Talk to me about trickin' out the ol' iMac

Factual Questions
1

I have a cute li’l blueberry colored iMac here, and it’s getting mighty slow (running 9.2) and packed full of stuff (including many mp3 files since I transferred a lot of albums onto my iTunes jukebox feature). Different friends have offered different solutions:

  1. pop open the iMac and put in a new memory card

or

  1. buy an external harddrive

Which do you recommend, and will it be easy for a <b>completely ignorant hardware clutz</b> to do these things? Is the external hard drive just like buying a zip drive or something? Hooked up with a wire?

And will an external harddrive allow me to install OSX onto the iMac? I know it requires quite a bit of free memory.

2

I know nothing about Macs but if it were a PC I’d say you need to do both. And both are quite easy.

I’d venture to guess that even in the Mac world, hard drive space and memory STILL are not the same thing :wink:

3

Think of the hard drive as a stomach, and the RAM (aka memory) as the brain. They have two different functions, both vital to the whole. Your stomach is full of MP3s and other stuff. You can buy a new stomach that all you have to do is plug in (This is the external Hard Drive) and it shows up on your desktop. If your machine has a firewire port, the best external stomach, er, hard drive, to get would be a firewire drive.

Memory is a bit different. It the brain. More chips don’t make your brain smarter (Actually, the processor is the real brain at work, we won’t bring it up for the sake of clarity) More chips just make your brain faster. Memory comes in the form of chips, and your little iMac has only 2 slots that those chips fit into. Most Mac suppliers on the web have RAM sites that you just enter what type of machine you have, and it gives you all the options you have. To install the ram (or to see if you have an open slot) flip the iMac upside down. There is a little door that is locked, use a penny or quarter to unloock the door. Pop it open with your finger nail and you’ll see what I’m talkin about.

4

To elaborate on NurseCarmen’s post, the brain would be the processor; memory would be the hands. Each hand can hold a tool, more hands means that you don’t have to put down a tool as often to pick up a different one. At a certain point, the number of hands is not the limiting factor in speed, it is the brain not being able to direct the hands fast enough.

5

Wow. Learn something new every day! thanks. I’ve been operating under the assumption that if I just kept deleting files and applications, I would have more memory cleared up. Is buying a memory chip and an external hard drive less expensive than buying a whole new computer? What I’m looking for is a solution until we have the cash to upgrade our whole shebang.

6

Think of RAM as short-term memory. Its for holding your currently running programs (browser, word processor, music player) and current data (your wp document). It is not opreserved when you shut down.

Your hard disk is your long term memory. Its where you save your doucuments, where your browser history is stored, where your .mp3 files are stored etc.

Many people get them confused, mostly because they are measued with the same units (Megabyes). If your hard drive is full (select it and chose "get info from the File menu-it should tell you the free space), getting an external HD would help and I think you can put OS X on it (you have to able to boot with it).

Just be more confusing, there is a system called virtual memory which allows you use part of the hard disk as short term memory. The hard disk is MUCH slower than your RAM. Getting more RAM will (in general) speed up your syetem since it has to use the HD less. (note that the virtual memory is MUCH better in OS X than OS 9.2 but OS 9.2 probably needs less memory in general)

Brian
probably made this more complicated than I needed to

7

With this iMac you have a G3 processor, in the range 233 MHz to 350 MHz since there’s several “blueberry colored” models. If it looks like this and was new in 1999, that’s what I’m talking about. If, however, it looks like this (in my opinion, more like a blueberry in color than the other one, but sold as “indigo”) it’s a newer model and what I say here doesn’t all apply.

With any of the iMacs, OS X will be quite a task for it. It’s going to be rather pokey, but if you don’t mind that you can still go for it. Unless you have a good reason for running OS X, you might not want it.

You really need memory. In fact, if you’re still running with what came with the machine you really need more memory – I think it started with only 32 MBytes, barely enough for OS 9 + any application. And if you’re going to run OS X, you need to get the maximum available.

If you want to know what you have, go to the ‘About this Computer’ option in the Apple Menu.

If you need to know how to do this : You need to be in the Finder (use the Application Menu, upper right, to select Finder, or click on an empty area of the desktop). Then go to the Apple menu (upper left) and select the first item, which should be “About this Computer”).

The window will tell you how much memory you have installed, and just as importantly, a graph of how much is being used by the system, and by applications. This’ll give you an idea of what these numbers I’m throwing out mean.

If your primary motivation for moving to OS X is simply to speed up the system, see what it’s like with just OS 9 when you get more memory.

So, how much memory can you get? With this machine, 512 MBytes is the max. However, it’s a little complicated; you have to make sure to buy the correct modules that will allow you to get that. There’s actually a difference in the memory slots; in the past you couldn’t fit as much memory into one of them. If you buy memory that’s compatible with both slots, you don’t have to worry about which is which.

Other World Computing has it (very last item on that page, see how it says “works in lower AND upper slots” ); $60 for 256 MBytes. You should be able to find it at other places, too.

You don’t need to upgrade both memory slots at once (you have two), so you can spend the money later. With OS 9, the improvement from 32 to 256 will be far greater than that from 256 to 512.

As you now know, getting an external hard drive isn’t going to give you much of a speed increase, just more room to put stuff as already mentioned. With the external slots on this machine, the hard drive isn’t going to be as fast as the internal one, so it’s a good place to put stuff you don’t need to access often (like music as opposed to system files).
(If you really want to trick out the iMac, you can get a G4/500 MHz processor ($300), full memory ($120), and a new internal hard drive (<$100), but for that price, you could probably get a whole system that’s better.)

8

How much memory do you have ?
How big is your hard drive, and how much space is left on it ?
What’s your processor speed ?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, start up the “Apple System Profiler” application to find out.

