Today we use my $130 iMac G3- an awesome computer, despite me being completely out of my depths with Mac OS 9. Hope you enjoy me struggling to figure out how to use this thing, and let me know what I should do with it in the future! Oh yea and I did a video on this on tiktok by the way www.tiktok.com/@91_tech

My parents got me one of those to start my junior year of high school. That machine was my life, I couldn't begin to count the number of memories and hours over the latter half of high school and a little while afterwards. School and personal life, it was my best friend and I loved it on an emotional level as such.

I work for a computer repair company, one of these was brought in last year for an OS reinstall, being used since the late 90s. The MacOS 9 CD we somehow still had was covered in dust having not been used in over a decade! Brought back some cool childhood memories!

Hey Josh, I don't normally comment on your videos but I do believe I could fill in with some info on this machine that should help get more use out of it! Firstly, as far as operating system versions go, the newest this machine can officially support is Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, which will run on your machine as it is equipped. Updates will take it up to 10.4.11. This will allow you to run the vast majority of compatible PPC software for the machine (bar installing a newer version of linux, and even then that's not a guarantee for app support). This machine can take up to 1 GB PC-133 RAM, so if you wish to upgrade it to the maximum in the future, that's what it will take with two 512MB PC-133 modules. And since I know you hinted at replacing the hard drive, do take note that the system tops out with HDD capacity at 128GB or so, that is a hard limit. However you should have no problem adding something that converts an SD card to IDE or something of that nature, or a more quiet 120gb IDE HDD if you so wish. AirPort is likely not worth adding, although you totally could if you cared to complete the unit, though it's by no means a dealbreaker. You'd be limited to 802.11b wireless connectivity at 11 Mbps speeds, and you'd also be limited to WEP security if I remember, so it's not worth downgrading your router security to connect it to Wi-Fi, you'd be best served via the Ethernet these days. With OS 10.4.11, I believe you are able to run a modern, lightweight Discord client made by dosdude1, I won't post the link since it'll likely flag the comment, and I've yet to try it, but it looks fascinating. And regarding modern web browsing, the best options you are going to get is a project Firefox-derived browser known as InterWebPPC. There used to be a project known as TenFourFox, but that got deprecated by the main dev a little while ago, and InterWebPPC is your best bet with Mac OS anyways. Hopefully this information is beneficial, I know too much about these iMacs, and in fact I own one of these same models myself, the color is known as Indigo. :)

Even when these iMacs were new, they had pretty loud hard drives, especially those Maxtor ones, Jobs said that these iMacs were virtually silent because they didn't had a fan, but oh boy, the hard drive is insane! Not only in their iMacs, but also in their laptops, my dad bought the PowerBook G3 Pismo with a 6gb hard drive and even that whas loud!

Maybe you should do a video on trying to put an SSD into the iMac G3, as well as trying to game with the iMac G3

That was my first computer. Yes, The HDD was noisy as hell. It was hard to use it summer days because of fanless system. It was getting too hot. Harman Kardon speakers had amazing quality. ATI Rage graphic card was great. I played all of the popular games in that era. It served me well about 4 -5 years.

DOOM II was designed for a smaller resolution, so switching to 640x480 would do the trick. Some apps will do this for you (automatically or ask like the colors), others will not.

My Dad still has his Graphite iMac G3 which has both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10.2 in it. The power cord for the iMac is actually transparent and see the colored wires in it.

That "Hello" on the mac was a wonderful touch that they added to the Iphone 13, very iconic.

“That’s not a legal move” ~~Mario

I always loved this Imac, I had 3 of them one time one 350mhz, and two 600mhz, I sold them and now I still have one 600Mhz with 40Gb HDD, 2Gb ram and even wifi with its wifi adaptor, I want to conserve it just to be sitted in my daughters room XD it looks cool

I was really impressed with that commercial Jeff Goldblum did for the iMac computer. The one with him showing us how simple it was to get on line with an iMac. I got on my sister's PC and and found an iMac for $609.99. I ordered it at 9:30 am and it arrived at 11:40 am. It was so shiny and had that new computer smell. I love the smell of virgin RAM memory first thing in the morning. They smell nicer before dynamic current has stolen their innocence.

