updating old G3 macs so they can still be used : Apple, OSX

May 16, 2008 10:22am pdt

1. strung 40,575
2. eoinosul... 24,600
3. pheidius 8,550
4. heterony... 4,500
5. darron_c... 4,000
6. mmconsul... 3,700
7. danomatic 2,500
8. juanolle 2,050
9. kiniama 2,000
9. ShineOn 2,000
9. jahboite 2,000
9. jbuzzard 2,000
9. tsmvp 2,000
9. Freya28 2,000
9. b0lsc0tt 2,000
9. PGallier 2,000
9. lamaslany 2,000
9. walkerke 2,000

1. weed 228,878
2. strung 152,414
3. eoinosul... 86,548
4. brettmjo... 58,582
5. slyong 46,230
6. ryan_sum... 40,975
7. idarmadi 26,700
8. pike480 21,500
9. matheweis 19,200
10. cracky 18,948
11. heterony... 16,525
12. walsellers 16,247
13. DrNikon224 14,882
14. dalesit 14,800
15. davebytes 14,350

05.01.2008 at 06:27AM PDT, ID: 23368401

	[x] Attachment Details

[x]

The Solution Rating System

With so many solutions, how can you tell which solutions are most likely to help you and which ones are not? To provide you with a tool to use, we rate our solutions based on various elements that most accurately determine if a solution is a quality solution. To explain what factors affect the solution rating, here are the elements we take into consideration when formulating our solution rating.

The Grade of the Solution
The Zone Rank of the Expert Providing the Solution
The Number of Author and Expert Comments
The Number of Experts Contributing
The Feedback of the Community

Your Input Matters
Because of the way the system is set up, the most important variable in this equation is you. As a member of Experts Exchange, you are able to cast your vote on the quality of the solutions in regard to how complete, accurate, helpful and easy to understand each solution is. When you provide your feedback, each rating is adjusted accordingly. So, if you see a solution that has a poor rating that you think is a good solution, let us know by rating it. As you do, the rating will be adjusted and will become more accurate for other members of our site.

If you have any suggestions that you would like to make for our rating system, please ask a question in the Suggestions Zone of Community Support.

Thank you!

5.6

updating old G3 macs so they can still be used

Zones: Apple Operating Systems, Apple Networking, Computer Servers

Tags: Apple, OSX

My school has several old G3 Imacs they are currently running os9. I am looking at 2 possible options in order to still make the usable. The requirements are being able to have a web browser with java and flash support and maybe office. So they wont require much system resources.

Option 1Upgrade them to Mac OSX panther or tiger and add more ram to them.
Option 2 Setup some type of terminal server so they would act as a thin clients

Any suggestions on how to accomplish this if it makes

Start your free trial to view this solution

Question Stats

Zone: Apple

Question Asked By: dsexton18

Solution Provided By: dsexton18

Participating Experts: 3

Solution Grade: B

Translate:

Loading Advertisement...

Microsoft

Internet Protocols
Applications

Development
OS

Hardware
Windows Security

Apple

Operating Systems
Hardware

Programming
Networking

Software

Internet

Search Engines
File Sharing
WebTrends / Stats
Spy / Ad Blockers

Web Browsers
New Net Users
Web Development
Chat / IM

Anti Spam
Web Servers
Anti-Virus
Email Clients

Gamers

Tips
Online / MMORPG
Puzzle
Emulators

Action / Adventure
Role Playing
Consoles
Game Programming

Strategy
Sports
Misc
Computer Games

Digital Living

Hardware
New Net Users
New Users

Software
Digital Music
Gaming World

Home Security
Apple
Networking Hardware

Virus & Spyware

Vulnerabilities
IDS
Encryption
Anti-Virus

Operating Systems Security
Software Firewalls
WebApplications
Cell Phones

Operating Systems
Internet
Hardware Firewalls

Hardware

Handhelds / PDAs
Displays / Monitors
Components
Networking Hardware

Peripherals
Laptops/Notebooks
Storage
Servers

Desktops
New Users
Misc
Apple

Software

System Utilities
Industry Specific
Network Management
Photos / Graphics
Page Layout
VMWare
Misc
Web Development

