"Building" a Mac system \ VOGONS

"Building" a Mac system

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First post, by wildweasel

Posted on 2008-11-01, 19:53

wildweasel Offline

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I recently got my hands on a blue-and-white Power Mac G3 tower, for about $30. The thing came pre-loaded with Mac OS X 10.3.9, which I quickly replaced with OS 9.1 to run the older stuff. But for the OS X side of the machine, I'm considering upgrading it to OS X 10.4. Before I do that, though, I need to know if anybody here has had experience running it on an older machine like this one.

Apple's sysreqs page just tells me I need at least a G3 processor and 256 MB of RAM. I've got the RAM and the disk space (extra hard drive), but is it going to be "worth" running 10.4 on a 350 MHz G3? Or would it be too slow to be usable? 10.3.9 ran decently, but struggled with things like Firefox and some Classic applications. Does 10.4 add a lot of stuff that would hog my processor?

Reply 1 of 5, by Moogle!

Posted on 2008-11-01, 20:26

Moogle! Offline

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First Go here.

Then Go here.

And then go here, and work from there. Make sure you get a Generic copy of Tiger.

Reply 2 of 5, by wildweasel

Posted on 2008-11-02, 07:21

wildweasel Offline

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Damn, those G4 upgrade cards at SonnetTech are spendy! But thank you for the links, I'm probably going to want the 9.2.2 updates...

Reply 3 of 5, by Moogle!

Posted on 2008-11-02, 16:22

Moogle! Offline

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Yes. 9.2.2 is supposed to be a teeny bit faster than 9.1

Reply 4 of 5, by Snover

Posted on 2008-11-05, 02:29

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You aren't going to find any software that will run on OS 9 unless you only want to be running ancient stuff. You won't even find a Web browser that works with most sites written in the past two years. Just FYI.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 5 of 5, by wildweasel

Posted on 2008-11-06, 17:13

wildweasel Offline

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Snover wrote:
You aren't going to find any software that will run on OS 9 unless you only want to be running ancient stuff. You won't even find a Web browser that works with most sites written in the past two years. Just FYI.

That's fine with me; there's plenty of stuff that won't run on OS X that I want to run (the Mac version of System Shock, most of the old Ambrosia Software games...).

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