My new G3 iMac collection

[jeffball610]

I'm finding that most of the iMacs being sold are from schools. The two people I got them from had them donated from the school to their children. Sadly, one had a class name and computer name etched into the top. Still trying to sand it down far enough to get rid of it.

I also noticed that I've been misquoting my Blueberry. Apparently they renamed the Bondi Blue to Blueberry after the very first editions. I saw the keynote when they announced the iMac colors, and Steve called the Bondi Blue, Blueberry. So, my "Blueberry" that I've been referring to is actually Indigo and my slot load Bondi, is actually Blueberry. Everyone complains about the small changes Apple makes that create such big issues. They seem to do quite a bit of it.

I swapped the logic board from my Blueberry into the Indigo and there is an extra standoff inside the Indigo that the Blueberry doesn't have even though they are both 350MHz units. Just silly.

And Admiral is correct about eBay products. There's tons of stuff out there, but shipping is killer. Yet another reason to stay local. Or find a screaming deal on a product. I got my G3 B&W for $39 shipped. It was only missing a HDD. Might see if I can barter off the other parts with stuff I want

 

[Olli73]

Here´s a nice little app that helps if You´re lost in Apples revision-jungle (if You don´t already have it...):

http://www.mactracker.ca/

Just type in the model number. Helps a lot; if you want to know how much RAM you can put into those vintage machines, for example.

Olli

 

[MacMan]

www.everymac.com is what I use for researching products and features for all Macs.

 

[trumpet444]

The bandpass speakerbox idea sounds awesome! Can't wait to see a finished product when/if its completed. You certainly gave me a good idea, I'd like to try it myself. I may just custom build a small wooden box to fit inside the G3 so it'd sound a little better.

btw.... I wonder if you could stuff one of those flat Blaupunkt subwoofers into an '09 iMac?

 

[jeffball610]

While looking for other cool things to do with an old iMac I found a site that was doing some stuff that was interesting. The least interesting, but most in line with my iMac sub was to stuff a JBL Spot sub inside. It's pretty cool looking, but doesn't really do anything for me just sitting inside an iMac. I'm hoping to have the iMac sub in motion by the end of July.
But in the mean time, I have a lead on another Grape slot load that I'm checking out tomorrow. Another $25 should get me a working unit with Panther I'll just copy the drive to my other units if I can't swindle the OSX disks from them. Might find another project for the first Grape that is missing the slot load drive and fascia.

 

[jeffball610]

Well, I just acquired iMacs 5 & 6. iMac 5 is a Grape tray load that came with Panther preinstalled. The owner also threw in the Panther 3 disk set with it iMac 6 is a Graphite DV. I haven't dug into them yet, but wanted to share my good news. I got all this for the bargain price of $35 off Craigslist. Probably could have gotten them even cheaper, but I don't care to haggle too much. The Graphite will probably give it's guts up to something with a better case, while the Grape will just be for fun. At what point am I considered a hoarder? Have I already passed that point?

 

[jeffball610]

I guess I haven't updated this. The Graphite DV unit that I acquired was quite neglected, but is my best unit. The HD was noisy, so I swapped it out and put Panther on it. It has a CD-RW in it and the plastic around the screen was all but dust. I swapped the plastic out with the one from my disassembled Blueberry/Bondi and it runs pretty good. It does have a 600MHz processor and 512K of RAM, but the CD-RW has issues with ejecting disks. Overall, it's what I expected of a 10+ year old computer. I think I'm going to load some old games on it and maybe try and burn some CDs for fun with it.

The newer tray load Grape received a 40BG drive upgrade and Panther while the older tray load just got a once over and swapped out the 6GB drive with one loaded with Panther.

Indigo just got a 60GB drive and Panther.

Still have the Bondi in all original condition while the Blueberry/Bondi is still disassembled waiting to be made into something cool.