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Mac Daniel'sAdvice
Dan Knight and Bill Brown - 2007.12.07, revised
I've been carrying on an extended email conversation with Bill Brownfor months. Bill is more-or-less the IT guy for an intense volunteerMac program at a senior center. Certainly a confirmed Mac lover, he hasmade some interesting discoveries and developed some interestingtechniques for refurbishing, repairing, and updating older Macs,particularly G3 iMacs, which are quite common there. With Tiger and apartial load of iLife, these early iMacs make decent trainer iMacs forbringing seniors into a totally Mac online experience
Partition the Hard Drive?
The tray-loading iMacsshipped with OEM 4-6 GB hard drives. Slow, low-cost hard drives thatmay have 8-9 years on them by now. Hard drives that may not be bigenough for Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger'. Drives that you may want toreplace 'just because' even if they still work.
Older G3 Macs can support drives as big as128 GB with no trouble; there's no practical way to overcome this 128GB limit (the Intech SpeedTools mentioned in our article on big hard drives in older Macscosts $60, more than these old iMacs are worth). What Bill likes to dois scrounge up smaller, generally faster replacement hard drives,usually in the 10-15 GB range, and put those in the old tray-loadingiMacs.
A Glitch with OS 9 and OS X
Tenacious Mac Os X
One issue the tray-loading iMacs, beige G3 Power Macs, WallStreet PowerBooks, andClamshell iBooks share is atransitional hardware architecture that runs into problems withIDE/Ultra ATA drives on the built-in drive bus under Mac OS 9 andOS X. If the drive is larger than 8 GB and not partitioned,you may never be able to boot into OS X and may also have problemswith the classic Mac OS. If the drive is partitioned and the firstpartition is bigger than 8 GB, same deal.
Mac OS X must be installed on an IDE drive smaller than 8 GB oron the first partition of an IDE drive larger than 8 GB - and thatpartition must be smaller than 8 GB. (Mac OS 9 needn't be onthe first partition, but it must be within the first 8 GB of drivespace.) Because a gigabyte is sometimes one billion bytes and sometimes2^30 bytes (that's 1,073,741,824 for the binary challenged), we'verecommended that the partition be no larger than 7.45 GB to play itsafe. Bill has found that our number is too high: Partitioning at 7.45GB or even 7.38 GB results in unbootable OS X installations. I'vefound the same thing when working with a Beige G3. (This applies onlyto IDE/Ultra ATA drives on the built-in bus. It's not an issue for SCSIdrives or IDE/Ultra ATA drives on a PCI controller card - neither ofwhich is an option for the iMac.)
Bill's solution, which I wholeheartedly support, is to dispense withtrying to create the largest possible boot partition and just make it7 GB (or perhaps a little larger). Even if you're not runningOS X yet, it's a good idea to partition the drive so that if/whenyou make the move, you'll be able to install OS X withoutrepartitioning the drive and wiping out all of its contents.
Bill's solution to downsize the hard drive is driven by a desire toshow only one hard drive on the desktop. You can partition thehard drive into two (or more) partitions to get the use of all the harddrive you have. Just make sure the first partition is partitioned at 7GB so the transitional architecture of these iMacs will accept it as astartup partition.
Installing Mac OS X
You can install the classic Mac OS and Mac OS X through version 10.3from CD, which is the only kind of optical drive Apple ever built intothe tray-loading iMacs and the 350 MHz slot-loading iMac. Mac OS X10.4 'Tiger' usually ships on DVD, although it was possible to order itfrom Apple on CD.
One of Bill's tricks is to do the entire Mac OS installation inanother computer, one that supports two internal hard drives. You canuse a Blue & White Power Mac G3 or any Power Mac G4, as the dropdown door makes access to drives fast and easy. Here are the steps:
- Create a master disk with the Classic Mac OS and whatever versionof OS X you'll be putting on the iMac, beige G3, etc. Run allavailable updates. Install any software you'll want on all of your Macs(iTunes, Firefox or Camino, Adium X, etc.). Use Delocalizer to removelanguages you'll never use and free up some disk space.
- Make a read-only disk image from this drive on your setup Mac. Itdoesn't have to be any larger than the amount of space usedon yourmaster disk.
- Turn off the computer, remove the master disk, install the driveyou'll be putting in your iMac, beige G3, or whatever. If the receiverdrive is bigger than 8 GB and may be used in a tray-loading iMacor beige G3, use Disk Utility to create two partitions - with the firstone about 7.0 GB in size. (Or, to avoid confusing new users withmultiple drive icons, just make a single 7 GB partition.)
- Use Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, orSuperDuper*to copy the contents of your disk image to the receiver drive. (Billprefers to work drive-to-drive rather than using a disk image. I likeusing a read-only disk image because it prevents anyone from makingchanges to your master. Whatever works for you is fine.)
* SuperDuper isn't fully compatible with Leopard at present, but Billreports that it works just fine making disk copies. - Shut down your Mac, remove the receive drive, and put it in theiMac (or whatever) you want to use it in. Assuming your firmware is upto date (covered below), it should boot just fine.
Another option is to use an external FireWire enclosure forformatting/partitioning the receiver drive and cloning your disk imageto it.
Using this process, you can create a bootable OS X drive for atray-loading iMac, beige G3, or WallStreet PowerBook without evertouching XPostFacto. Ifyou support a lot of Macs or do a lot of refurb work, as Bill does,it's worth setting up a 'cloning mule' to facilitate the process.
