articquad Posted December 8, 2007 Share Posted December 8, 2007 So, I'm upgrading my grandparent's iMac g4. It's current specs are: 1.25 GHz PowerPC processor 256 MB of fixed RAM. 17 inch screen. Combo, maybe superdrive. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. and last, but not least, an 80 GB HD. They had about.. 5 MB of Files on there, so I just backed that up onto a CD, and I reinstalled Panther in order to get rid of Classic, which was just a royal pain. We're putting in a gig of ram, OS X Leopard, and iLife '08. Also, when I reinstalled, and hit option at boot, I noticed that the BIOS was outdated. Or so I think. It looks very, very OS 9'ey. I'm not sure it's just like that, or if there's some update to have the interface similar to EFI. Anything I should watch out for? And will the processor be sufficient for these apps? Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Nonny Moose Posted December 8, 2007 Share Posted December 8, 2007 G4's don't have BIOS. They have Open Firmware. If it needed updated, Software Update would have told you this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
articquad Posted December 9, 2007 Author Share Posted December 9, 2007 Open Firmware, eh? Thanks for that tip. =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Baron Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 Open Firmware, eh? Thanks for that tip. =) There isn't a Firmware update for your iMac - I've got the same model. I've never seen the screen you mention, when I hold down a key I get the drive icon and firewire icon - I suppose these look a bit old fashioned (they reminded me of Amiga icons!) You could put 2gb in there and a larger drive if you were willing to open it up - not a 5 minute job... I tried Leo, but wasn't too happy with the performance but 10.4.11 (and iLife) works great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scj312 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 I run Leo on my 800MHz fine with the new iLife - you have to hack the iMovie to get it to install and run on a G4 unfortunately, but it runs fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
articquad Posted December 12, 2007 Author Share Posted December 12, 2007 iMovie '08 isn't a big deal. Actually I found '06 much more useful. I think Leo should run fine though, with a 1.25 GHz processor. Thanks for all the suggestions and whatnot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jberg44 Posted April 11, 2010 Share Posted April 11, 2010 It will run, but with only 256mb of ram it will be slow. I'd recommend upping the ream to 2 gigs to run 10.5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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