Have an old G3 iMac? Got Kids?

[Dylan]

No, OS8 sucked.
And the Mac server software was even worse. We used the iMacs in college for our graphic design labs. The things froze up all the time. Terrible with multitasking and if anything hiccuped on the server, the whole place went into chaos.

Now that sounds more like what I remember. Desperately trying to force quite in vain, and using those crappy word editing programs that couldn't communicate with my computer at home.

Are they better as stand alone units?

[RCBH928]

hmmm...
I don't want to start a computer war here,
I know macs did crash pre-OS X , but the worst possible OS ever is probably '98. You are typing within Word and for no reason BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. It happened on daily basis.

I do not recall people complaining about Macs, it was the "stable" OS . We had Macs in school, I don't recall having problems with them? We had even those old black and white ones, and later the OS 9ish ones.

I do not recall of Windows 3.x crashed or not though, but Windows became stable only when it turned back to XP as far as I can recall

[racketboy]

hmmm...
I don't want to start a computer war here,
I know macs did crash pre-OS X , but the worst possible OS ever is probably '98. You are typing within Word and for no reason BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. It happened on daily basis.

I do not recall people complaining about Macs, it was the "stable" OS . We had Macs in school, I don't recall having problems with them? We had even those old black and white ones, and later the OS 9ish ones.

I do not recall of Windows 3.x crashed or not though, but Windows became stable only when it turned back to XP as far as I can recall

Windows 98 was pretty decent -- it did require a lot of reboots though.
Windows ME was far worse.
But for the longest time, I used to run a stripped down version of 98 (using 98lite I believe) to run on really old hardware. It would do a pretty good job until I could retire those machines and move onto something like Windows 2000.

Like I said, it seemed like the older Mac struggled with multitasking. If you were more straightforward in your uses, it wasn't a big deal. But going between Photoshop, PageMaker, and Freehand on those iMacs running OS8 was a pain at times.

And I did run 95 and 98 for years on a number of machines and, as long as you didn't install a bunch of crap on them, I rarely had bluescreens. I just needed to reboot every day or two to give it a fresh start.

[fastbilly1]

I know several people now that still use windows 98SE. Base 98 could get buggy, but I personally had a 98SE box run for two months without a reboot or a crash and it ran fine (except when I started up Falcon 3.0 and the whole thing went to hell - I never did play that game, owned it since 91).

I just wish manufacturers sold their older OS's at a discount, Im not paying $90 for OS9...I do like that Apple has released OS7 for free, mainly since we have OS7 on a stick because of it:
http://portableapps.com/apps/operating_ ... c-on-stick

I would love to have a Windows 95 build like that, but Ill just settle for dosbox:
http://portableapps.com/apps/games/dosbox_portable

[Hatta]

Every Mac OS before OS X sucked.

[RCBH928]

Okay,
I don't mind people saying OS 8 crashed, although I have an impression it was decent, I didn't have years of experience with it, but to tell me that Win98 was good? Thats blasphemy !

That thing crashed and had more security holes than you can imagine. As a matter of fact my last memories of viruses and malfunctioned software was on the win98 system. I have been using WinXP and mac os x since Jaguar up until now.

I heard Windows ME was terrible, but I can't imagine a worse operating system than Win98 only if it was a non-working beta.

[Hatta]

Win98SE was the best of the 9x line. Still a piece of crap by todays standards, but back in the day you got used to rebooting every few days and reinstalling every 6-12 months. But it was mostly usable in between fuckups. ME was not.

[racketboy]

I forgot about SE -- yeah, that's what I used. So that does make a difference.
Yeah 98SE with 98Lite stripping out the extra crap made for a nice slim OS for those that didn't want to mess with Linux

[CRTGAMER]

We have a bunch of these that we are about to get rid of at school (Im a teacher not student) I think I may get one or more of these if they are going to go into the dumpster. This is a cool project.

: Save those iMACS!

I have an iMac G3 slot 500MHz that I upgraded to internal DVD and one gig of SD ram. It is dual boot with both OS9 for older games and OSX for Safari. Using it right now online typing this note. For anyone looking at going this route, its a great Retro computer.

Make sure you have the latest firmware before installing OSX or your iMAC will do the Apple version of a RROD.

Firmware Update link at Apple:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1395

The newest OSX version that is compatible to the iMac G3's is Tiger 10.4. You can set it up as Dual Boot with OS9, and even have OS9 run while in OSX mode for older games.

[fastbilly1]

You can believe what you want Kingmohd. But to many of us OS8 was crap and so was 9. Comparatively, I would say 98SE trumped them without any trouble. The original build was supposed to be 2k and merged the NT4 and 98 cores, and gave us decent networking tools built in.

It BSOD when there were compatibility issues, much like how OS8 would grey screen for the same reasons. Much like how 7 and OSX do now. If you knew what you were doing you could set up a 98se box to run smoothly and efficiently. Now dont get me wrong, it needed to be rebooted and setting it up properly was not the easiest task, BUT it was doable. I know people who still use it, I cannot say the same for OS8. Heck one of my best friends used 98se as is daily OS until two years ago when he finally had to upgrade (PSU blew and took the motherboard with it). He had access to damn near anything you could want, he worked for a tech supply company, and knows the file structure of a dozen os's like I know the neighborhood I grew up in. BUT for his low level home computing, 98se did everything he needed it to do. He did have several gaming pcs in various states of working in his basement so he did have XP but he still used 98. He recently updated everything in his house to 7 or a variant of linux since he needed access to new hardware and didn’t feel like coding everything by hand.

Also keep in mind that alot of POS machines use 98se or CE. Slowly they are being converted to other OS's but for now they still use the monster.