Rev A iMac G3

[Mars478]

I have spotted this one for a while. It was finally brought to me today. Its in like mint condition! Perfectly white where it need to be, and a really nice CRT. The admin that I work with says that it was used for like 2 years and put into the closet while all of its brothers (20) where thrown out along with all the puck mice and keyboards. Alas, I have no keyboard and mouse for this baby but I can get those. I can get a Bondi Blue keyboard from the lab just not the puck mouse. Someone have one they don't want.

Runs OS 9.2.1

 

[Mars478]

Is this model rare?

 

[macgeek417]

I used to have one of those (I gave it to someone I know... spread the joy of Macs!)

Call me crazy, but I *liked* the puck mouse...

Best Mouse Ever!

 

[Hrududu]

I like the puck mouse too. Still use a few on occasion actually too. As for whether or not the Rev. A iMac is rare, I doubt it. Pretty sure those things sold REALLY well back in 98, so calling it rare would be a bit of a stretch. Might be worth something to a collector someday if kept it good working condition with all the accessories. Right now its probably not worth any more than any other G3 iMac. Too old to be particularly useful, but too recent to be truly collectable.

 

[Mike Richardson]

It's not currently rare.

Unfortunately, a lot more have to be crushed before it will be rare :-/

 

[Mars478]

I used to see tons of these on curbs. Back when I wasnt into collecting computers. This one was manafactured in 9/8/98.

I check the system profiler and it says 2 MB of SGRAM.

I like it!

Oh and also someone who has a puck mouse for me or 2! (For my G3/350) Please PM me or email me. I really want one!

 

[Gorgonops]

Just one thing to remember about trayloading iMacs: If you use it regularly, expect the monitor to lose its flyback transformer within a year or two. I gave away my Rev. B (same thing except it came with the 4MB video RAM upgrade) in 2007, just as it started to get "twitchy". It probably had *maybe* three cumulative years of daily use on it. (a couple years before I got it, and maybe a year's worth of *very* sporadic use in my hands. It just wasn't fast enough to really use under OS X, which it ran since the "public beta" days.)

It's not a matter of "if" it'll go, it's when.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Just one thing to remember about trayloading iMacs: If you use it regularly, expect the monitor to lose its flyback transformer within a year or two. I gave away my Rev. B (same thing except it came with the 4MB video RAM upgrade) in 2007, just as it started to get "twitchy". It probably had *maybe* three cumulative years of daily use on it. (a couple years before I got it, and maybe a year's worth of *very* sporadic use in my hands. It just wasn't fast enough to really use under OS X, which it ran since the "public beta" days.)
It's not a matter of "if" it'll go, it's when.

I disagree - I think there were at least two manufacturers of the trayloading iMac, and several sub-part sources. Just like the Blue Trinitrons, not all tray iMacs will suffer from the flyback failure.

 

[Mars478]

Hmm. I hope mine does not die. It will not be used daily, it will go next to my G3/350.

 

[Christopher]

Little known fact of the 350's, they can run tiger natively. Even apple says so.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Little known fact of the 350's, they can run tiger natively. Even apple says so.

It's just rather difficult to install, because there's no DVD drive or FireWire port. You can get the Tiger CDs (rare), or take out the hard drive and install it on another Mac (difficult), or install over USB 1.1 (slow).

 

[Christopher]

Little known fact of the 350's, they can run tiger natively. Even apple says so.

It's just rather difficult to install, because there's no DVD drive or FireWire port. You can get the Tiger CDs (rare), or take out the hard drive and install it on another Mac (difficult), or install over USB 1.1 (slow).

or if you own a copy of tiger legally, you *could* torrent the cd version.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Little known fact of the 350's, they can run tiger natively. Even apple says so.

It's just rather difficult to install, because there's no DVD drive or FireWire port. You can get the Tiger CDs (rare), or take out the hard drive and install it on another Mac (difficult), or install over USB 1.1 (slow).

or if you own a copy of tiger legally, you *could* torrent the cd version.

I guess so. It's not ideal though.

 

[johnklos]

Little known fact of the 350's, they can run tiger natively. Even apple says so.

The requirement for 10.4 was that the machine have either AGP graphics or FireWire, but Apple decided more people would know what FireWire was than whether they had AGP graphics.

If you take out the hard drive and use another machine to install 10.4 (any except, of course, Intel machines), it'll boot and run just fine in a 350 MHz iMac.

If you want 10.4 on a first generation iMac, you have to make sure the boot partition is within the first 8 gigs or use Xpostfacto to boot OS X from an OS 9 partition. I have a 750 gig drive connected to my first generation iMac motherboard, and it's running OS X Server 10.4.11 quite well.

 

[H3NRY]

The requirement for 10.4 was that the machine have either AGP graphics or FireWire

Even that may not be a hard requirement. Tiger 10.4.11 boots natively on my Wallstreet 292 MHz, and it has neither FW nor AGP. It does require XPostfacto to install, but not to boot.

What happens to flyback transformers in many cases is over the years heat expansion and contraction cracks the solder joints on the PC board. It's a good idea if you're handy with a soldering iron to touch up the solder on hot parts on the analog board of any old Mac which comes under your care. That will prevent a lot of failures. While you're looking around, look for leaky or puffed up electrolytic capacitors. The usual safety warnings and precautions apply, of course. There are lethal voltages around CRT circuits and you could kill yourself or get a nasty shock. 8-o

 

[Mars478]

OK, well its in my possession now, looking pretty next to my 512k. Can I use this iMac as a monitor for my 68k/older ppcs? I think I can as it has the DB-15 port for video.

 

[johnklos]

OK, well its in my possession now, looking pretty next to my 512k. Can I use this iMac as a monitor for my 68k/older ppcs? I think I can as it has the DB-15 port for video.

No. Video from the 15 pin ports is only out, not in. You'd need something like Apple Remote Desktop and proper networking to get the screens from the older machines to the iMac.

 

[Christopher]

OK, well its in my possession now, looking pretty next to my 512k. Can I use this iMac as a monitor for my 68k/older ppcs? I think I can as it has the DB-15 port for video.

No. Video from the 15 pin ports is only out, not in. You'd need something like Apple Remote Desktop and proper networking to get the screens from the older machines to the iMac.

http://www.screenrecycler.com/home.html

 

[johnklos]

http://www.screenrecycler.com/home.html

That's cool, but they don't have an m68k version. They don't even have a pre-OS X version that I can see...

How far back does Apple Remote Desktop go? Or does one have to go to Timbuktu?