iMac G3 and more fun!

[EverythingIBM]

Okay, I brought home a bondi-blue iMac G3 today (yes it has the keyboard). Um... I haven't got around to playing with it yet. I did boot it on at school: OS 9.2. One reason is that I simply have no room to set up another computer... need more tables...

Besides looking to run caesar 3 for mac & warcraft 2 for mac on it... what else fun should I have?

There's a graphite iMac G3 still at my school, although I think I should build up my iMuscles before lugging one of those a fair distance... again...

My school was also throwing out a purple iomega external zip drive (no cords with it sadly). Um... a mousepad, other old macs, and so forth. No IBM stuff! Too bad...

PS: I might be taking home a G4 tower if nothing can be decided on its fate. I love those cases, one flip of a button and you're in! Easy as an IBM! Plus they're really colourful plastic. OOOOH SHINY SHINY, baby BABY!

[D-EJ915]

pick up the heroes series, those are fun games to play multiplayer as well as diablo 2 heh

[ricercar]

Baldur's Gate.

[EverythingIBM]

pick up the heroes series, those are fun games to play multiplayer as well as diablo 2 heh

I already have heroes, I already have diablo 2 (and 1). Plus all the manuals too. Interestingly enough I don't have baldur's gate, but I've played it quite thoroughly. Before it there were those "windale?" games? Boy did those ever suck.

The reason why I want to play caesar on OS 9 is because it supports more buildings than the windows version. Warcraft 2 on OS 9 would allow me to play it via TCP/IP instead of IPX (I hate IPX: could never get the blasted thing to work).

ALTHOUGH, if I get more macs, and the mac versions of the heretofore mentioned games, I could network them for multiplayer if I ever come short of computers and want to have a LAN party.

Maybe I'll try it out. It'll give me more variety and experience. Can't limit oneself to one thing. Life becomes boring that way.

[EverythingIBM]

Alright so I loaded warcraft 2 on the iMac in OS 9.2

I have a few complaints:

#1 the CD doesn't start spinning slow once it detects the CD as a "music disc," it just keeps pumping it at full speed. My trusty old IBM winds down so there isn't any noise when reading the music from the disc. Mind you, a lot of improperly built PCs spin the CDs at full speed even with music. So, I'm not railing at apple exclusively.

#2 the mouse... I need a two button ergonomic mouse. Not a single buttoned UFO thing... seriously, it's hard to use. Every time I want to move a unit I have to hit "M". Really? I want to play warcraft 2 not warcraft 1.

#3 the sound is hard to adjust... they should have put some volume knob on the case or something... which my old IBM happens to have (if using the internal speaker: otherwise the external speakers obviously have volume knobs).

#4 I really want to replace the HDD. It's slow and noisy.

Other than that it seems fine... the tube is actually better than what I was expecting (decent colour). Running it in 640x480 at 117 Hz is very nice. Running it in 1024x768 you can see the tube getting a little blurry... not to mention ridiculously hard to see on 13". My eyes got very dry from looking at it.

However, if CDs are going to be so loud, I will not be able to use it for gaming when a CD is constantly required. I CANNOT *STAND* the noise of CDs spinning loudly.
But it's cool, nice to use Mac OS 9 after years and years and years. Much better than OSX in terms of GUI.

[NamelessPFG]

Don't have any performance issues with it? That's nice to hear.

Have any interest in PowerBook G3s, by any chance? Comparing my Pismo G3 400 to a neighbor's indigo iMac G3 350 slot-loader gives me the surprise of a laptop having more expandability than a desktop, which just isn't supposed to happen. (Doesn't help that the 350 MHz slot-loaders lack FireWire and AirPort, and the PowerBooks of that era had dual module bays.)

[ricercar]

The Pismo remains one of the best examples in laptop design. Stable; won't torque (passes the ricercar stress test). Two battery bays give 9+ hours away from the plug. Removable CPU card allows CPU upgrade. All the ports you might want. And cardbus if you need more.

Last year I scored 5 for free; I carry one everywhere. Screen breaks? I swap in a new one. Daughter eats a key cap? Swap in another one. Need more peripherals? Plug in my Magma expansion chassis and add PCI cards.

[ch_123]

Not sure if I would want to use a laptop called "Piss mo'e"...

Wasn't OS9 meant to be a hideous operating system? I never had much experience with it myself, but I've heard bad things about it.

[keyboardlover]

My favorite Mac game: Dark Seed.

[EverythingIBM]

My favorite Mac game: Dark Seed.

Nah, that is actually a DOS game. But I'm surprised they ported it to mac.

You can download the DOS version here:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/420/Dark+Seed.html

Re: ch_123

Mac OS9 being horrible? What? It's not slow, it runs things fine, and I've had no problems with it. Most games need at least Mac OS 7.

[microsoft windows]

Okay, I brought home a bondi-blue iMac G3 today (yes it has the keyboard). Um... I haven't got around to playing with it yet. I did boot it on at school: OS 9.2. One reason is that I simply have no room to set up another computer... need more tables...

Besides looking to run caesar 3 for mac & warcraft 2 for mac on it... what else fun should I have?

There's a graphite iMac G3 still at my school, although I think I should build up my iMuscles before lugging one of those a fair distance... again...

My school was also throwing out a purple iomega external zip drive (no cords with it sadly). Um... a mousepad, other old macs, and so forth. No IBM stuff! Too bad...

PS: I might be taking home a G4 tower if nothing can be decided on its fate. I love those cases, one flip of a button and you're in! Easy as an IBM! Plus they're really colourful plastic. OOOOH SHINY SHINY, baby BABY!

You should take the graphite iMac as well. They make great lawn ornaments.

And the G4 tower--Those make great garbage cans!

[keyboardlover]

And the G4 tower--Those make great garbage cans!

