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iMac G3 Tray-Loading and Mac OSX

I recently bought a "Grape" Rev. D iMac G3 w/ 333mhz, 96mb Ram and the first thing I wanted to do was install OSX (As it still had OS 8.6). Anyways, the orriginal CD-ROM drive will *not* work and, knowing Macintoshes, It will not boot over usb or an external drive. I tried putting in a had drive from my PowerMac G4 running Panther. It doesn't recognise the OS and it only has a blinking question mark. I thought it might be the firmware, but it already has the latest, 1.2, installed. Any help is appriciated. Thanks c:

iMac, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier

Posted on Apr 25, 2012 11:24 PM

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5 replies

Apr 26, 2012 6:56 AM in response to iHack501

You'll need more installed memory than 96 MBs to run Panther and possibly a larger hard drive than the current one. As for the hard drive from the G4, its software build is undoubtedly incompatible with the iMac. Unless it was the grape color of this iMac 333 that attracted your interest, I don't understand why you'd want a G3 iMac that's older than a 400-600 MHz slot-loading version with onboard FireWire. The FireWire bus provides a bootability option, in the event of internal optical drive failure. You might want to check eBay for a working/pulled optical drive from another tray-loading iMac.

Apr 26, 2012 7:03 AM in response to iHack501

I see two things:


1) The OS may be looking for more RAM. According to this Apple article:


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2176


10.3 requires a minimum of 128MB RAM.


2) If the drive you tried has a boot partition larger than 8GB, it won't work. The tray-loading iMacs fall in the group of Macs that require a bootable OSX installation to be within a first partition no larger than 8GB:


http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22193

Apr 26, 2012 7:04 AM in response to Jeff

In addition to Jeff's good comments, it is possible that booting OSX on this computer requires the use of the XPostFacto helper application. I'm not positive though. I know the beige G3 does need it, but not the Blue & White G3.


I agree that running OSX on that computer is really asking a lot. While it might be an interesting challenge, if what you want is a computer running OSX for a low price you'd be better off looking for a very cheap low-end G4. You're definitely looking at a RAM upgrade and a hard drive upgrade (if it's anything like the 6GB hard drives that used to come with the fruity iMacs).

Apr 26, 2012 7:07 AM in response to Limnos

Limnos wrote:


In addition to Jeff's good comments, it is possible that booting OSX on this computer requires the use of the XPostFacto helper application. I'm not positive though.


We all posted at the same time! The article I linked with the 10.3 sysreqs says any iMac will run 10.3 natively, without requiring XPostFacto. However, it is subject to the same 8GB first partition limit as the Beige G3

Apr 26, 2012 7:12 AM in response to Allan Jones

Allan's point about the OS X installation being contained "within a first partition no larger than 8GB" is undoubtedly a contributing cause of your problems with the G4's drive. When you partition the hard drive, make the first partition safely less than 8 GBs to avoid running into problems. You could set it for 7.75 GBs and be OK.

iMac G3 Tray-Loading and Mac OSX

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