10.3.9 on stunningly old iMac?

Your old iMac is capable of running Panther 10.3. See it's spec sheet
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_333.html
You need to install more RAM. Look at the *OS X 10.3 Panther Requirements*
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106163

You must use a retail version of Panther (black with white X). You can't use a gray installer from another model Mac.

 Cheers, Tom 😉



Edit - You have another problem. Your iMac requires a firmware (Boot ROM version in System Profiler) update. Mac OS X: Available firmware updates
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117 The update must be installed (using OS 9) BEFORE you install OS X.

Message was edited by: Texas Mac Man

Hello HawaiianHippie,

Yes, your older "fruit" iMac will run up to Panther 10.3.9.

You will definitely need to upgrade the amount of RAM installed to a minimum of 128 MB. If you install OS9 first though and then upgrade you will retain use of the "Classic" environment which allows use of older OS9 applications if that is important to you.

See this older topic here in the Discussions for additional information that may help you upgrade:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2120806&tstart=1

post back with any further questions or comments,

littleshoulders 🙂

HawaiianHippie wrote:
... Do I have a chance getting OS X to run on this? Or would I be better off investigating an alternative, like one of the Mac-flavored Linux distributions? ...

Not sure if you were aware, but with Mac OS X you can install and use many popular GNU/Linux packages with the fink package manager:

http://www.finkproject.org/download/index.php?phpLang=en

I think either Mac OS X or linux would be happy to have more RAM, get as much as you can for that machine, if you don't want to install RAM yourself, try finding a local Apple service shop that could do it for you.

here are some other informative articles about your machine.
http://www.lowendmac.com/imacs/rev-d-imac-g3-333-mhz.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/ed/hatchett/08jh/inside-tray-loading-imac.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2348

good luck

You should verify that you have the latest firmware, before installing new software. See the system profiler for details. What firmware do you need?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117

You may run Mac OS 10.3 on this machine. Mac OS X takes about 4gig. You can trim it down to 3gig with a custom install.

This will require a minimum of 128meg of ram. More is better. I'd suggest 256. You may put 512meg of ram in this machine. There are two memory slots. One must be Low Profile memory. Be sure you can return your memory cards. iMac memory cards are finicky.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac-G3-G4/

All the tray loading iMac g3's, models a-d, are constructed the same.

While this article deals with adding memory, you should see the pram battery on the logic board when you get to step 17.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43012
You should skip steps 17 to 20. Look for the pram battery instead.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43013

Here is a good disassembly page:
http://www.macopz.com/columns/imacrepair/disassembly.html

The second article in this series has information on replacing the battery:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2584291

How To Upgrade Your iMac
http://www.djonmac.com/

The tray loading iMac requires the boot partition to be within 8gig. Since there are hidden partitions before the first visible partition, people recommend that you make the first visible partition 7.5 gig to 7.9gig. The machines support upto a 128gig Parallel ATA drive.

You should be able to use Unix symbolic links to 'move' some directory like /Users to the second visible partition.

Robert

HawaiianHippie wrote:
Ok, just to confirm I'm reading this right, I need to:

1. Add RAM. I've got literally dozens of 128 MB SIMMs lying around, leftovers from other upgrades or dead computers. Most of it is 100 MHz, a few may be 133.

Not all SIMMs work. Mac OS X is rather particular when it comes to memory. Try it & you will see.

2. Install OS 9.

For a tray loading iMac ( iMac 333 MHz, iMac 266 MHz, & iMac 233 MHz), you need to use MAC OS 8.0. Or the version of Mac OS classic that came with your machine.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60384

3. Update firmware.

4. Install OS_X. I'll do a custom install to keep it as small as possible.

Do I have it right?

Mahalo!