4 G3s

[sambapati87]

"two b&w G3s, two imacs"

$30.

Will report tomorrow when I pick them up.

 

[Unknown_K]

Nice. Hope they all work and have been upgraded nicely.

Craiglist find? Rarity to see old macs on craigslist here (just a g4 once in a while and overpriced and laptops)

 

[sambapati87]

Yep, I actually put up a WTB add for old macs. One person tried to sell me an SE for $400, then I got this offer.

 

[Unknown_K]

Try freecycle too.

 

[sambapati87]

I've done that a couple times, maybe will post another ad there soon.

 

[sambapati87]

Okay so I'm picking them up tomorrow (Sunday). He also offered me a 15" iMac G4 (which I've always loved the design of): 700mhz, 768mb, broken optical drive, $125.

What do we think?

 

[Unknown_K]

Not an Imac G4 fan here, but the broken drive should be an easy fix.

 

[Bunsen]

I'd try and bargain him down for the broken drive, but it's not an awful price by any means

 

[sambapati87]

I'm going to offer $120 for everything, then $140 if he says no.

 

[tmtomh]

$125 for an iMac G4 with a broken optical drive is not an amazing deal, but certainly a good one.

I would say if you could get everything for $130 - in effect, getting him down to an even $100 on the iMac G4 - you could consider that a major bargain, no question.

I would show up with a wad of cash ($120, $130, whatever you want) and take that out at the right moment. Most folks with old stuff won't object if the cash is staring them in the face and the amount is at least in the general ballpark.

M

 

[sambapati87]

Okay so he decided he wanted to keep the lampshade before I got there.

Here's what I got for $30:

450mhz B&W G3, decent case condition

512mb RAM, DVD Decoder, SCSI Card, DVD-RAM drive, 12GB HD, ZIP

This chimes and apparently boots but I have no VGA monitor! (need to get on that). I'm pretty happy with this machine, it's worth more than the $30 alone assuming everything works.

400mhz B&W G3, not as good case condition

512mb RAM, unknown optical, no HD, no ZIP

Rev. A "Bondi" iMac G3, terrible case condition

No optical drive. Doesn't boot. Doesn't sound like there's an HD in there

Rev. A "Bondi" iMac G3, better case condition

more on this later

Rev. C "Grape" iMac, 333mhz, okay case condition

see below:

The iMacs were in various states of dissassembly, and I was left with a puzzle.

The Grape iMac came with the logic board from the Rev. A inside (233mhz). No hard drive, no optical drive/

The second Bondi iMac had the 333mhz logic board from the Grape inside, with hard drive and grape(?) optical drive. This seemed to boot but I could not get video either in the Bondi case/CRT or the Grape case/CRT. I could hear those annoying Mac OS 9 action noises if I hit Apple-O or something so I knew that video was the problem.

Putting the Rev. A bondi logic board in the bondi imac yielded video, and a blinking question mark.

So, I moved the hard drive (4gb, noisy, probably dying soon), optical drive, processor card, VRAM, and memory (256mb total) from the Rev. C logic board onto the Rev. A logic board, and it booted straight up to OS 8.5(!!).

So now basically what I have (iMac wise) is

A grape shell, CRT, optical drive, 233mhz processor, 64MB of RAM, no video.

A supposedly empty Bondi shell/CRT, no hard drive, no optical.

A Rev. A Bondi iMac with upgraded VRAM, 256mb RAM, and a 333mhz processor card.

Any thoughts on getting the video working out of the Rev C. board? I'd like to be able to use the better chipset in that system.

Overall a pretty good deal for $30.

 

[Unknown_K]

Yea the 450 B&W was worth $30.

 

[~Coxy]

I suppose it's a bit of a moot point now, but the optical drive is fairly easy to change on the iMac G4s. I replaced mine when the burner died, and then removed it entirely so I could fit in a second hard disk drive.

Nice haul though.

 

[Bunsen]

A Rev. A Bondi iMac with upgraded VRAM, 256mb RAM, and a 333mhz processor card.

Awesome. Ideal for all those whacky RevA mods, like serial, ADB, video out, and floppy. And upclocking to 400MHz