My parents had a iMac G3, blue and white with slot loading version. I remember playing some games on it and surfing the net. We had a Mac Quadra 650, used it for graphics editing and photoshop back then. I was a teenager at the time in the 90s. Our first Mac was the IIci in 1993. Im still using Mac today! :)

the iMac G3 was the first ever computer I ever used cause my mom had one that she would let me and my brother use. I have so much nostalgia for Mac OS 9.2.2 and just the look and feel of it brings back alot of memories for me. I used to play so many flash games on the internet with my brother, and my mom also owned Bugdom which was a fun classic Mac Game.

God, I feel old 🙈😅🤣 I remember when my elementary school went from the ‘ol-timey Macs to a computer lab full of these that were all blue! At 9 years old, I was mesmerized by how cool and futuristic they looked and loved the weird, circular mouse that matched. The early 00’s we’re pretty awesome 😁 Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

Man! my first computer was a Bondi Blue, I was like 6 and my dad had got it years back brand new for work and music recording. When he got a MacBook Pro he gave me the iMac without an internet connection but tons of paint programs and music makers, ah so many great memories!

For a first time user, your guesses about the functions are pretty good.

22:51 'Mac OS Monterey 12.1 now ready for installation'

I am of the Ms-Dos era, not a lot of experience with Mac, but in Dos, you play Doom with the keyboard: cursor keys to move, space to use, crl to shoot (maybe there is cmd?), and pressing alt and the move keys to strafe

These were shiny and new when I was in elementary. I was born in 1989. We had a boring old beige Windows tower computer at home. It ran well for awhile but constantly crashed after a bit. When my elementary school got these in, I was blown away by them. I learned how to use Google, played a ton of educational games, and learned proper typing skills on these old iMacs. It was my introduction into Apple. I recognized the logo and must have seen older ones somewhere but these were the first active memories I have with them. I got in iPod in high school and now I am all in on the Apple ecosystem.

I personally love those old loud clunky hard drive noises.

honestly just ur background looks so good 0:00 will we be seeing a room tour . also because of this video i now have a new obsession with old retro tech, i bought a bunch of old tech, i currently have an old ps1 and a crt tv in my room (the crt is only a 10" with a vhs player built in) a ps2 and a nes and im also trying to find an old Macintosh

I bought a 13 inch 2009 Macbook and upgraded it to Big Sur. That baby still rocks.

Wow what a nostalgia trip! I haven't seen one of these in person since Middle School! These guys used to populate every classroom and every computer lab, and I distinctly remember that old Hard Drive buzzing sound even when they were new! I'll never forget the old days when everyone would try to rush to use on of the newer iMacs 1999-2001 with MacOS X because no one wanted to get stuck on one of the old 1998 models with MacOS 9. Even still, seeing this classic OS again for the first time in probably 18 year really is a treat! Thank you so much for posting.

Hi Josh, just stumbled across this old video post of yours. It was fun watching you learn the iMac and macOS of the day MacOS 9.2.2. By now I am sure you have either moved well beyond the Grape iMac and hopefully have had the chance to work with newer Macs. Or you decided to go back to just using a Windows PC. (LOL) either way, it was fun watching you. Hopefully, I will come across more of your videos. - peace!

I was literally googling for this exact thing when the notification popped up:D Great timing, Josh, pretty sure this video will be great!

im not an Apple or Mac person either, but I did use them in at school. both my elementary and middle school had only Apple iMacs. Despite not being an apple fan, I think the iMac G3 is one of the most iconic computer designs ever

I was into computer repair at the time when these were around. It was fun to work with these little guys; and yes that handle can support the massive weight of the CRT tube. At the time there were 24" CRT monitors that were twice as heavy.