9

Forgot to mention pricing on external hard drives. A 60 GB or 80 GB external USB hard drive is likely to be around $100-$150. Currently you have < 10 GB. You can get smaller ones, for cheaper, but if you plan on upgrading soon, this size should be good.

The nice thing about it is that it’ll still be usable when you upgrade. So the larger size will last longer (Files seem to expand to fill the space available). Another bonus is that you can transfer all your files rather easily from the old computer to the new one.

10

I have both added RAM and installed an external hard drive to my iMac (DV SE, graphite). I hadn’t tinkered with an iMac before, but both modifications were easy.

Installing RAM was the quickest. My iMac’s RAM is accessible through a hatch on the underside of the machine. Using a nickel, you turn the slot lock to release the catch, and the hinge flips right open, exposing both RAM slots. (This might be different with your machine.) Popping the old one out and inserting the new chip in takes more force than you’d think, but I was done within a minute.

My external hard drive is actually an internal hard drive in a drive case I bought online. I found this to be the cheaper way to go, since I wanted to make use of my FireWire ports, and external FireWire hard drives went for about $200 at the time. My roommate got me the hard drive itself (a 30GB one), so my only expense was the $45 case. Had I had to buy the hard drive, it wouldn’t have cost more than $80. I think I saved at least $60.

However, you might want to check current hardware prices. FireWire drive prices have gone down since I added mine, and so there might not be any real savings in taking the route I did.

I’d never set any computer hardware up before, but mounting the drive in the case was easy. Everything you need comes with the drive case. And I didn’t need to install any software drivers. Mounting the drive on my desktop was as simple as connecting the FireWire and power cables and switching it on.

In all, adding RAM and the drive cost me about $200.

Around the same time I upgraded from OS 9.1 to OS X. The RAM upgrade, which boosted me from 192MB to 256MB, was much needed, since OS X requires a minimum of 128MB RAM.

Rather than install OS X on the external drive, I chose to partition my 13GB internal hard drive, and have OS X on one half and OS 9.2 on the other. Gotta have my Diablo 2 fix, after all, and I hear the OS X patch for the game is crappy. Anyway, you can make the partitions with Drive Setup, which should already be on your 'puter. Keep in mind that partitioning erases your hard drive, so you should have a backup of everything somewhere if you take this route. With this set-up, I can operate in whichever OS I want, and if that half of the drive starts getting full, I move stuff off to the external drive.

To see if your machine can run OS 10.2:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html

11

Another option would be to sell or donate your iMac as-is, and try to pick up a decent, used, faster machine from eBay or the like. You could upgrade your RAM and add another hard disk, but you’ll still have a slower processor and older graphics system. Whereas if you pool your cash from the iMac sale and what you would spend on the upgrades, you could potentially get a faster iMac with the same cash outlay. If you weren’t averse to purchasing a monitor, you could even get a tower Mac, and then upgrade that in the future. For example, adding an internal hard drive to a tower is cheaper than adding an external hard drive.

12

Thanks for the info. Chicago seems to be generally averse to Macintosh, as the places I’ve called (Like Computer Renaissance) which do resale or take donations, won’t even TAKE an iMac for free. jerks.

I think I’ll do what Audrey suggested, sounds fairly easy.

The only reason I was thinking of upgrading to OSX is because I’ve just been told by “mac geniuses” that “I simply MUST” have OSX. (All I use this computer for is internet, writing and music, I’m not doing games or graphics or anything like that)

13

That’s wierd, jarbaby, it was a western Chicago suburb (I don’t remember which one; they run together; maybe Carol Stream or Glenn Ellyn) Computer Renaisscance where I traded in my Colour Classic for a Quadra 636. Of course, that was some time ago…

14

I live downtown, they may have different policies. All I know is that I had two Macs sitting in my apartment for months last year, because I couldn’t even unload them at thrift stores or for parts because people said “no one wants 'em” :mad:

15

Eh, you shouldn’t upgrade unless you want to. That is, unless they’re offering to pay for the upgrade and provide technical support…

Feel free to e-mail me if you want more details on the modifications.

16

I am currently in the process of upgrading twelve 350 MHz G3 iMacs to OS X Jaguar. It runs it pretty well, with 512 MB RAM, which is the maximum allowable for these computers.

To install OS X, you should have around 2.5 GB of free hard drive space. Since these things all come with an internal 10 GB hard drive, it is not a bad idea to get an external FireWire drive. I recently bought a 120 GB external drive for $200. MacWarehouse didn’t really have much selection. It was either that one or a 100 GB one for $180, IIRC.

OS X is fairly efficient, as it is based around a trim BSD kernel. It even runs fine on 256 MB (although the Dock and minimization animation is choppy, so turn that junk off). To have it nice and smooth, I would recommend at least 384 MB RAM.

Also, take into account the software costs when upgrading. You should really consider buying the newest, OS X native, versions of your software once you upgrade. Classic mode (OS 9) works fine (although you need at least OS 9.1 to run Classic Mode), but it is far less stable than OS X. So consider rebuying Photoshop, the MS Office Suite, Quark, Deneba Canvas, whatever you use. For us, in an educational setting, it works out to about $400 per computer (OS X + Office X + Photoshop + EndNote + Deneba Canvas).

Since I am doing all kinds of Unix work, OS X rocks for me. In my lab, everyone who has switched has been happy with the OS (or at least not greatly inconvenienced). It works like a good Mac OS. Most of things that you would regularly do with OS are readily apparent within 15 minutes of sitting down in front of it for the first time. It is also a helluva lot more stable than 9.2 – I have hard crashed only once or twice.