OS
CYGWIN
Voice Recognition
Message Queue
Quality Assurance
Security
Firewalls
MultiMedia Applications

Development
Database
Office / Productivity
Business Management
OS/2 Apps
Server Software
Internet / Email

ITPro

OS
Storage
Encryption
Operating Systems Security
Apple Hardware
Laptops & Notebooks
Servers
Networking Hardware
Peripherals

Devices
Displays / Monitors
WebTrends / Stats
Search Engines
Firewalls
WebApplications
IDS
Vulnerabilities
Email Clients

File Sharing
Spy / Ad Blockers
Web Browsers
Web Servers
Networking
Anti-Virus
Chat / IM
Anti Spam

Developer

Web Servers
Web Browsers
Game Programming
Dev Tools
Industry Specific
Office / Productivity

Database
CYGWIN
Web Development
Search Engines
File Sharing
WebTrends / Stats

Programming
Content Management
Application Servers
Protocols

Storage

Removable Backup Media
Storage Technology
Servers

Grid
Remote Access
Backup / Restore

Misc
Hard Drives

Miscellaneous
Security
Development
Linux
VMWare

MainFrame OS
Unix
Apple
OS / 2
AS / 400

BeOS
Microsoft
VMS / OpenVMS

Database

Oracle
Miscellaneous
MySQL
Software
Sybase
Contact Management
PostgreSQL
Data Manipulation
Clarion
InterSystems Cache

Siebel
MUMPS
OLAP
SQLBase
SAS
GIS & GPS
4GL
Berkeley DB
DB2
Informix

Interbase / Firebird
FoxPro
Reporting
LDAP
Filemaker Pro
MS SQL Server
dBase
MS Access

Security

Misc
Web Browsers
Software Firewalls
Operating Systems Security
File Sharing

Spy / Ad Blockers
Vulnerabilities
WebApplications
IDS
Anti-Virus

Encryption
Anti Spam
Email Clients
VPN
Chat / IM

Programming

Editors IDEs
Installation
Handhelds / PDAs
Multimedia Programming
System / Kernel

Algorithms
Game
Signal Processing
Project Management
Open Source

Database
Misc
Languages
Processor Platforms
Theory

Web Development

Scripting
Blogs
Web Servers
Software
Search Engines
Web Graphics
Images

Internet Marketing
Images and Photos
Components
Document Imaging
Web Languages/Standards
Illustration
WebApplications

Fonts
WebTrends / Stats
Authoring
Digital Camera Software
Miscellaneous

Networking

Protocols
Apple Networking
Network Management
Message Queue
Application Servers
Content Management
File Servers
Email Servers
Misc
Java Editors & IDEs

Wireless
Networking Hardware
Backup / Restore
System Utilities
ISPs & Hosting
Web Servers
Storage Technology
Removable Backup Media
Servers
Broadband

Grid
OS / 2
Novell Netware
Unix Networking
Windows Networking
Security
Telecommunications
Operating Systems
Linux Networking

Other

Community Advisor
Lounge
Community Support
New Net Users

Philosophy / Religion
Math / Science
Miscellaneous
URLs

Expert Lounge
Politics
Puzzles / Riddles

Community Support

Suggestions
New to EE
New Topics
Community Advisor

CleanUp
Announcements
General

Feedback
Input
EE Bugs

05.01.2008 at 06:50AM PDT, ID: 21478521

Rank: Wizard

strung:

You would have to add a larger hard drive as well as more RAM. By the time you pay for the RAM, the drive and a copy of OS X you will have spent far more than the result will be worth. In my experience you will find that even with more RAM a G3 will be painfully slow running OS X.

05.01.2008 at 07:48AM PDT, ID: 21479141

Rank: Guru

eoinosullivan:

I'd leave them with OS9, install iCab as your web browser as it supports Flash and Java. As for Office .. if you have MS Office on OS9 you can leave it alone. You might find copies of MS Office for OS9 floating about on eBay or elsewhere.

I agree with strung .. G3 just not worth upgrading to OSX .. the machines are pretty much outdated and spending on new RAM when OSX does not really like G3s anyway is not worth it.

