I have a G3 Purple that I picked up. There is a 6 gig maxtor drive in it, I have a 60 gig IDE Western Digital I would like to install.
1: Is this possible
2: the 60 comes out of my PC
3: If so, will the Mac recognise it when I install OS X 10.4
Im a PC Tech, but getting to know Mac. I would appreciate some tips on how to do it, if possible. I hear that I can only use a 10 gig partition for the main drive and can format the rest as storage.
G3 Purple? You must be a PC guy! I think you must mean blue, or aqua, or bondi blue, but purple? Unless someone painted it, G3 desktops/towers are either beige(1st gen) or bondi blue/white or in the parlance of true Mac fanatics, it's a "Blue'n'White".
Despite your colour issues, you wll have no problem dropping a 60Gb IDE/ATA drive in and formatting it any way you like. Boot up with a OSX Install CD, select disk utility from one of the menus (its moved around depending which OS installer you may have) and format! There is a partitioning tool in disk utility if you need to use it. Choose HFS+ or extended as the format, and you're seconds away from a Mac disk.
The 10-gig thingie is probably a minimum size for a OS X partition, the only limit is the 128Gb maximum volume size on those older machines - i.e., you can install a 160Gb drive but will only see the first 128Gb.
There are rare occasions when you cannot use the native disk utility, some drives will not be recognized - then a third-party utility such as Disk Genius (ProSoft) will be needed, but it is indeed rare.
Good luck and welcome to Mac!
Dan
Dan, you mis-read Earl's post. Earl has an early iMac G3, NOT a Blue & White PowerMac G3. iMac G3's came in blue, red, grey, white, green, orange and even purple. From his description he has one of the iMac Rev. C or D's - either 266Mhz or 333Mhz.
Yes, you can change out the hard drive, but I don't know the particulars. You may need to make sure the first partition is a certain size for MacOS X as some older computers did require this.
If you don't get an answer here, you may want to try www.ehMac.ca which is alot more active Mac user forum.
UPDATE: I found the info you were looking for here http://lowendmac.com/imacs/imac-d.shtml go half way down the page where the OS X title is. It says the MacOS X partition must be less than 8GB and the first partition. It applies to both Rev. C and D iMacs.
Another note if you're going to upgrade that iMac to MacOS X. Max out the RAM to the 384MB maximum. MacOS X likes alot of RAM.
Also note this comment on that link I gave you:
QuoteMac OS 8.5.1 or later officially supported, although 8.1 can be used, 10.3.x officially supported, 10.4.x can generally be installed using XpostFacto 4
OK OK I didn't read the title closely enough. I apologise for belittling your colour discrimination. Can I belittle your spelling? D_I_R_V_E?
Dan
I think he meant "Grape". That's the colour scheme Apple used to describe their "Purple" iMacs.
:)
Sam
Couple things:
1. If you have an OS on the iMac currently run software update and update the ROM first. Usually 4.x.x is the newest if I recall.
2. Make sure you set the hard drive to cable select (CS) or slave. The iMac has the reverse of normal convention, the hard drive is slaved to the cd-rom/dvd-rom.
3. When booting from the OS X disk to to drive setup on the top menu and partition the disk first, reboot and then start the install process as normal. Most PC hard disks seem to give the early imacs grief at first. If you just start the install and try to install it sometimes says "cannot install on this disk".
Best regards,
Ed
As near as I can tell, you have a rev c or d iMac - d if it's a slot-loading CD/DV, rev c if its a tray-loader. In either case, you should check the firmware in case it does need an update - it's the 1.2 firmware update you want. See this link: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n60384.
Don't know where that CD slave/master config info comes from, but here it is direct from the Apple iMac Service Manual:
6. Make sure the Slave/
Master switch on the
back of the drive is still
set to the Slave mode
(set to the left).
Doesn't really matter as the Mac will scan both devices for boot sectors, but best to follow standard practice.
'nuff said on this topic - is Earl even reading this thread anymore?
Dan