I just got an old beige g3 desktop model and I'm planning to run it as a server. I still want to install jaguar on it to make it more stable. How much RAM do I need? I found some old 64Mb DIMMS and I was just wondering: is it possible to run jaguar at only 192Mb RAM? I know it wont be fast, but thats of no matter; I just want it to be able to boot.
Thanx for any reply.
You can. The minimum for OSX is 128mb. I run my iBook on 192 and it works great. AND I'm running Panther. I would still reccomend 256 though. Hope it helps!
Oli
I have a Beige G3 with Panther and it runs fine with 288 MB -- there's plenty of free memory for applications. I can only assume that Jaguar wil consume less RAM. After a boot in Panther, this G3 shows only about 144 MB of memory in use so your proposed 192 MB should be more than enough.
The amount of RAM OSX uses depends on the amount available. With less RAM the system loads less of the OS and relies more on Virtual Memory. A 192mb system will use less than 144mb and spend more time accessing the hard drive and so will feel more sluggish than a 288mb ststem.
I have 1.75gb RAM and my system uses about 334mb and another 20mb if I want Classic running in the background.
Wayne
...for your answers. So I guess it is safe to give jaguar a try on the old g3. Another question: is there a 100mbit card in the beige g3 by default or just a 10mbit? And is it safe to put a ata66 card in there and attach another 4 harddrives?
thanx again
Well the ata66 card is a go (provided its mac compatible) but i wouldn't put 4 more hard drives in there unless you took the beige motherboard and put it into a standard ATX case with a good sized powersupply (350-450 watts?).
4 hard drives plus the additional stock hardware is going to overwhelm the stock powerupply.
And heck, I don't think you could fit the 4 additional hard drives in the stock beige case (even tower).
Personally, i would keep the cdrom on the stock motherboard bus (makes booting off the cdrom less problematic), and put 1 or 2 big hard drives on the ata66 card and not have any drives hooked up to the stock bus.
Re: ethernet: a Beige G3 has 10 mbit ethernet on the mobo. I added a D-Link 100mbit card and that worked very well (Panther had drivers for it and automatically selected and configured the card).
Re: HDs: You will need to remove the CD to get 4 HDs in a Beige DT. There's one lower bay next to the mobo, two official 3.5" bays and the 5.25" bay for the CD-ROM. I don't think the floppy bay area is big enough for an HD, but I could be wrong. Now if you are willing t hack chunks out of the machine, then maybe more can be jammed in there,but I'd start to worry about power if you have a couple PCI cards, CD, and all those drives.
My Stock beige I had at one point ran panther great at 128 megs ram, Good idea for a server I got an old beige board laying around here that i could do myself. My brother is happy with a Beige G3 266 with 128 megs and panther. Now if only i could convince my mom that panther works better than buggy os 9 then i could do her iMac