# upgrading g3 imac



## vampyr2005 (Mar 15, 2005)

I have an apple iMac g3-400 with a 10GB hard drive and a DVD rom in it ... can anyone tell me if I can upgrade the processor and/or the hard drive and what i might be able to upgrade them to?? 

thx


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## john6 (Oct 3, 2006)

Vampyr, I to have a G3 Mac and wanted to uprgrade, I had XP in mind. So, I phoned our local Mac experts who know their Macs. This is what they said: A G3 Mac was built for a job and was never intended to be seriously upgraded and it was pointed out to me that with that attidude in mind the Mac was not even built with additional memory adaptor slots so memory additon is extremely limited. I have two other computers - Windows 98 XP and Linux I hate to lose my Mac but I notied that Canada supply free (shipit) a Mac version of Ubuntu (Dapper) so even as I type this post I am playing with the live Ubuntu on my Windows computer which again came free from Canada to see if it is worth deleting the 8.2 Mac OS. Even though Linux boasts of installing on small free partitions there is not enough space for even this on a G3, you are always talking of only megabites of free space never gigabits. This arrangement with Ubuntu is very handy. Hope this helps.
john6


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## vampyr2005 (Mar 15, 2005)

the 400mhz version of the g3 that I have actually does have 2 ram slots ... I know I can upgrade the ram to 1G by using 2 512 sticks but I wanted to find out just how large a hard drive I could put in them assuming that I can actually remove the hard drive that is in it currently ... my g3 currently has a 10GB hard drive in it.

I know that the 266mhz and 333mhz versions of the g3 have only got one memory slot in them but if ur mac "experts" dont know that there is a g3 version that actually has an extra ram slot then I would seriously be looking for a new mac expert. I have actually just upgraded my g3-400 from 64mb to 128mb ram by adding a second 64mb ram card.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

john6 said:


> Vampyr, I to have a G3 Mac and wanted to uprgrade, I had XP in mind. So, I phoned our local Mac experts who know their Macs. This is what they said: A G3 Mac was built for a job and was never intended to be seriously upgraded and it was pointed out to me that with that attidude in mind the Mac was not even built with additional memory adaptor slots so memory additon is extremely limited.


don't know where you got the idea that xp can even be installed on a g3 mac, and i don't know what 'experts' you went too, but there are some upgrades, and life left to that imac, as long as you arn't needing a supercomputer. without knowing the exact imac you have (there where 4 different ones with a 400mhz cpu), i can tell you that you can upgrade the ram to at least 512mb, which is enough to install os x 10.2.8 (ONLY after you update the firmware, which is a free download from apple). sadly, the cpu is part of the motherboard, as well as the graphics, so those will always be the same. you can also install a bigger hard drive, but i believe that that imac could not see anything bigger than 128gig. as for the optical drive, i don't believe that there is any that you can switch with, but it does have usb, so you can use a external drive. that imac mac is still perfect to surf the web safely, email, chat, type school papers on, and play some older games. if you want anymore info or help, let me know, and we'll get you going.


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