Best OS for my iMac G3

Hey ejoy,

I upgraded to 192 MBs of ram, OS X 10.1.5, and a 30 GB HD (making me lose OS 9, and, sadly, SimCity 2000. :().
I still want to use OS X, but something newer. Panther or Tiger prefered.

OK it looks like what you have here is an Indigo 350:
http://www.lowendmac.com/imacs/350-mhz-imac-g3-indigo.html
You could run dual partitions on your hard drive and make a dual booter. It could boot into OS 9.2.2 and also Tiger 10.4.11
http://www.lowendmac.com/imacs/350-mhz-imac-g3-indigo.html
You would need to bring your RAM up to at least 512 (it will run on 256 but very slow). I prefer 768.
Tiger is the best choice if you want to do a lot of surfing. It can be installed at around 2.4 GB if you don't install the printer drivers and all the language stuff.
Richard

Hi Patrick,

A 350mHz slot-loading iMac can use an OS no higher than 10.3.9. Were it a 400 or faster, it could use 10.4.11.

We have an iMac 400mHz running 10.3.9. It was a little sluggish with the original 256MB RAM but we raised that to 512MB and it was happier. I also swapped out the orig 10G hard drive for a 60G to give OSX more room. When I installed the new HD, I partitioned it to leave a small (5GB) partition for OS9, allowing booting to either system.

Your 30G drive should do OK, but you will need more RAM; I consider 384MB to be the Panther minimum. Your computer can hold up to 1G of RAM (2x 512MB modules). Also, full retail install disks for Panther are getting hard to find and rather pricey for what you get.

The only real problem with Panther is that it can only run Safari 1.3.2 and some sites are starting to outgrow that version. However, teh latest version of the very nice (and free) Camino borwser still works with Panther. We use it on the iMac 400.

The best OS for it is Mac OS 9.2.2. That machine was designed with Mac OS 8.6 to 9.x in mind, and 9.2.2 is the last release of the "classic" Mac OS. You can run old applications and games with excellent performance, especially since you upgraded the RAM and hard drive. Although Internet access is a bit hampered, you can do many useful things running Mac OS 9.

Now, if you want to run more modern applications with somewhat mediocre (and often undesirable) performance, 10.3.9 (Panther) is the best bet with your current specs. It's your call, but spending any amount of additional money (for Panther and more RAM) in not a great investment. It's a ten year old Mac and its potential with today's software is limited.

Be sure to install the 4.1.9 firmware update BEFORE attempting to install 10.2 (Jaguar) or later. If you don't, you'll have video issues that are often difficult to recover from. You need to be able to boot into Mac OS 9 to install the update.

Here's more info

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3036

Hey ejoy,
Well I've got 12 Indigos that I'm getting ready for donation to a digital photo class in Chicago. I've got 10.4.11 running on them just fine. They only have 7 GB hard drives and 256 MB or RAM. (they came in with 64 MB ) I did drop 2 X 512 MB of RAM in there but I feel the limiting factor is the CPU speed. I've got Photoshop 7 on them and using the "liquify" filter on a 1.5 MB JPEG takes about 3 minutes. So not Core Duo speed but it does do the job and for kids that have nothing that's all that matters.
I had it on the Web and it will do a Google search of "oilkn" in about 4 seconds in Safari.
If I had the RAM I'd bump them up to 384 MB but I'm working with salvaged and donated parts so it's just about as good as it's gonna get.
Richard