I have just gone and bought a used iMac DV SE 400mhz completely standard (the graphite grey version - http://www.apple-history.com/body.php?page=gallery&model=imacdv&performa=off&sort=date&order=ASC) to learn some apple stuff. What operating system should I put on it as I have been reading mixed feelings regarding Tiger 10.4 on older G3 based machines. Should I instead be installing Panther? I would be willing to add a bit more RAM, etc if needed. Any thoughts appreciated!
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i personally used panther on my 400 MHZ DV and it ran just fine, though ive never tried tiger.. should work fine though
I asked the same question for my G4 with 512MB RAM. Most of the responders said Panther, which I installed.
Tiger will work on older 400MHz Macs, however, it will be somewhat slow compared to Panther. How much RAM do you have? OS X needs at least 256MB, with 512MB or more is better.
I still use OS 9/apps over 95% of the time, but I'm learning how Panther works.
Cheers, Tom
Mac Troubleshooting, Maintenance & Tips
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/MacTroubleshoot.html
Hi - I just got introduced to Apple with the same machine - 400MHz G3 iMac DV SE. It came to me with 512MB RAM and runs Tiger fine (although not screaming fast by any stretch, but no problems) I bumped the memory up to 1GB for fun
Side note - if anyone is sitting on a truck load of new-old-stock PC-100 RAM, you could probably quit your day job...
I don't have any OS 9 stuff, though, so I can't comment on Classic support...but everything native is hunky-dory.
Regards!
-iTiger
I've tried Panther and Tiger on my 500MHz iBook - slightly faster CPU than the iMac, but likely a slower HD. With 320MB RAM, the iBook runs Tiger just as well as Panther - maybe even a little faster.
Matt
I'm not so sure about running tiger on an iMac SL, or at least, and early edition. I just installed it on my mom's machine. The problem that we are having is that the vast majority of the resources being used (ram and CPU) is being wasted on widgets and Spotlight. I have disabled both using onyx OS X and Tiger Cache Cleaner, but it's still slow.
It mainly has to do with the fact that the graphics subsystem isn't fast enough to keep up with tiger, and you have slow redraw/refresh rates on the windows and some of the apps don't work that well (DVD Player being one of them, can't deinterlace properly) and it just isn't worth it. I would just stick to Panther.
I ran tiger on my PM G3 AIO for a while, and sadly to say, it was faster than the iMac because my AIO was using a different chipset, and the CPU was a little faster (458MHz versus the 400MHz my mom has) and it was mostly that tiger was able to work with my video card (original with 6MB VRAM) and work with it better than tiger did with my mom's iMac.
So in this case, tiger is just too feature rich and resource intensive to be installed on the early iMac series. This is one of those cases where newer is not better for older machines.