As for thin clients .. again this is tricky as there are not many options for G3 PPC clients. You could get something like YellowDog linux running on the boxes but what do you have to SERVER the client data?

05.01.2008 at 03:23PM PDT, ID: 21483227

dsexton18:

My school Principle relly wants to keep them. After I did some price checking we can get tiger for around 1100 and upgrade the from 256 to 512 for 659.00 so for about 1800 we have 30 usable computers. All they will be used for is a math program that runs over the web. And that program just uses java i think or it might be flash. I think we are going to try it on one computer and see if we think it will work. I wanted get rid of them but at the same time if all they are going to be used for is just the web. Then it seams like a good option to update.

05.03.2008 at 06:57PM PDT, ID: 21494336

Rank: Master

pheidius:

I have over 34 iMacs in my classroom running Tiger. Each has 768 of ram. They boot far faster and and run relatively quicker then the 2.4 p4 's in our multi-use lab.
Naturally the p4-s are ram starved as are most school machines. But they also have enormous overhead to pay with all the security/virus/spyware/ etc ware that pc's need. Secondly, depending on the size of your school system, you might not have to pay a dime for the upgrade if you scrounge. In my school system, I simply took the discarded Tiger licenses from machines being sent to the crusher. I also took the memory. Next, I scavenged bigger,quieter, hard drives out of the pc's being sent to the crusher. So my net cost was zero money and a few trips to the district warehouse in a district truck on district gas. Of course I had to spend the time to put in the drives but that is only maybe 10 minutes per machine. Sometimes I even took complete machines if they were faster than my slot loading 450's. The only caveat here is that if you have the older tray loading imacs dump them.

05.03.2008 at 06:59PM PDT, ID: 21494346

Rank: Master

pheidius:

o, by they way if you can scrounge, as was suggested above you can upgrade 9 of them to g4 500-s( about 200 for each machine for a g4 500 chip installed).

05.05.2008 at 12:53PM PDT, ID: 21502500

dsexton18:

I all reday asked to see if other schools had license I could use no one has any. Our school district is pretty tight when it comes to money.

05.06.2008 at 01:01PM PDT, ID: 21510519

dsexton18:

Ok so I got some more ram and took an image of tiger that was on a firewire hard drive ran the disk restore tool to have it copy to the internal hard drive all ran with no problems. set it to boot tiger on start up. I did a restart to make sure it was going to boot tiger but it acts like it can't find the hard drive or os. Yet when I boot from the firewire hard drive it sees the internal hard drive. What am i missing?

05.06.2008 at 03:54PM PDT, ID: 21511688

Rank: Master

pheidius:

What software did you use to make your clone?

05.06.2008 at 06:50PM PDT, ID: 21512585

Rank: Master

pheidius:

umm this seems to be a disjointed ending. No response on what seemed to be a progressing thread.

05.06.2008 at 07:44PM PDT, ID: 21512829

ForestDenizen:

dsexton18

You have made a request to PAQ one of your responses, but discussion seems to be ongoing. We will postpone any action on this question to see how it progresses.

Thank you for using Experts Exchange,

ForestDenizen
Community Support Moderator

05.07.2008 at 05:35AM PDT, ID: 21515681

dsexton18:

I used the apple disk utility. I had some images on a firewire hard drive.

Accepted Solution

05.08.2008 at 03:23AM PDT, ID: 21523535

Rank: Master

pheidius:

cool by me, you solved it on your own. Admin I now support his request for a refund. You might find ccc or superduper easier next time though.

05.10.2008 at 05:49AM PDT, ID: 21538839

modus_operandi:

A request has been made in Community Support to close this question:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Q_23380752.html

If there are no objections, a moderator will finalize this question in approximately 4 days as follows:
PAQ with refund using {http:#a21515681}

Please leave any recommendations here.

modus_operandi
EE Moderator

05.10.2008 at 06:47AM PDT, ID: 21539035

dsexton18:

Thanks for the suggestions on CCC the app looks cool.......feel free to close the questoin

05.14.2008 at 02:29PM PDT, ID: 21568907

kodiakbear:

Closed, 125 points refunded.
kb
Experts Exchange Moderator

20080236-EE-VQP-29 / EE_QW_2_20070628