CRT could actually do any refresh rate or resolution that was within their horizontal refresh range. For instance most consumer TVs were limited to 15khz which is why they were stuck at 480i/240p. Computer monitors could over 100khz and could do resolutions like 1600x1200 @85hz or go down to 640x480 @170hz. Different monitors had different specs limiting their range of resolutions and refresh rates

Really enjoyed this dude, nice work

I love how out of all of the games that could have been on this Mac, Mario’s Game Gallery was the one that was on here.

Tip: If you load MacOSX, up to about 10.2, you can still retain the 'classic' environment for classic applications. It opens up a bit like Virtual PC (which is also worth a try, if you can find a copy). As it retains classic MacOS, you can also reboot the computer in the classic environment. That means I, for example, can load my iMacDV in 9.2., 10.2, and Windows 98, all on the same machine.

I love your channel! I'm sure this video will be as good as all the others!

I don’t usually compare myself to other people, but for some reason the realization that we’re the same age really hit me xD I think I might need to work harder haha

I used quite a bit the classic Mac OS from syst 7 to 9.2.2! Great system, when you used a computer and you didn't need to be on the internet, you just used softwares... Funny to see you discovering an old system :)

I like when disclaimers are added to the video. The laziest low-effort unskilled way to be ignored by anybody that isn’t glued to the screen.

The only time my dad was interested on an Apple computer was with the iMac G3. He and many of his classmates back in university wanted one, but we live in Guatemala and affording one wasn't that easy. Now I see why he wanted one so much! I.e. we are Windows users, but I really like this computer.

She’s a nice and cute dog. I just ordered a purple M1 iMac and it’s really nice to see this one. Thanks.

I have probably the only iMac G3 in existence that has a G4 500 processor - it’s a Flower Power slot loading model and is in perfect working order. The G4 upgrade was carried out by a company that specialised in such upgrades (Technovillage). It runs Mac OS X 10.5 and works with an Apple iSight FireWire webcam

The Mario Game Gallery brough back memories, I used to play Go Fish a lot! Cheers for the video.

I LOVE the iMac G3! Also I really like the longer videos/documentaries

The goat❤️

I am pretty sure your iMac will have Mac OS X 10.1 (that generation of iMac came with a 20GB hard drive, and both versions of MacOS, unless someone has put a newer, smaller hard disk in it). To boot to Mac OS X, go to the start up disk control panel, and change that start up disk to the OS X disk.

I believe that's actually the "Indigo" model from ~2000. I have a couple of those that I rescued from the trash heap at work around 2010. They make great "jukebox" machines (the internal speakers are actually as good as/better than some of today's laptops and AIOs). Also, those mice are universally maligned, but not that bad if you use them properly. They're meant to be moved around using just your fingertips with your palm on the desk/table. Also, the Indigo model was near the pinnacle of these in terms of hardware. The two I have are 500 MHz; the last two models had 600 & 700 MHz G3 chips, but they weren't noticeably faster and the few I've worked on/with had a tendency to overheat. Also, these later ones having USB and FireWire makes them great "bridge" machines for rescuing data from a variety of external drive types or even importing video from DV camcorders. You won't want to edit or encode the video on there, though.

Great video as always 👍 I’m in the uk and remember buying one of these new. Ram upgrade was around £1 per Mb !

That's how Doom controlled, the first game with a somewhat modern mouse look is Marathon by Bungie which was Mac exclusive and would be a good thing to try out on that iMac. You can still do some very very limited browsing in OS 9 but you'll want to use Classilla. Honestly the only use for a machine that age is gaming and old Applications.

Congrats on getting your hands on this piece of history. You now own a part of my childhood that i grew up with back in the very early 2000's. Spent countless hours playing mdk and nanosaur on it.

