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iMac G3 233MHz trayloader upgrades?

Posted by: HardZero on 2016-03-18 12:40:06 I just got an iMac G3 Bondi Blue trayloader. It's a 233MHz processor and 23MB of RAM on OS 9. I saw on everymac that I could put 256MB of RAM in there but I was wondering what are some other upgrades that I could/should do? Is there any way to upgrade the processor? I read about replacing the daugherboard but I can't seem to find any for sale anywhere. This is also my first old Mac, so feel free to give me some basic tips for taking good care of it.

Posted by: TheWhiteFalcon on 2016-03-18 13:06:45 There are some upgrade cards but they're hard to find. You can also do some part swaps. https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/26786-fst-almost-ultimate-rev-a-imac-upgrade-kit-parts/

Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-03-18 23:14:03 You can take that up to a 333MHz CPU by swapping in one from a later iMac.  That's the max though, the later / faster ones aren't compatible. I think they can take up to 512MB of RAM as well, but you need to find the right RAM sticks for that, and they're a trifle more expensive.  Single banked is the word IIRC.  Honestly though if you're running OS 9 or 8.x, 256MB is plenty.

Posted by: butterburger on 2016-03-19 08:32:21 Yes, any Rev A–Rev D accepts 512 Mio memory, two "low density" modules each 256 Mio. Just a few years ago, there were plenty of processor cards for little money in fleeceBay. They must have been pulls from the tens of thousands of iMacs headed to death/disposal.

Posted by: swamprock on 2016-03-24 20:16:21 I recently bought 2-333mhz cards for my Bondi. One of them will be staying at it's rated speed; the other will be used in an attempt to overclock it to 400mhz. That 100mhz boost does make a difference. Hopefully my overclocking attempt is successful.

Posted by: johnklos on 2016-03-24 21:00:23 My main computer for many years was a slot loading iMac motherboard I built in to a Tonka truck. It can handle 512 megs, drives up to 128 gigs without extra software and up to 2 TB with Intech's ATA Hi-Cap software: http://www.speedtools.com/STATA.html You can use XPostFacto to keep the base OS in the first 8 gigs for booting, then boot in to a partition that's the rest of the 128 gigs, then have /Users be the rest of the drive above 128 gigs because files there aren't necessary until the OS has booted enough to load the ATA Hi-Cap driver. For accelerators, some people sold Apple cards with a G4 swapped in place of the G3. I had one of those, but it wouldn't see all 512 megs properly (worked fine with 256 megs). But I also have a Sonnet HARMONi G3 accelerator with a 600 MHz G3 and Firewire: http://www.welovemacs.com/hag3up.html Note that by default this machine can only run up to 10.3, but I'm running Tiger thanks to XPostFacto. I still use it regularly, since I can run Mac Classic software on it, it has a 2 TB drive and has more than a terabyte of movies on it, and it has a serial port in place of the modem so I can print to an ImageWriter II. It even shares the ImageWriter over the network 🙂

Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-03-25 21:45:48 a slot loading iMac motherboard I built in to a Tonka truck. Come on, you can't just drop a comment like that and not post any pictures 😛

Posted by: johnklos on 2016-03-26 00:20:18 Ha ha ha... I'm sure it's on here somewhere... http://www.ziaspace.com/hosting/tonka/

Posted by: Elfen on 2016-03-26 08:43:27 Wasn't that the iMac You had in NYC long ago?

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