Q: How do I update my emac?

We don't know much about your eMac, a model that had several variants. If the eMac has a 700 or 800 mHz processor, you can upgrade the OS to 10.4.11 "Tiger" but no higher. Those with 1.0GHz, 1.25GHz, and 1.42 GHz processors can use up to Mac OS 10.5.8 "Leopard". Any higher Mac OS requires an Intel processor, which cannot be retrofitted to any eMac.

By "adobe" I have to assume you mean Abode Flash. Adobe stopped development of Flash for PowerPC Macs like the eMac long ago (the newest eMacs are now close to eight years old). Web developers also stopped developing video coding for PowerPC Macs, too, so web video can look like a slide show.

About the only hardware improvement the average end-user can make is to increase RAM. To see what the max amount of RAM you have, do "About this Mac" from your Apple menu and, in the resulting window, click the "More Info" button. That launches System Profiler for you. In the first screen of Profiler, Hardware Overview, the second line has a code. All eMacs have one of two codes: PowerMac4,4 and PowerMac6,4.

If the code is the 4,4 version, your max RAM is 1GB (2 X 512MB modules). If the code is 6,4, the max RAM is 2GB (2 x 2GB modules, but must be from a Mac-friendly vendor).

If you provide more detail about your eMac, perhaps we can offer more help with the "games" question. Few modern games will run on any pre-2006 Mac, which includes the eMacs.

Also, Macs and specifically, OS X, doesn't need to have any antivirus software installed.

Actually, a machine as old as an eMac, with an outdated system and correspondingly outdate version of Java, is more at risk for malware these days. If Java is turned off in the web browser, that risk is mitigated, but if the user of such an old machine also must keep Java turned on for some reason, anti-virus software would be a necessity at this point.

If the system is Mac OS X 10.4 or later, Sophos should work, though it may be a bit demanding on such a low-powered old machine. (I don't honestly know, as I haven't used it with such old hardware before.) ClamXav is less demanding, and will also work on 10.4 or later, but its detection of malware is not as good as Sophos'.

I hope you don't mind me asking an add-on question, Thomas and Allan, a friend has two old Emacs with apparently no software loaded, can she just use a retail 10.4 or 10.5 to install or does she have to start off with 9.2.2 and upgrade that? Finding the exact 9.2.2 for that specific model seems difficult.

Thanks for any help!

James Lohse

OSX retail disks work, but the eMac needs a 1.0Ghz or faster processor for the 10.5 installer to work. She needs to check the speeds.

The sticker on the inside of the optical drive door has the serial number but also the original hardware config and processor info. In this picture:

the third line starting with "G4" has the hardware config. The example has a 1.25Ghz processor, Have your friend check that before buying any OS disks.

She should also see if the serial numbers fall in these ranges:

• G8412xxxxxx- G8520xxxxxx
• YM412xxxxxx - YM520xxxxxx
• VM440xxxxxx - VM516xxxxxx

Quite a few eMacs in these ranges had very bad logic board issues and may not be worth the cost of system disks, which are not cheap.

I hope you don't mind me asking an add-on question,

Around here, add-on posts sometimes get ignored because of the difficult they pose to the responder in keeping multiple issues straight in a single thread. We find the phrase, "exact same problem" seldom applies! It's always best to start a new thread so you get the full attention you deserve with diluting help offered to others. We gotcha covered this time, however!

thanks for the awesome info have a great day!!!