support 256 MB memorymodules in both slots, but not all do, and there's no way to know inadvance whether yours will or not. Some people have 512 MB in theirtray-loading iMacs. Get there if you can, settle for 288-384 MB as asecond choice, and live with 160-192 MB only if you absolutelymust.

Next find a fast, moderate capacity hard drive. The IDEspecification supported by G3 iMacs won't work see the whole drive ifit's larger than 128 GB (about 120 GiB), so don't spend the money foranything 160 GiB or larger. Speed matters. Although today's drives willbe faster than the iMac's data bus, that means you'll be getting allthe hard drive performance your iMac is capable of.

My first choice would be a new 7200 rpm hard drive with an 8 MBbuffer. Second, a 2 MB buffer. Third, a 5400 rpm drive. Capacity?80 GB drives are pretty much a commodity these days, often on sale ataround US$80 (sometimes with a rebate). Smaller drives may be availablefor a bit less, but the difference is usually inconsequential.

Avoid used hard drives. Pulls, drives taken out of a new computer soa faster and/or higher capacity drive can be installed are often gooddeals - when you can find them.

And don't forget that the first partition must be no morethan 8 GB in size. That's 8,000,000,000 bytes, not 8 GiB(8,589,934,592 bytes). Drive Setup in the Classic Mac OS and DiskUtility in OS X work in GiB, so choose 7.4 GiB as your firstpartition size to keep it within the 8 GB limit.

Upgrading a tray-loading iMac so you can use OS X won't be cheap.You'll probably spend $300 for RAM, a hard drive, and a copy ofOS X - and that's part of the reason I suggest buying aslot-loader instead of a tray-loader for the small difference inprice.

Still, you can run OS X on the early iMacs. Just don't expect earthshattering performance. Even with plenty of RAM and a fast hard drive,the slower video chips, system bus, and CPU speeds mean performancewill range from tolerable to acceptable.

To get the most of out limited resources, run as few apps at once aspossible to avoid depending on virtual memory.

Revised 2004.09.08 to correct and clarify use of GB vs. GiB.

Reviesed 2004.09.09 to include Rev. B as IrDA model.

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