Panther on an iMac 333?

bungebunge
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I'm wondering if I should upgrade some family members. They've got the old candy colored iMac 333s with 160 MB of RAM. How does Panther run on these systems? What's the max RAM these things can hold and what's the minimum Panther should realistically have?



Thanks in advance....

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    stevesteve Posts: 523member
    My astronomy teacher's old gumdrop held 512MB of RAM, and that was a 400MHz. I wouldn't dare put Panther on a system with less than 256MB. There's a reason Apple has been upping the RAM in even the lowest-end iBook.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Steve

    My astronomy teacher's old gumdrop held 512MB of RAM, and that was a 400MHz. I wouldn't dare put Panther on a system with less than 256MB. There's a reason Apple has been upping the RAM in even the lowest-end iBook.



    There was a serious revision between the 333 and the 400 so I don't know if 512MB would work for me. I'm all in favor of getting more RAM because it's pretty cheap now. Just wondering if Panther is really worth it compared to a relatively decent installation of OS 8.6.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    There was a serious revision between the 333 and the 400 so I don't know if 512MB would work for me. I'm all in favor of getting more RAM because it's pretty cheap now. Just wondering if Panther is really worth it compared to a relatively decent installation of OS 8.6.



    512 MB might work and it might not. Apple officially supports 384 MB, but that's just because at the time they were released, one of the slots required low profile RAM and the largest low profile module was 128 MB. According to Low End Mac, the tray loading iMacs accept anywhere from 256 MB of RAM to 512 MB of RAM.



    I wouldn't say RAM is cheap now... it's pretty expensive relative to prices six months ago. But 256 MB is a reasonable price. With a computer as slow as 333 MHz, I don't think going from 256 MB to 512 MB will show a huge performance increase. At some point, you won't see an improvement no matter how much RAM you add, and since it's a slower computer, it'll hit that point earlier.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    qnationalqnational Posts: 8member
    I had to weight this option up when I gave a friend of mine a Rev. A iMac (233 MHz/160 MB RAM/4GB). As this friend is new to computers, I figured stability was more important than speed and opted for Panther over leaving the machine at OS 9.



    The Limitations: As far as I have been able to find, 128 MB is the highest amount of RAM you can get to easily upgrade that Mac. Coupled with the 32 MB already installed, that put it at 160MB. Also the harddrive is only 4 GB. As this was a Mac for a newbie, I didn't really want to spend a lot of time opening things up and upgrading this and that, so that's what I had to work with.



    The Outcome: The Mac is connected to a Netgear DG814 DSL Modem/Router for internet access and a Canon S300 printer. E-Mail works just great. Printing works just great. Sometimes switching between applications takes a couple seconds and window dragging seems a little bit choppy, but in general it works just great for someone who just wants to surf the web and send e-mails. iPhoto even does a respectable job.



    I wouldn't recommend suiting up a Mac like this for anything more than basic computer use, ie. Office documents, E-Mail, Web Surfing. Heck, even iTunes is a problem because there's not enough hard drive space for much music...let alone no firewire to attach an iPod or external FW drive. BUT, it does work for the basics. When my friend has gotten his head around how it all works and he needs more power, then he'll need to get a better Mac.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by QNational

    The Outcome: The Mac is connected to a Netgear DG814 DSL Modem/Router for internet access and a Canon S300 printer. E-Mail works just great. Printing works just great. Sometimes switching between applications takes a couple seconds and window dragging seems a little bit choppy, but in general it works just great for someone who just wants to surf the web and send e-mails. iPhoto even does a respectable job.



    This is perfect. My mom and my sister don't do much of anything other than browse and email, and both dial up. X should get a better dial up connection, so if the 233 works, a 333 will be fine.



    Thanks, this is good news.



    Now the RAM. I see a 256 listed, but I just don't know if they're low profile or not. I'll be putting in a call though, just to ask. I'll guess that a 256 with a 32 is enough all things considered.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    arty50arty50 Posts: 201member
    Just to correct some misinformation here. The Rev. A-D (otherwise known as tray-loading) iMacs will happily accept and recognize 2 256MB DIMMs for a total of 512MB. My Rev. A has been happily chugging along with this much RAM for the last 3 years, and the OS does recognize and utilize all of this RAM. There are many others out there that have done this also, and the topic has been discussed to death. The ONLY reason that Apple listed a lower limitation was because these larger DIMMs did not exist then.



    I bought mine from www.transintl.com and several other companies sell them too. Transintl even lists which of it's chips are low profile. Right now a 256MB (high or low profile) is only $69.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I'm going to install it on my 266 iMac. This is one of the unsupported "support" machines. I'll post back with how well it doesn't work.
Sign In or Register to comment.