Panther on my 266 Lime iMac

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I tried 10.0 on my iMac when it came out. It ing sucked. It was so bad I deleted it and wrote a nasty letter to Apple. I'm glad they got sued by iMac and Powerbook owners Because OS X did not support these systems. The Apple Apologists will ague otherwise but they are wrong.





So time goes by, wife gets an iBook OS 9, I get a 12" Powerbook OS X ... Panther comes along and it's time to bring everyone up to the same OS.



My goal for the iMac is to have it serve as extra storage, print files and maybe play some iTunes and that's about it. I install OS X 10.3 thinking it even the iMac can do that on OS X.



I'm shocked to find out that it's good and works well considering it's CPU. I have a 266 MHz iMac with 320 MB of RAM and an upgraded HD, 40Gigs 7200 RPMs. Under 10.0 it was so slow I hated using it. Under 10.3 it's different.



Apps launch in a reasonable amount of time. Some fast others take their time.



Expose is nice. The nice part about it is that it does not try to animate. The windows just pop to the sides. I pick one and they pop back. Almost no animation. Which is good because if it did try to animate it would suck the life out of the system.



The Dock. Raking the dock is smooth for the most part. Suck effect it a tad sluggish but not like pulling teeth. For some reason in is much faster than out?



Anything OpenGL is useless. Mainly due to the fact that the video card is not supported. It's the same one Apple fscking soldered into the motherboard. The screen savers blow.



So I ran XBench on it and compared it to my stock 12" powerbook w/ SD. There's one interesting result. The iMac beat the PowerBook in "random" reads and writes. Here's the (partial) results of the Powerbook and iMac. I chalk it up the iMacs 7200 RPM HD.





PowerBook 12" Stock

Quote:

Results\t79.15\t

\tSystem Info\t\t

\t\tXbench Version\t\t1.1.3

\t\tSystem Version\t\t10.3.1 (7C107)

\t\tPhysical RAM\t\t256 MB

\t\tModel\t\tPowerBook6,1

\t\tProcessor\t\tPowerPC G4 @ 867 MHz



skipping



Disk Test\t44.40\t

\t\tSequential\t45.86\t

\t\t\tUncached Write\t37.77\t15.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Write\t38.87\t15.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t101.50\t16.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t39.75\t16.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\tRandom\t43.02\t

\t\t\tUncached Write\t38.24\t0.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Write\t40.23\t9.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t50.00\t0.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t45.53\t9.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]





iMac 266MHz 320MB 40 Gig 7200 cut into 4+36

Quote:

Results\t19.37\t

\tSystem Info\t\t

\t\tXbench Version\t\t1.1.3

\t\tSystem Version\t\t10.3.1 (7C107)

\t\tPhysical RAM\t\t320 MB

\t\tModel\t\tiMac,1

\t\tProcessor\t\tPowerPC G3 @ 267 MHz



skipping



Disk Test\t45.82\t

\t\tSequential\t38.05\t

\t\t\tUncached Write\t36.45\t15.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Write\t36.35\t14.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t42.56\t6.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t37.46\t15.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\tRandom\t57.58\t

\t\t\tUncached Write\t45.03\t0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Write\t66.12\t14.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t81.14\t0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]

\t\t\tUncached Read\t50.46\t10.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]







I have to admit I thought OS X 10.3 would fscking suck on this old iMac. I haven't tested it enough to call it "useable" but it will make a nice storage/print server.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Woo hoo! My two 333 machines are going to be upgraded soon, as is my 400 mhz iMac. All need email and web, nothing more. I'm excited for them.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I'll try out Office X as soon as I find my Office X CD. It kind of sucks on my 12" so I'm not expecting much.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    I'm currently running Mac OS X 10.2.8 on a Grape iMac (266MHz). It runs Office X and QuickBooks 5.0 just fine. I assume if I install Mac OS X 10.3 on this iMac it will operate just as good or better? Has anyone made the upgrade from 10.2.8 to 10.3.1 on a Rev. C iMac? Any problems I should be aware of?
  • Reply 4 of 7
    Quote:

    Originally posted by fahlman

    I'm currently running Mac OS X 10.2.8 on a Grape iMac (266MHz). It runs Office X and QuickBooks 5.0 just fine. I assume if I install Mac OS X 10.3 on this iMac it will operate just as good or better? Has anyone made the upgrade from 10.2.8 to 10.3.1 on a Rev. C iMac? Any problems I should be aware of?



    I read someplace that 10.3 may need more RAM than 10.2 for decent performance.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    this is good news for my 11 yr old sons 233 imac. I am going to max the ram and install Panther. He was a little bummed when I told him it wouldn't run OSX, and he'd have to stick with 9 since he only has 96mb ram and a 233 ppc.

    we have all been using X since 10.1 and to go back to 9 is like....well it suxor.

    Randyjavascript:smilie('')
  • Reply 6 of 7
    I put Panther on my girlfriend's Bondi Blue first iteration iMac and it's absolutely great, I agree. She runs Office X too. Windows judder when you move them but they open fast enough. Exposé's great. It doesn't seem to do all the Quartz Extreme tricks but it looks good to me.



    She has quite a lot of RAM in it, though.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah

    I put Panther on my girlfriend's Bondi Blue first iteration iMac and it's absolutely great, I agree.



    That's great news for me to hear. My father has a first-generation bondi blue iMac and I think he has been itching to try something new. I've been hesitant to tell him to install Mac OS X because of all the horror stories I had previously read about it performing like a complete dog. Your testimony is certainly refreshing.



    I'm going to have to explain why OSX isn't as snappy and immediately responsive as OS9, but hopefully he'll learn to cope and compensate with the improved multitasking.
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