I remember that I was just a kid at 15 years old in 1999. My first year in high school was the school year of 1998 to 1999. I remember in another video, Josh said he was 21 years old. For me, it don't seem long ago since my 21st birthday, but that was on May 11th, 2005.

many of those "Applications" were speakable items.. You could turn on the feature and it allowed you to control the mac by speech.. they would allow a command to be attached to an action. Others were part of main applications. they were not all Programs a user could directly interact with, and they only show up in the system profiler which is a data collection, usually for troubleshooting

These were in my elementary school. Circa like 1998 or so. Ha. We also had the older macs (Oregon trail og floppy disk), and then slightly newer ones in the classroom. My first elem only had the fancy macs in the library as they transitioned from old school card catalogs. My last one had them in all the classrooms lol.

It was really entertaining to watch the checkers!

I got a Bonnie Blue iMac G3 from Canada recently and I'm still trying to figure out how to install software. The only custom thing that was loaded when I got it was Photoshop 7.0

That was really funny, seeing someone get acquainted with what was the OS that was new when I went to college. A quarter of a century ago. It look very familiar to me. Soothing. 😄

This video reminds me of me in '02 or '03 when I bought an iMac. Coming from a mainly Windows/DOS background, it was an exciting new world to explore.

I would think the hockey puck mouse would be more popular in Canada,

Excellent vid. Great to see a young guy get excited about an old Mac. Still got my 30GB 'iMac DV SE Snow'. Love it to bits! Still use it for running old film scanners. It took me ages to find an old 'pebble mouse'. Those later slot iMacs came with a 'pro mouse'. I'd forgotten all about 'Doom'!

The applications folder should have many more applications in it than just Norton Utilities. I believe that you were scrolled all the way to the bottom of the window so that the majority of the files in the folder were cut off. My suggestion is that you go to the top menubar, select the view options menu, and change the view mode until you can see the files more easily. I personally prefer to use the icons view over the list view when I am in the Applications folder in Mac OS9, as I like to see all of the fun icons. I hope this helps!

I just got a very similar one that was built in 2002. I installed macOS jaguar on it and it’s so nostalgic to use!

If you ever revisit this mac and want to mess around a little more with it, they take SSD upgrades as long as you use a converter with the "cable select" function. I've got a couple of the 700mhz models which are way more usable than the sub 500mhz machines, however you can install OpenBSD on them to really bring new life into them, as its a modern OS with software support making them really usable in 2022! If you don't mind messing with configurations etc beforehand.

I got a teal colored one back in 2016 from the Riviera Hotel and Casino here in Las Vegas before they tore down the hotel. it is a 1999 model with the slot drive in front like yours. It was used in the spa there and still has all the client info on it! I'm in the process of replacing the PRAM battery. It turned on when I bought it but won't now, so hoping the PRAM battery is the only issue. If not, it will just become a super cool paper weight, I just love it!

I had a green one in 2005 as a secondary computer and really enjoyed it. A couple other great machines to try would be the Apple IIC and the Macintosh Classic II.

Until 4 years ago I was using my Bondi Blue Rev b 233 Mhz iMac as a music server in the house. Yes I replaced the 5 Gig hard drive, but did keep it. It’s now safe and sound in its box 😊

Got mine last May for the same price in USD. I absolutely love it. Can’t wait to move into a place with more room so I can give it a permanent spot so I can play with it.

My primary school still had one of those exact iMacs in the kindergarten room in 2013

My first computer was a blueberry 1999 iMac G3. That was a great computer.

I love the Sonic music you’re playing in the background! 😊

I like how you struggled to find one and I found my G3 abandoned in the bushes of a parking lot

Towards the beginning of Covid, I saw one for sale on Facebook Marketplace for only $60, and I was so tempted to buy it. The trouble was, I was low on money at the time, but if I see one again I'm going to buy it up!

When looking for Applications, did you think to check the Applications folder? The System folder is just for specific OS items.

My first computer was the Space grey DV version of this..still got it

I have the same computer. Has been sitting in my basement for years. Should check and see if it still works. Bought it brand new in 1999 for $900. at Best Buy. I held onto it because it was my first Mac computer plus it is a cool looking computer.

