Daft Mac questions - so be patient!

Yeah, that's likely!

Righto - I have acquired some Apple kit from a place I just bought
over, and I'm installing PC kit there to go with everything else. Now,
I have here the following:

1 x PowerPC G3 - 233 MHz, 2 x USB, yah de yah. Seems straightforward
enough, although the OS is totally different from what I'm used to.

I also have an iMac, which I thought was just the monitor for the
PowerPC but why then does it have it's own CD drive, and various
connectors - 2 x USB, modem, LAN etc. Is this a self contained unit,
therefore I have in fact two machines here?

Or am I talking out my arse so much it's funny? I haven't a clue about
Macs, so thought I'd ask here. Once I've figured out WTF they are, I
then have to figure out WTF to do with them!

Anyone care to shed some light for me?

 

The Imac is indeed a self contained unit, the G3 is a stand alone unit,
both ahve built in ethernet networking and if you put OSX on them they
will ahppily integrate into a pc environment talking SMB Appletalk or
even NFS out of the box.

Whilst I love macs you really need an application for one, so ussually
this is graphics or design etc , However you can get std microsoft
office products for them , which are compatable with office pc.

Good luck and remember once you have MAC you never go back....


--
______________________________________________
Ken
VTR1000 - Senior Workflow specialist
Mac and PC ccna mcse
______________________________________________

 

Get the pretty coloured iMac and go the the highest floor you can
find. Hold iMac out of window, arrange someone with video camera to
look at it from street level and then let go of the iMac.

I'll pay you £5.

 

Yeah, that's likely!

I'll give you £50 for the iMac.


--


--
R o b b o

Trophy 1200 1998
BotaFOF #19. E.O.S.M 2001/2002/2003/2004.
B.O.S.M 2003, 2004, 2005
FURSWB#1 KotL..YTC449
PM#7
..

 

G3 is still quite a decent machine. Yours will probably be running OS8,
unless it's been upgraded to OS9.

As someone else has said, the iMac is a self-contained unit, so you have
two machines. It depends which model of iMac it is - the colour willm be
a clue.

I'd be tempted to use the iMac for connecting to the internet - you
won't get any virus or spyware hassles. The G3 can still be upgraded
quite handsomely if you want - it'll run most DTP software happily. we
used one in the office until two, maybe three years ago.

If you want to sell either or both, I'd be interested.

 

Dave Jennings says...

Get a proper computer.

 

Thanks for all the info, I appreciate it.

I don't have any need for these at all, I run high end Windows kit at
work and at home. We're Microsoft & SUN Developers, so it's Windows all
the time for us. The place I just bought had this kit but I'm replacing
it with our standard setup, so I brought these home for a shufty and to
play with. I haven't the least fecking idea about Macs.

TOG - the iMac is a dark blue/green colour. Now, in my feckwittery I
have the setup as follows:

PowerPC hooked into mains, and iMac has monitor lead fm PPC into iMac
socket. Am I therefore using the iMac as an external monitor right now?
I ask as the system info, as far as I can see, shows this as being a
PowerPC G3 with 233MHz, etc. If I simply run a power plug frm maisn
into the iMac, I assume then it'll show me the details of this?

Is there a similar thing to the System option in Windows Control Panel,
that tell sme the setup - RAM, HDD etc? If so, where do I find this?

I might well be interested in selling them, as like I say - we're all
MS here.

 

Slot load or tray load CD drive, and does it have firewire?

Are you sure about that? - I can see you being able to power the iMac
from the PC, but there's no way to use an iMac as a monitor without
hacking about inside it.

Yes - get the OS to boot up, find system profiler and post the results
in here.

Can't remember for pre OSX, but if you look around the hard drive you
should find the control panel stuff.

Don't expect a lot for them - beige 233 boxes are worth next to nothing,
iMacs, dependent on spec, a little more.

 

Blueberry, I think.

Sounds like it, unless you have the iMac plugged into the mains as well.
But if you did that, and had it switched on, you'd have the iMac running
under its own steam, as it were, since AFAIK there's no way to run an
iMac monitor without the computer system running as well.

OK, forget the G3 for a moment. Just run the iMac as a stand-alone. Plug
in, switch on.

Click on the desktop. Click on the little apple icon, extreme top left.
From the dropdown, select "About This Computer". That'll tell you all
you need to know.

The Apple System profiler, further down the same dropdown menu, will
give you a lot more info.

It would be interesting to know what software it has loaded. Go to hard
drive -> applications and see. Did you get any software discs with it?

 

The G3 isn't beige, it's a lovely shade of blue too! Pretty, or what?

 

Thanks TOG!

I'll do just that. The iMac is fine, I assume that the G3 I have to
hook up to my existing monitor my PC runs on then, is that right? Once
I do that I@ll post the gubbins for both.

No CD's with either machine.

 

Ahhh, right.

Worth a bit more, then. But don't expect to make loads from it.

Probably around £50 - £80 each.

 

I'll probably keep the day job then!

Do I need some sort of adaptor to fit my PC monitor lead into the back
of the Power Mac? If so, what, any ideas anyone?

 

Scrub that, the PC one fits fine!

 

What's the difference? On the iMac, it's a tray in the centre of the
monitor that slides out. On the Power Mac, it's like a regular PC CD
tray.

iMac specs are:

MAC O.S 8.5
Quick Time 3
Virtual Mem 161
Built in Mem 160
Power PC G3 233 MHz procesor
4GB HDD

Power PC specs are:

MAC O.S 9.2
Virtual Mem 385
Built in Mem 384
Power PC G3 300 MHz procesor
6GB HDD

Both have stacks of apps listed, so being the lazy cnut I haven't
copied them down. Any ones in particular I should look out for? I have
a load of MS stuff for MAC if that makes any difference.,

 

Both machines have had some extra RAM instaled, by the looks of it.
Apple has always been a bit mean on the amount of RAM installed when
new, to be honest.

OK, the goodies are QuarkXpress, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator,
which you're more likely to find on the G3 than iMac.

Appleworks is Mac's own WP/spreadsheet etc app. Might be called Claris
Works in the iMac. Pretty good.

Graphic Convertor is an old Mac app but still very, very good indeed.

If you've got MacSoup, you're laughing - the best newsreading app bar
none.

The G3 might have MS Office for Mac installed - MS Word, Excel, IE.

 

Unlike the PC the macs early os wasnt licensed so you can copy the g3's
os onto the imac if you have the cd's. To be prefectly honest you can
actually copy the entire system folder over the macs pretty good at
that. Id upgrade the machines to min os9.2 but ideally osx (unix).

If you want connectivity with your pc's OSX will do or install servies
for mac on your windows servers. (free with any server platform).
Then in your sharing youll see a mac option from admin tools.


--
______________________________________________
Ken
Life is like a pubic hair on a toilet seat!
Sooner or later your bound to get pissed off.
*Remove knickers to mail me
______________________________________________

 

<lol>
....aaaand Macs are s'posed to be easy to use, right?

 

Yes, yes. See, as stated, total Mac knobhead here. They're on eBay now
anyway, I'm sticking to wot eye knows.