Do you even own a garbage can?

[microsoft windows]

Do you even own a garbage can?

So you haven't seen my basement?

[Findecanor]

I recommend that you should see if your school is throwing out any better CRT monitor. The Apple CRTs have a different port than VGA, but it is practically signal-compatible. For years, I used a 17" Apple CRT connected to my PC with an adapter cable that I had just soldered together.

I tried a couple of iMac keyboards today. I did not find the throw to be that bad, or the keys to be as wobbly as people here have complained about. However, I noticed that the key tops were quite flat and wide causing you to miss keys.

BTW, I find the exterior design of the translucent iMacs an abomination. Unfortunately, it had set a trend when it came, causing designers of the day to make all their items translucent. Thankfully, it died out pretty quick. I hope that it never gets back in style.

[nathanscribe]

It will.  I'm predicting 2020.

For what it's worth, I find the previous iMac keys utterly abysmal for anything but stopping doors or hitting things.  They're certainly not for typing on.  Maybe they're OK if you're more interested in posing in cafés than actually working...

[ch_123]

I recommend that you should see if your school is throwing out any better CRT monitor. The Apple CRTs have a different port than VGA, but it is practically signal-compatible. For years, I used a 17" Apple CRT connected to my PC with an adapter cable that I had just soldered together.

I tried a couple of iMac keyboards today. I did not find the throw to be that bad, or the keys to be as wobbly as people here have complained about. However, I noticed that the key tops were quite flat and wide causing you to miss keys.

BTW, I find the exterior design of the translucent iMacs an abomination. Unfortunately, it had set a trend when it came, causing designers of the day to make all their items translucent. Thankfully, it died out pretty quick. I hope that it never gets back in style.

I'm almost certain that those colouredy iMacs have a VGA port, and that the external Apple monitors of the day also had a VGA cable.

Said monitors look like a slightly larger version of those iMacs. This causes much confusion when you're scavenging in a dumping area for SDRAM...

[microsoft windows]

Once you've got experience with it, you can tell the difference. (I've salvaged over 20GB of RAM and 800GB worth of hard disks out of old iMac's they trashed at work).

[NamelessPFG]

The Pismo remains one of the best examples in laptop design. Stable; won't torque (passes the ricercar stress test). Two battery bays give 9+ hours away from the plug. Removable CPU card allows CPU upgrade. All the ports you might want. And cardbus if you need more.

Last year I scored 5 for free; I carry one everywhere. Screen breaks? I swap in a new one. Daughter eats a key cap? Swap in another one. Need more peripherals? Plug in my Magma expansion chassis and add PCI cards.

It's definitely a delight to work with. I'd be all over a modern version with the addition of a swivel screen containing an IPS or AFFS+ panel and a Wacom digitizer.

I'm just not really getting any use out of the one I currently have, though-the fact that the sole battery I got with it gets anywhere from 9 to 12 minutes of battery life basically renders it an integrated UPS more than an actual portable system, and the DVD-ROM drive I got in the other bay is not only noisy, but won't read data CDs or DVDs well unless I turn the whole thing upside-down. (Note that I was not aware of these things before I got it; lacking eBay descriptions can be a crapshoot, and I was very tight on funds at the time.) But more than anything else, the 400 MHz G3 isn't really cutting it for the modern Internet and who knows what else.

Oh, and as for the VGA port discussion, PowerBooks started having standard DE-15s by the 1998 WallStreet revision, if not earlier.

[ricercar]

The Apple CRTs have a different port than VGA, but it is practically signal-compatible.

This ended about the time Apple switched to the G3. Apple uses industry standard VGA and DVI ports on all my G3 machines.

[EverythingIBM]

EveryThing IBM is on a Mac?

Maybe my Dell prediction will come true...

That's one ugly computer.
Some of the first computers I used were macs.

I recommend that you should see if your school is throwing out any better CRT monitor. The Apple CRTs have a different port than VGA, but it is practically signal-compatible. For years, I used a 17" Apple CRT connected to my PC with an adapter cable that I had just soldered together.

I tried a couple of iMac keyboards today. I did not find the throw to be that bad, or the keys to be as wobbly as people here have complained about. However, I noticed that the key tops were quite flat and wide causing you to miss keys.

BTW, I find the exterior design of the translucent iMacs an abomination. Unfortunately, it had set a trend when it came, causing designers of the day to make all their items translucent. Thankfully, it died out pretty quick. I hope that it never gets back in style.

The iMac keyboards are actually better to type on than what most people think. The keys aren't wobbly, and the really small ones (like the arrow keys or function ones) are very crisp.

I kind of like the translucent plastics... if I had a choice of colour, I'd want a lime iMac G3. Or maybe sage.

You should take the graphite iMac as well. They make great lawn ornaments.

And the G4 tower--Those make great garbage cans!

Yeah they would be pretty good as some modern art thing for a garden.

I'm almost certain that those colouredy iMacs have a VGA port, and that the external Apple monitors of the day also had a VGA cable.

Said monitors look like a slightly larger version of those iMacs. This causes much confusion when you're scavenging in a dumping area for SDRAM...

If I'm not mistaken, some versions of the iMac G3s themselves had external VGA ports.

And yes, the mac coloured CRT monitors should have VGA, as, the G4 towers came with an ATI DVI & VGA card... there's no other way you could plug the monitor in...
I know someone who ran a blue G4 tower with a matching blue mac CRT (so it was either running on DVI or VGA).

[ch_123]

AFAIK, they all have VGA ports at the back.

I rescued one of those 'bubblegum' Macs from a skip once. The monitor made a rather ominous snapping noise during operation, so back it went.

[D-EJ915]

The only monitor port on my 333 is where the internal screen plugs in.  My 600 has a standard VGA port accessible the back though.