Switchers! - Did you make it ?

[sandmanfvr]

This deserves a new post. I went on ebay and bought me a Power Mac. It is a G3 400mhz, 256 megs ram, 6 gig hdd, dvd-r/cd-r, radeon 7000 32megs ram. Now I know some may say "that sucks" but I just want at machine to run OS X and do internet, office, web pages, burn some things here and there. Nothing more. Get use to a Mac and then later get me a more powerful one. So PearPC converted another person. Can't wait to get it on Monday.

[tnli]

There is a local shop in my area.. They are selling g3/400mhz towers with 128MB of ram and 20-40gb of harddisk. I picked one up and have had tons of problem with it.. its incredibly picky with ram. I ended up buying new memory for it.

Even after all that, the machine is pretty slow for browsing the web. It works.
But I would not want to sit in front of it to browse the web with safari on 10.3 or 10.4 when i could do it 3x as fast on my pc running xp.

I hope you didnt spend more than $120 for the thing..

Because of that I bit the bullet and bought a dual 1ghz g4 with 1.5gb of ram and an 80gb harddisk.

the system was completely loaded..
with a dvd burner, 3 different mice/trackballs, 2 different keyboards, a complete professional wacom tablet, and a brand new unopened copy of tiger

[sandmanfvr]

Actually that is what I paid for it. :wink: But if you were running 128 on OS X, then it was going to be slow. This one has 256 so it should run the web just fine. I don't need the big powerful macs, just web and stuff. I mean I just do what I am doing now, on the web looking and such. I don't need a Mac Mini, Dual Core or anything like that.

[thewer]

sounds like a good buy then sandmanfvr.

Macs are VERY ram hungary things (well the OS is). When look at a mac the first thing I consider is how upgradable the RAM is. I wish they would stick 2 (or even 4) ram slots in the mac mini (and a 3.5" sata HD).

thewer ;)

[sandmanfvr]

Well I looked up the G3 Blue and White tower and it takes PC133 ram. Well it is nice that I have a stick of 512 PC133 ram at home. Can up my ram from the get go to 768 megs of ram.

[thewer]

768 is a good amount, I think a min of 512 is needed. 256 will work but when you start running apps it will fill up...

thewer ;)

[sandmanfvr]

PowerMac ran beautifully. I opened the Mac and saw it had 2 128 sticks in it and those are PC100. I put my PC133 512 stick in there and the Mac just ran off the 512 and ignored the other 2. I figured Apple didn't do what PCs did and throttled the higher ram down. Still got 512 ram. The machine runs great. Sure it is "old", but everything is very fast and I don't have to emulate anymore. Got it on OS 10.3.5 and can go to 10.3.9, but don't see a need to. Funny, an "old" Mac is so much cleaner on the video than my PC. :shock: Now waiting on the guy to send me my modem and I will be on the net.

[ted.nli]

Be super careful with ram in the blue and white g3's

the max memory in those systems is 1gb..
the max per slot is 256.. so your 512 will not work in there.. or it will not work properly.

also..
the memory needs to be low density ram.
this means that the memory module will probably have 16 chips on it instead of 8. these modules cost more becuase more chips are required.

supposedly, the board takes pc100 and pc133 cl3 and cl2 respectively.
I bought and returned memory twice before i found memory that calculated the correct amount of memory.

these machines are super picky.
if all else fails, you cna buy the ram from crucial www.crucial.com.. this is where i ended up buying memory. It is guaranteed to work in the machine.

ted.nli

[sandmanfvr]

I figured that out. My 512 stick ran fine, then my Mac went CRAZY. Nothing would run, crash crash crash. I took the 512 out and now it runs fine. Sure just 256, but it is stable. I use crucial to. No better ram out there. In time, I might up my ram but if I don't see a need to since my Mac is used for MP3's, burning cds/dvds, and ther internet, may not need it. (I wondered why on crucial they didn't sell 512 sticks for my Mac. Dumb me should have realized it only took up to 256 sticks.

[Carrie]

My order got here today , so now I?m a proud owner of a 1.4Ghz max equipped Mac mini .