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iMac G3 (Bondi Blue). Vintage, classic, collectible? All, some or none?

T

tezza

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Hi,

I've been neglecting my computer collecting hobby of late. I did get something recently I had on the list though.

The terms vintage, classic and collectible are subjective terms. It could be argued that this is not a vintage computer? At only 18 years old, maybe it's too new. I would call it a classic though, and I would also call it increasingly collectible for the reasons outlined in the link.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/collection/imac.htm

It's good to have it in the collection.

Tez
 
Congratulations on the latest acquisition Terry! It's great to see you back and I am looking forward to the video on this indisputable classic.

Cary
 
It's funny, I love these stupid little iMacs.

I floated the question about these being vintage/retro/collectible on another mailing list, and was harshly criticized about them not being vintage, and not being collectible, etc. I don't get it? I think they are cool.

I mentioned that I can get quite a few of these. I was contacted by a few interested parties that want to make fish tanks out of the cases. As a restoration and repair guy, the thought of sending them off to get gutted and stuffed really irritates me. Also, they are a pain to ship.

In fact, I have standing access to a pallet of them. Probably 30+. I can get it for nearly no money, but haven't. Honestly, I don't want to be stuck with them all. :) I took one off of the pallet for myself. The rest wait for another owner, or for me to have the momentary lapse in judgement that it would take to make them mine. I've consciously not driven my truck near there, just to make sure I don't have a way to bring them home should that lapse in judgement happen.

I love the write-up Tezza! Good stuff, and glad to see some people share my enjoyment of this classic and historic (if not Vintage and/or Retro) Mac!
 
Hi Tezza,

An absolute classic. It changed the outlook of the industry for years.

It also spawned a number of copy-cat styled products for which I don't thank Apple. There was a time when you could hardly move for clear TVs, radios, mice etc. :)

I love my Bondi blue, and my Graphite, and my G4 lamp base and my G5 etc... ;-) All special.


Cheers,

Andy
 
Nice work Terry, that era of Apple is certainly one to keep around.
iMac's for asthetics, and I think the G3 towers are a great blend of engineering/function combined with style.
 
Thanks for those comments. I might replace the photo in the writeup at some stage to bring out the proper blue colour and translucent nature of the case. Also I'll photograph it from the other side..that has a big Apple logo on it. To appreciate the nature of the design you have to photograph these machines sideways. A straight-on view just doesn't show it.

Yes, it will be the subject of a video in the near future.

Tez
 
Nice score! I had a final-revision Indigo for a bit dual-booting 9.1 / 10.3 (I think I posted about it on your forum a while ago.) The 500MHz G3 w/640MB RAM made it surprisingly competent in OSX, and of course OS9 flew. They used a really nice crisp CRT (at 1024x768 ) with great colour depth in those. I ended up trading it for a mixer but I'm wondering if I should have held on to it.

From the right angles they are stunning:
imac1.jpg

imac7.jpg


...of course I did manage to replace it with my holy grail of unorthodox Mac design, a G4 cube. ;) Between that and two G5 towers I don't think the iMac would have had much of a job. But it was pretty.
 
I have a strawberry iMac G3. I like the look of the off-red, and I stuck a Sonnet HARMONi in it. With Shadowkiller helping out the anaemic Rage Pro, it's acceptable in 10.2 (but it mostly runs 9.2.2).

I never got into the iMac G5, though. I think the design high point was the G4.
 
I never liked the G3 iMac design and never botherd to snag one (even when offered for free). The G4 iMac (lamp) was slightly more interesting but I won't pay for one. I have a few G5 iMacs and they are ok except for RAM limitation (once you recap them).

There was a local guy who had a nice grey plastic CRT monitor (ADC) that looked cool in an iMac kind of way but he sold it before I could snag it.
 
I got an iMac G3 Snow from a recycling run and I didn't like it from day one.

The issues I had with it:

- It ran very hot from the get-go and always had that hot plastic smell, like the temperature before the plastic starts melting smell.
- The speakers weren't shielded and caused the display to shimmer when playing sound. The original speakers were dry rotted as well and had to be replaced.
- The slot loading optical drive was junk and would always eat discs and not be able to read them most of the time.
- The hard drive was crammed in an unventilated bay at the bottom of the unit under another big chunk of metal and gets EXTREMELY hot.

I played with it for two or three months to get Ubuntu loaded on it, since it at least has modern software available. Getting the ATI Rage GPU to work on it with 3D hardware acceleration was a nightmare but it finally worked.

But all of that was undone when I sold it on fleabay and UPS drop kicked it off the back of the truck on the freeway going 70. Entire case was destroyed but miraculously the machine still worked. It's been sitting in my garage waiting to go to the recycling center since it doesn't seem anyone wants it for parts.

I later found an eMac G4 1.25 GHz unit and snagged that, which makes me feel less guilty about chucking the iMac G3.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I got an iMac G3 Snow from a recycling run and I didn't like it from day one.

I played with it for two or three months to get Ubuntu loaded on it, since it at least has modern software available. Getting the ATI Rage GPU to work on it with 3D hardware acceleration was a nightmare but it finally worked.

Entire case was destroyed but miraculously the machine still worked. It's been sitting in my garage waiting to go to the recycling center since it doesn't seem anyone wants it for parts.

I later found an eMac G4 1.25 GHz unit and snagged that, which makes me feel less guilty about chucking the iMac G3.
Click to expand...

Are you able to transplant at least the HD from damaged iMac G3 into your eMac G4 ? Would it run and allow you to then Ubantu on that machine ?

If not, maybe at least offer the Ubantu loaded HD on here ?
 
inotarobot said:
Are you able to transplant at least the HD from damaged iMac G3 into your eMac G4 ? Would it run and allow you to then Ubantu on that machine ?

If not, maybe at least offer the Ubantu loaded HD on here ?
Click to expand...

Why would I transplant an overheated junk Maxtor drive into a newer mac with a much larger working drive?

I've also offered the iMac G3 on this forum several times, nobody wants it even for parts.
 
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