I still have my Bondi blue 233Mhz iMac. Until 5 years ago I was using it as a home music server running Mac OS 10.2 and a replacement 80 Gig hard drive. The original one was 4 gig! My last desktop was a white eMac! Just laptops since then.

There is a feature in OS 9 that is vastly better then the current Mac OS. Pop up folders absolutely blow dock stacks away. Drag a window to the bottom of the screen and it converts into a tab. This lets you see the full title of the folder in a label, select multiple items at once, organize by attribute. Makes no sense that this 1998 feature works better then the 2022 equivalent.

I have a Blue iMac G3 in the basement that i had forgot about. Has the CD slot on the front and is running OSX with 1 gig ram and 30 gig HD.. Used to use it to run my music through my stereo system. May have to boot it up today

My favorite computer of all time. I had a ruby red version.

I loved the Bubsy music in the background!

I love that you used Sonic 3 music in the background

I still have my 1999 Bondi Blue iMac G3. Runs perfectly fine with Mac OS 10.2.8 Jaguar!

good video!! a long time ago i had a big litigation deal with apple and i won see apple imac dispute i even ignored steve when he called :)

I'm still pissed about my mom's stupid ex who threw away mine. It's beautiful old tech.

Mac OS 9 is a very underrated operating system. There are a lot of cool video and audio software for it specifically like Final Cut, VocalWriter (the singing synthesizer app), and Metasynth just to name a few.

I used to have a Mac from right before this one looked like a regular beige PC it also had OS 9.2. It was already about 5 years old when I got it for free and at that time a 5 year old computer was completely obsolete and didn’t have any value. My friend who gave it to me had the G3 and I always thought it looked cool but I was a Windows kid so I never used the Mac much. Mostly just played some StarCraft on it. I think it had around 266mhz and 64MB RAM. Was formerly a university computer that my friend had gotten for cheap when they upgraded.

Only times i used these was in elementary school from kindergarten to 3rd grade. Class of 2015. After 3rd grade, the school showed how poor they were by purchasing 4GB RAM Windows computers (XP, Vista, 7 and all the way to 10). 4GB of RAM only so you can image how frequent it was freezing and how slow they were. Never owned an imac g3 but wanted to

Damn you're making me feel old. I used the G3's in middle school.

Once I saw this imac in your video background, I had a feeling you would feature it on the channel. 😁👍

I used PowerMac G3 at my previous office. Mac OS 9 is not supported for pre-emptive multitasking meaning that when you're downloading something and switched to other window, that downloading won't continue. You need to make that download window active.

Awesome video, I have seen a few people install a compact flash or SD card as storage for this iMac, that seems like a better idea than wasting a whole SSD as IDE would not be able to reach the SSD's top speed anyway

I used them in school, they were pretty good back then.

I would recommend going with a compact flash card adapter over trying to adapt a SATA SSD. I know from watching a few other channels trying to do that same thing that the iMac is very picky on which SATA to IDE adapters will work Since the compact flash card is basically a very small version of ide, adapters for that are much simpler and are much more likely to work

Played Nanosaur on this in elementary school. Good times!😌

I own a iMac graphite from Ebay and it works amazingly well I run os 9.2

😅 my first computer ever purple iMac I was in love with it. I would fall asleep at the desk. I took it apart one day and that was that my parents beat my ass 😂

I just picked one up from village market in France for 10 euros haha can’t believe it, and it works great !

I found one last summer with it's keyboard for 35 dollars in a thrift shop, absolute steal. My parent even just so happened to see that they had a puck mouse lying around at her work in the exact colour that my iMac was in, so that was cool-

I have a g4 and a g3 desktop but I've been seeking a g3 for years as well 😆 I know the exact craigslist post your talking about

this is pretty much the final iteration of the original Mac concept introduced in 1984 - the system software still has a connective lineage and the hardware form factor replicates same computer appliance concept

I still have one, can’t really use it much but it makes a good display.

Did it come with Cro-mag Rally installed? That was a dope game!

Cute dog! great video