A few months ago we inherited a 1998 Bondi iMac from a friend. While the 233 Mhz G3 processor was speedy for its time, running many modern applications can require a lot of patience. At first glance, this older machine doesn’t seem useful for much more than word processing and web browsing.

We considered a number of options for putting this classic iMac to good use, including making it a dedicated MacMAME emulator encased in a custom-built arcade cabinet. While that is definitely a fun and exciting project, we opted instead to make the iMac a dedicated media/file and chat server.

One of the immediate limitations of the iMac was the size of the hard drive. The original 4 GB hard drive doesn’t offer much for storage, especially considering that a basic installation of Mac OS X is almost 2 GB without additional applications and data. The original iMacs are capable of using at most a 120 GB EIDE drive, so that is what we purchased.

While the “all-in-one” design of the iMac doesn’t make internal modifications as easy as PCs, it is not as difficult as one might suspect. The motherboard, memory, optical drive, and hard drive are all contained in one chassis that is easily accessed by removing the bottom cover of the computer. Remove two more screws at the top of the chassis, unplug all of the power and data cables, and the metal unit slides out. Specific instructions can be found at How To Upgrade Your iMac and in the Apple iMac Service Manual.

Because these iMacs are now several years old, it makes sense to go ahead and change the PRAM (Parameter RAM) battery on the motherboard before reassembling the computer. The battery is easily located on the motherboard, and replacements can be found at many computer retailers, camera shops, or the Apple Store.

In 1998 when this iMac was made, it was unusual for the computers to come with more than 32 MB of RAM installed. For Mac OS X to run usefully, it is important to install more memory. The older iMacs have two memory slots, making it possible to install 2 x low-profile 256 MB SDRAM modules. 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB, and 256 MB modules can be used in any combination. The RAM should be either PC66Mhz or PC100Mhz... faster memory will not work.

It is very important to pay attention to the jumper settings for your new hard drive before installing it. Many new hard drives come with the jumper set for CSEL (Cable Select), but the Bondi iMac does not support this setting. The jumper should be set for SINGLE or SINGLE MASTER/SLAVE. The jumper positions are usually labeled on the top of the hard drive and can also be found at the website of the hard drive manufacturer.

The drive may still be readable with an incorrect jumper setting, but it will not be bootable — meaning even after you install the OS, the computer will not be able to boot from the hard disk. If this happens, take the computer apart again and change the jumper to the correct setting.

When reassembling the iMac, make sure the CD drive tray aligns properly with the front of the computer case. It is easy to accidentally wedge the tray behind the front bezel, making the CD drive unable to open. If this happens, remove the chassis and reinsert with the CD drive tray aligned properly.

With the iMac reassembled, it should power up with no problems. Because the new hard drive is empty, the computer will flash a question mark on the screen indicating there is no Startup Disk to boot from.

While any version of OS X can be installed, it is highly recommended to install 10.3.x (Jaguar) because of the speed improvements. 10.3.x will deliver significantly better performance over previous versions of OS X, and because of the iMac's older processor we need the fastest OS possible.

With the computer on, insert the OS X installation CD and the iMac will boot from the CD and launch the installer. Before proceeding, the hard drive needs to be setup correctly and formatted. Go to the menu bar and select “Disk Utility.”

The older iMacs must have the OS installed in a hard drive partition less than 8 GB. This partition must also be in the first 8 GB of the hard drive. We found that for this to work, the OS partition must be the last partition created (the lowest and last partition in the utility visual). First we created a 104.5 GB partition titled “Media” and used the remaining 7 GB of space for the OS partition titled “iMac G3.”

Other partitions can be any size you want, with a maximum of 8 partitions total. Just remember to create the OS partition last and make it less than 8 GB.

Once the drive is formatted and partitioned, quit the Drive Utility and the Installer will re-appear. Continue the installation, making sure that the OS is installed on the appropriate partition. If the OS partition is the wrong size or not located appropriately on the drive, the installer will stop and present a description of the problem. If this happens go back to the Disk Utility and repartition the disk correctly.

Follow the rest of the OS X installation process. Because the iMac is older and with a slower CD drive, this will probably take at least an hour. When the installation is complete, reboot the computer and you should see the OS X setup screen. If this doesn’t happen, retrace your steps and correct any mistakes (such as hard drive jumper settings).

The Bondi iMac comes with a built-in Ethernet 10/100BASE-T port, but no Airport card slots. That means that any broadband network access must be through Ethernet. We chose to share our broadband connection and network the iMac using the Netgear WGR614 54Mbps Wireless Router. Internet and network access was better than expected thanks to the 10/100BASE-T Ethernet access, actually making the iMac network connection faster than if it could have used an Airport card.

With internet access enabled, we used Software Update in System Preferences to update OS X and applications. The software updates took approximately an hour.

All of these settings, including server features, are accessed through System Preferences.

The iMac’s Energy Preferences are set to put the monitor to sleep after 3 minutes, never put the computer to sleep, and restart upon power failure. There is no need for a screensaver.

Date & Time was set to automatically synchronize with the Apple time server. We often lose track of time, so the server’s Date & Time Preferences are also set to use OS X Speech to announce the time every hour.

