First off let me start by saying that I`m a Pc guy, I started off with one from my uncle at the age of about 4 in 1992. The computer my family had was a flat accounting machine that wasn't able to run windows on it so it was stuck with DOS. Dos was hard to use and didn`t have a lot of help compared to XP command prompt which is much nicer to understand. I consider Mac Os 9.2 to be a similar experience except in a GUI.
When I bought the computer I was sure it was a 600mhz computer that may be able to boot OSX with some lag issues(the required Specs of OSX is 1Ghz), I wanted to help my friend David Golinski(http://davidgolinski.com/) program in Cocoa for the Iphone, which he was building an unknown project in(he never disclosed the details). When I bought it I found that it was a 233mhz 96mB ram computer. I should have done my research on this G3. Anyways I booted the computer up and the clock didn't work right. I had this problem before in my P3`s and instantly knew that it had a dead battery, a fact that the owner of the Power PC G3 failed to mention to me. That was okay.
It had taken quite some time to boot. After it booted I noticed all the crap on there. I had forgotten to get the Installation Cd-roms. I then tried to put Linux onto the G3 but after it started to boot the screen would go black and the PC activity light would go dead. So I assume that its some proprietary feature that G3`s have to prevent other OS from being run on a MAC or maybe the architecture is different that Linux wont recognize.
So I decided to download a copy of MAC OS 9 off the Internet as I could not find version 9.2 on the pirate bay that had enough seeders. I first put the cd in and clicked esc key or F8 like on a PC. It didn't work. So I let the computer boot and went into the help files of the Cd-rom. In the help files it has a arbitrary and completely unreferenced to hitting C when its booting(It says so on the cd if you have a legit one). So I tried that and it started but than it stopped working. After this I gave up and decided to use the dirty install that the other guy had.
The first thing I did after this is go through his stuff. He at one time had another hard drive attached to this computer which he had taken off so a lot of the porn I found on his computer didn't work, I found emails that were saved and read them. I might have found some of the deleted items if it were not for my next issue.
I tried to download a DMG to OS 9.2 of Windows Live Messenger for MAC and found that DMGs didn't open the same way they did on OSX. In OSX they are like a virtual drive you click on them and they unpack sort of. In 9.2 you have to run another program to run them as they can only use SMIs. So I found the SMI program on www.downloads.com and downloaded it. I tried to get the emulator to work but to no avail. Frustrated and bored because I had to keep switching to my laptop to chat without my IM, I gave up and haven't used that $20 computer since.
www.Kijiji.ca but no one would buy the machine for $20, I guess I got ripped off. Anyways if your looking to get a computer make sure its at least a G4 because a G3 is a pile of shit because MAC OS 9.2 is a piece of shit, buy a computer capable of running OSX.
