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I don't have much passion for this debate. iMacs were always those little Mac other people buy to me.

I have to say I honestly wonder at all the floppy problems people claim to have had. My experience was that they would fail from time to time but for the most part were fine as long as the dog didnt chew on them.
Heck, I worked prepress in a place that had customer data coming in on floppies by the dozens every day and we would run into a bad one maybe a couple of times a month, out of hundreds.
Last year  literally blew the dust off an ancient Norton's repair floppy and ran it in my vintage Powerbook 530c and it was fine.......




Pause to check......

Yep, still bootible and runs. When was Norton's 3.0 new?

dvpierce wrote:

See, that's not been my experience at all. Maybe it's the weather difference between MN and OK, but probably 1 in 5 of the floppies people bring into my work are bad.

Then again, we get an abnormally high number of incorrectly burned CD-Rs too (not finalized, or even not burned to begin with.) It amazes me that somebody will drive 20 miles without spending 30 seconds to see if their disc burned successfully. Oh, and of course it's my fault that their files aren't there.

Also, Pariah, I've said this before. There was no such thing as a 530c.

I would agree that 1 out of 5 floppies is a pretty accurate number. And that's not counting the people who knew enough to check the disk before sending it to you.

Have you explained the "verify" concept to the customers ?

On the receiving end it's hard to tell how many floppies are bad if your customers know what they are doing because they know to check it before sending it out. If you deal with lot of amateurs you will see everything that is done half-assed like not even checking to see that the file is there. That can be frustrating.

Graphic Autist wrote:

KrowMagnum wrote:

Ram in an iMac at the time was maxed at 128MB and that wasn't enough for me.

I had a Bondi Blue iMac and upgraded the RAM to 160 MB! The original 32 MB card, and added a 128 MB to it. So take THAT!

Oh my god that thing was a pain in the ass to take apart, and I did it again to upgrade the 4GB drive in it to 20GB. I gave it to a friend in 2003...I wish I had it back.

Bat has mine. 160 MB, 25GB, and a VooDoo2!

Graphic Autist wrote:

KrowMagnum wrote:

Ram in an iMac at the time was maxed at 128MB and that wasn't enough for me.

I had a Bondi Blue iMac and upgraded the RAM to 160 MB! The original 32 MB card, and added a 128 MB to it. So take THAT!

Oh my god that thing was a pain in the ass to take apart, and I did it again to upgrade the 4GB drive in it to 20GB. I gave it to a friend in 2003...I wish I had it back.

At the time it was released the max was 128MB. After RAM technology improved the limit was raised. Now if you can find the right RAM, you may be able to get 512 to work in the original iMac. I've never found two 256MB sticks that will work in a Bondi iMac but 320MB is east to do.

KrowMagnum wrote:

dvpierce wrote:

Graphic Autist wrote:

I had a Bondi Blue iMac and upgraded the RAM to 160 MB! The original 32 MB card, and added a 128 MB to it. So take THAT!

Oh my god that thing was a pain in the ass to take apart, and I did it again to upgrade the 4GB drive in it to 20GB. I gave it to a friend in 2003...I wish I had it back.

Bat has mine. 160 MB, 25GB, and a VooDoo2!

Yea, there was what ONE video upgrade available ?

That's hardly something I would consider upgradeable. And I would like to see the average user try to upgrade the RAM and hard drive in a Bondi iMac.

It was pretty easy, actually.

I upgraded the CPU too and added a FireWire port.

dvpierce wrote:

...added a FireWire port.

Oh MAN!

That mysterious "expansion slot" pissed me off. I wanted FireWire on that thing for a bit, but got a Yikes G4 a bit more than a year after the iMac debuted.

As a matter of fact, I only dared crack that Bondi Bitch up AFTER I had the G4. I didn't want to smurf it up. Once I did it the first time, it was easy. But I remember that first time I dared open her up I was wondering if I'd ever get it back together. Worst serviceable computer I've ever owned by Apple. But I loved it.

And it was also the first computer I ever installed Linux on! Linux PPC 2000.

Actually, dvpierce, there was a PowerBook 530c (aka 550c), manufactured in 1995-1996. It was sold only in Japan. It had a 33 mhz 68040 processor, 8 megs of RAM and a 500 MB hard drive. It featured a color active-matrix screen, and was oone of the first to have a trackpad. It had the same form factor as the PowerBook 520/540.

Everymac.com lists only the 550c, but I found a few  references to the elusive 530, mostly in Japanese, one in Spanish, and an interview with Harry Shearer (he mentions his "late, unlamented 530c").

I have a 520c. I just goofed the typing.

Speaking of iMacs, I recently bought an iMac DV at Goodwill for $20. Only problem was, when I got it home I discovered it had no RAM. So I found two 128M SDRAM modules on ebay (@$20, w/shipping). After installation, I started it up and discovered the PRAM battery was dead and the System Folder (OS 9) was pretty messed up. I ran Norton Utilities, thinking it would help, and after that the HD disappeared from the desktop. On restart, it couldn't find the System Folder, although it would boot from the Norton CD. I reformatted the HD, but I don't have a copy of OS 9, so I shelled out another 20 bucks on ebay for that; I'm still waiting for it to arrive. In the meantime, I found a matching iMac blue keyboard & "hockey puck" mouse at a local computer recyclers store (another 20 smackeroos)! I also replaced the PRAM battery (@$17 at Radio Shack).

So much for my $20 bargain!

Last edited by sonnymoon42 (2007-09-17 1:02 pm)