All that is necessary to make the iMac a server is to turn on Personal File Sharing in the Sharing settings. If you want to network with Windows computers, also activate Windows Sharing. The iMac could also be easily configured as a web server (Personal Web Sharing) or FTP server (FTP Sharing). This would take less than 30 seconds to setup, but we have no need for these features at the moment.

Because our iMac will also be the print server, Printer Sharing was also turned on in the Sharing settings.

Because the iMac came with only 2 USB ports, we needed a USB hub to connect our printer and other USB peripheral devices to the server. Many of these devices draw their power from the USB bus, so it is extremely important to use a powered USB hub. Powered USB hubs also decrease device and driver errors because there is more power to go around for all of the devices. These hubs are common and easily recognized because they use a separate power adapter. Our choice was a D-Link powered hub with a low-profile power adapter that easily fit onto the surge protector strip without blocking other outlets.

With the hub installed, the remaining USB port on the iMac was used for the keyboard and mouse.

We plugged our printer into the iMac USB hub and installed the printer software on the iMac. Printer Sharing was already turned on the Sharing settings in System Preferences.

The print server was first tested from the iMac and then from the other computers on the network. It is interesting to note that some of the printer’s special features, such as printing from the photo paper cartridge, were only available on the iMac and unavailable to the other computers on the network. Whether or not this happens is based upon the specific printer and drivers used.

We added a Parlient PhoneValet to the iMac USB hub as a telephony solution to manage voice mail, caller ID, and fax data. Not only does the PhoneValet software offer individual voice mailboxes for multiple users, but it uses OS X Speech to politely announce the identity of any callers.

Because the iMac does not have FireWire, a USB-based video recording solution must be used. We added an Elgato EyeTV USB to the iMac USB hub. The EyeTV includes a 124-channel cable-ready TV tuner with editing and on-demand viewing. While the digitized video is MPEG-1, the quality is still high enough to create archive DVDs of television shows. The MPEG-1 video also streams well even over older Airport cards (802.11b).

The EyeTV video can be easily streamed to other computers in the network (both wired and wireless) using CyTV and VLC. Even though the iMac has a slower processor, the fast 10/100BASE-T connection makes video streaming seamless. While EyeTV is not recording, CyTV allows other computers on the network to control the EyeTV (including channel changing, instant replay, and instant recording). Internet video streaming is also possible with FTP server access activated (FTP Sharing in Network in System Preferences).

The large 104.5 GB Media partition on the new hard drive is ample space for archiving edited video recordings for network access.

We wanted our entire music collection to be consolidated in one location with access to all of the music from each computer in the network. This is fairly easy to accomplish using iTunes.

One possibility is to use iTunes Music Sharing, and this is a very simple solution that works well. Unfortunately this requires that iTunes always be running on the iMac server. If other applications (such as EyeTV recording video) were busy, that might interrupt access to the music library. We decided to go with another solution.

In the user’s “Music” folder there is another directory titled “iTunes,” inside of which are two files titled “iTunes 4 Music Library,” “iTunes 4 Music Library.xml,” and another folder titled “iTunes Music.” We transferred all three of these to a directory on the Media partition on the iMac.

On each of the computers in the network, iTunes Preferences were changed to locate and store the music on the iMac Media partition. The files “iTunes 4 Music Library” and “iTunes 4 Music Library.xml” were copied to the Music > iTunes folder on each computer in the network.

All of the music files, including playlists, became accessible to each computer on the network without using iTunes Music Sharing.

We wanted to keep all of our photos on the iMac Media partition and have them accessible from all computers on the network. As with iTunes, iPhoto offers a built-in sharing feature to allow other computers on the network access to the same photo libraries. For this to work (similar to iTunes) iPhoto must be always running on the iMac server, and we needed a solution that didn't require the iPhoto application to always be running.

Fortunately Rick Neil has written a great freeware utility named iPhoto Buddy. iPhoto Buddy allows iPhoto to use any photo library and not just the default photo library in the user folder. Using iPhoto Buddy, we set each version of iPhoto on each of the networked computers to access the photos on the iMac Media partition. This worked perfectly and made the photo library centralized for all users.

With a dedicated server running 24/7, it only makes sense to make this a private server for our friends and family. There are many Mac compatible servers and protcols available, but we decided on Wired because of its interface, stability, and ease-of-use for both the server and clients.

After running for our “new” iMac G3 Server for a week, its performance is even better than expected. The larger and faster hard drive boosted overall performance so that the iMac is performing at approximately 70% of a 500Mhz G3 iBook — a significant and surprising result. This is mainly due to the slower 5400 RPM notebook hard drive in the iBook, creating a speed bottleneck even though the iBook's processor is much faster than the iMac.

The wired Ethernet connection to the Netgear creates speedy file server access, making the shared music, photo, and video libraries pleasantly accessible. Video files play perfectly even over the wireless network, since the dedicated Netgear wireless router handles all of the network demands.

Because the only applications running are EyeTV, PhoneValet, and the Wired Server there are no other applications competing for computing resources. Fewer processor demands have made the EyeTV video recording more reliable with the iMac than when it was used with our other computers. The powered USB hub also appears to have improved EyeTV hardware reliability.

The iPhoto and iTunes libraries are centralized, making the same media accessible to all computers on the network without affecting the performance of other computers. All of these files are easier to backup because they are on one computer instead of several.

Bringing new life to a 1998 Bondi iMac was much easier than we thought.