Apple Teal iMac (1998) restore and upgrade opts?

Question

Apple Teal iMac (1998) restore and upgrade opts?

I found this 1998 Teal Original iMac

This is what it came with:

Claris Works 5.0 (with 2 manuals as well)

iOmegaware 6.x software and books

Faxstf 5.0 book and software

MacDraw Pro book/manual

Quicken for Macintosh 98 softare with manual/guide

The iMac Book

Easy iMac book (color guide for the OS)

Cliff Notes "Using Your First Mac"

FileMaker Pro users guide

Claris Filemaker II manual

Belkin 4 port USB hub (I needed one of those too!)

Install and restore disc Version OS 8.1

William Sonoma Good Cooking disc (it's all recipes!! Perfect for me)

Quicken Deluxe 98 Software

MDK (some kind of game)

Kai's Photosoap/Photoshop disc and programs

It also came with the owners personal notes and records of items and books purchased. It also has a nice recipe collection from the 82 yr retired county school worker how owned this before me. She seemed like a very sweet lady, all her stuff is still on it. She was very involved it seems with her church and her family. It was just an added bonus for me. I found reading her letters sweet. I might contact her famliy or church and make them a book of her recipes. The computer was acquired via an estate sale right after Christmas and I bought it yesterday for $75 bucks. I've done a little reading online and I have read I can do various updates to it.

My question is what is the max you can add to this? I have heard various answers for which OS you can actually put on it.

This one comes with OS 8.1 and I have the restore and install disc.

iMac, iOS 5.0.1, It's an iMac in teal. OS is 8.1?

Posted on Jan 8, 2012 6:22 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 8, 2012 6:53 PM in response to MacPrincess78

This is the box of books/manuals it came with.

😕 for some reason this will not let me up load a pic of the box of books and manuals it came with. Oh well.

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Answer 2

rccharles

Level 6

12,985 points

Jan 8, 2012 8:07 PM in response to MacPrincess78

This is a tray loading iMac. They came out in the from '98 to '00. You can run Mac OS 10.3 on the machine. With a little xpostfacto hac, you will bee able to run 10.4. You can add a maximum of 512meg of memory. Apple will say 256meg.

The screen tends to go bad on these machine. The harddrive is past do for replacement.

This could be the original iMac g3. It is the right color. Could be a colletors item.

Look for the system profiler. Click on the apple icon in the tope left. Look for about this mac> more info. Or, look for system profiler. This will give yu more details abou the mac.

------------------------------

it does have a 10/100 ethernet port.

iCab - The Taxi for the Internet

http://www.icab.de/

Mac OS 9

Classilla is a free, open source browser for Mac OS 9

classilla.org

----------------------------

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/

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

Open Firmware, boot into Open Firmware.

Power on your iMac while holding down command+option+o+f

The first output line contains the firmware level. Mine reads:

Apple PowerMac4,1 4.1.9f1 BootRom built on 09/14/01 at 13.18.04

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

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Answer 3

Jan 9, 2012 5:44 AM in response to rccharles

WOW awesome!!

You guys/gals are always so helpful on here! I love it.

Yea here is what the screen says when I click "about this mac (computer on here)"

I have a computer guy in my area who specializes in Apple repair/upgrades. He is licensed too so that is good and my friend just used him and said he was great. I will more than likely have him do all this. I want to use it for Claris works and just basic internet. It's a back up basically. It won't be heavily used but I do want to max it to it's full potential.

From what I can tell from looking at it, one person owned it and she was 82 in the last letter I read. It seems like she had it for 10yrs and took excellent care of it. There is alot of office type programs on here. She worked in the school system so they make sense.

Im very happy with this find. I only paid $75 bucks for it too 🙂

Thanks for all the help! This will definitely come in handy.

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Answer 4

rccharles

Level 6

12,985 points

Jan 9, 2012 11:08 AM in response to MacPrincess78

My parents had an iMac G3 A, the first generation of iMacs. The displayed failed.

You found about this mac. There is also Apple System Profiler.

http://toastytech.com/guis/macos81asp.gif

The most value will be the software. Finding a printer may be difficult. It will network to a postscript printer.

I'd backup the software. You could by an 4/8 gig flash drive & backup everything up. You will need to format the flash drive. look for disk utility or dirve setup.

Click on harddrive icon. command + i

will give you information on the harddrive including size.

command is the key to the left & right of the space bar.

Robert

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