Update the Firmware
The most important step in upgrading tray-loading iMacs, Blue &White G3 Power Macs (especially the Blue & White G3), and a fewother Macs of that period is making sure you update the firmwarebefore you install any software updates or new versions of the MacOS.
You can determine what version of firmware is installed by choosingAbout This Mac under the Apple menu in OS X and then clicking theMore Info button.
You have to be running the Classic Mac OS - version 8.5 through9.2.2 depending on the update - to update firmware, so be sure to readthe Read Me before you try to boot into a version of the Mac OS thatisn't supported by the currently installed firmware. Bill keeps a harddrive with Mac OS 8.6 handy for this. You can't do a firmware updatefrom OS X, which is one more reason to install the Classic Mac OSeven if you don't plan to use it for anything but firmware updates.(You can't boot from a CD to do a firmware update; you have to bootfrom a hard drive.)
Firmware Versions and Links
- Tray-loading iMacs: iMac FirmwareUpdate 1.2
- Slot-loading iMacs: iMac FirmwareUpdate 4.1.9 (required for Mac OS X 10.2 or later)
- Clamshell iBooks: iBookFirmware Update 4.1.7
- Pismo PowerBook: PowerBookFirmware Update 4.1.8
- Blue & White Power Mac G3: Firmware Update1.1
- Blue & White Power Mac G3 with Ultra SCSI: Firmware Update1.2
Be sure the firmware update has taken before upgrading your Mac OSinstallation, as you can otherwise end up with a Mac that won't bootwith the OS you've just installed.
Another tip from Bill: If you do end up with an unbootabletray-loading iMac and have access to another iMac that's working justfine with the version of the Mac OS you installed, swap out the littledaughtercard CPU modules. That's where the CPU, memory, and that peskyfirmware are stored. You'll still need to update the firmware on themodule you just removed....
Thanks for the Memory
I've learned a lot from Bill. For instance, some tray-loading iMacsthink they have 32 MB memory modules installed when running MacOS 9, but when booted into any version of OS X, the recognizethem for what they are: 64 MB modules. So any time he sees a Rev. A-DiMac reporting 32 MB modules, he boots into OS X to see if they'rereal 32 MB cards or misreported 64 MB ones.
He's also the only person I've ever heard from who has managed toget 512 MB RAM cards working in tray-loading iMacs. He writes, 'We havefound two of these early iMacs, likely 333s, that would accept andreport a 512 MB card. We don't hold our breath looking for theserarities. We have no idea if these two iMacs will accept two 512s.'Bill isn't 100% certain, but he's pretty sure that the successful 512MB modules were 'CL2' memory; when he tried with 'CL3' RAM, it didn'twork. He says, 'Being marked as PC-100 vs PC-133, or 222, 322, or 333was no issue. CL2 or CL3 was.'
Bill also reports almost universal success with 256 MB modules intray-loading iMacs. I've been one-for-two with a pair of 333 MHz iMacs,and many others have less luck than Bill. He says it may be due tomemory issues, such as the 256 MB CL3 module that every iMac sees ashaving only 128 MB. But if the memory is marked CL2, it will work. Ifyou've installed the latest firmware update, you may have as much luckas he does. If not, you should be able to get 256 MB working in thelarger RAM slot, 128 MB in the smaller one for a total of 384 MB. Billreports 100% success with 256 MB CL2 memory.
Because Bill has had so many iMacs with psuedo-32 MB modules thatturned out to be 64 MB, his typical setup is 320 MB - 64 MB in thesmall slot, 256 MB in the big one. You can pick up 256 MB modules forunder $32 nowadays, 128 MB for under $15, and 64 MB for as little as$9, so memory upgrades are pretty cheap.
While we suggest at least 512 MB for good Tiger performance, Billsays that an old iMac with 320 MB of RAM works decently with Tiger.
Bill says, 'We successfully run Tiger on as little as 160 MB of realmemory. However, you are very deep into virtual memory. The performancehit is enormous. At 320 MB of real memory, performance is quitereasonable for our users. Even online performance is reasonable.'
Remember that a tray-loader G3 iMac cannot only run older versionsof Garage Band, iMovie, and iChat. Newer versions require a G4. Bill'sTiger software load for tray-loaders uses iTunes and iPhoto from theiLife '05 suite. The very latest iTunes will still work here. iPhotofrom the iLife '06 suite will not; it requires a G4. If you wantiMovie, you may want to try an older version from the Panther or Jaguarera.
Affordable Fast WiFi for Older Macs
Finally, you'll want to network your old iMacs, iBooks, G3PowerBooks, etc. Bill just loves the Edimax EW-7718Un 802.11n USBAdapter, which OWC has for$67.99. (You may save a few bucks by shopping around, but why notsupport a company that loves old Macs as much as you do? OWC may be theonly source for these WiFi adapters. And used AirPort cards often sellfor more than this dongle does!)
These older Macs have no built-in AirPort support, but the Edimaxadapter gives you better WiFi than Apple had in the old days. It's thesame 802.11n found in today's Macs, which means great throughput andmore tenacious, longer reaching connections to 802.11g and 802.11nrouters. And Bill reports that it works just fine in the Apple USBkeyboard's USB port, which is nice since the tray-loading iMacs onlyhave two USB 1.1 ports. (For the beige G3, pick up an inexpensive 4- or5-port USB 2.0 PCI card with Mac support. You'll use it for the WiFidongle, modern printers and scanners, current iPods, and who knows whatelse.)
I hope these tips will help you bring some older Macs into the TigerAge. And if you have an early iMac or a 256 MB CL2 SoDIMM memory cardto spare, Bill could put it to good use in his senior center Macprogram.
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