iMac G4 Shenanigans

We all tend to look back at events and things in the past with slightly rose tinted spectacles. I remember looking through my Grandad's old Cine films looking for 'the parrots' bit. This was where he had been on holiday in Majorca sometime in the early 80's and one of the locals had a parrot show where the parrots would do various funny things for the amusement of tourists. Growing up, I thought that this was the absolute best thing I had ever seen and it was a staple when visiting Nan and Grandad. Fast forward fourty years and I was sad to discover that that bit of footage was only about three minutes long and was, to be honest, a bit underwhelming.

And, after the excitement of getting the thing working, that pretty much describes my first experiences with the iMac G4. Underwhelming. (But that's not the whole story...)

I know that it's 19 years old. I understand that. I realise that technology has marched relentlessly forward; the web has changed, encryption and security have improved. I get all that but for some reason I was expecting more from a machine that at launch cost $1799 (almost $2600 in 2021 adjusting for inflation).

The Interwebs

So, anyway. First things first. What was the iMac G4 like to use on the modern internet? Well, if you read my previous post on this machine, you'll know that I actually managed to download quite a few things, and after a bit of work I managed to find a modern-ish browser that will load modern websites. 

First up, Twitter. Well, it works. I can't deny that. But you would need the patience of Job to be able to cope with using it. On a modern PC the twitter page updates itself every so often which is quick, seamless and unnoticed by most users. On the G4 it's slow, slow and then decides to slow down a bit. Typical time to render the home page is around 80-100 seconds. Every time it updates. Every time. Not really usable and only worth the novelty value.

Next up, Facebook. Well, this one refused to log me in. It got further than the ancient version of Safari but point blank refused to go past the login page. Oh dear.

Blogger. This one appeared to work but was, as twitter, excruciatingly slow. Then the version of Firefox I have on the iMac crashed. Ah.

At this point it was time to give up on any idea of using this for any type of web browsing. The 800Mhz processor just doesn't seem up to the job. 

Now what?

VNC

One thing that occurred to me is that, although this machine doesn't have the grunt for modern uses it doesn't need much grunt for the famous VNC Viewer. If I could find a VNC viewer that runs on this iMac then maybe I could use it to control another, more powerful machine that can be hidden away. Part of my issue is that both Mrs Crashed and I love the way the iMac looks and it's currently sat in our bedroom, just looking cool. But to be useful it really does need to be able to access the internet. No other machine is ever likely to be permitted in the halo'd confines of the bedroom, so don't even suggest it..

So, my ridiculous plan. Set up a headless Raspberry Pi with the desktop gui and VNC server enabled. Then, assuming VNC viewer is available for the iMac, connect via VNC and use the web browsing capabilities on that machine. It doesn't need to do much, just BBC News, Blogger, that sort of thing.

After a bit of Googling (or Safari'ing) I found that VNC viewer for PPC was available from here. Installation was simple and done in two minutes. After setting up my Raspberry Pi with VNC Server, it just worked. I managed to pull up the screen of the Pi and re-size the window so Chrome appeared as it would as if it were a browser window running native on the iMac. All in all, despite being a compromise, the results are quite good. No YouTube though.

Other Internet Options

The most excellent @ActionRetro1 on Twitter (and YouTube) has made a couple of websites that are designed specifically to run on very old, vintage computers. Although my iMac is possibly a bit more modern than was originally intended, the outcome is a very usable system. The websites are:

• frogfind.com
• 68k.news

68k.news

frogfind.com

As the names suggest, frogfind is a very lightweight search engine that uses DuckDuckGo as it's engine, and 68k.news aggregates news stories into simple text, meaning that viewing and reading is simple, fast and also ad-free. Both are really worth a look if you have an old machine on the intertubes and they prove that you can enjoy some online action if you don't fancy messing about with that VNC nonsense. They also work very well on modern machines if you're sick of all the ad-induced slow down. My iMac G4 displays both sites quickly and perfectly in the ancient version of Safari that is installed.

Games

Another reason for having this machine is to play games from the era. One such game that I have on PC and really do enjoy playing is Sim City 3000. This is one of the last decent versions of Sim City and is before the company that shall not be named got hold of it and screwed it into the ground. Having found the appropriate files to download I was a bit disappointed to see that the installation would not work as I did not seem to have the 'Classic' environment installed.

Dangnabbit.

After some research I discovered that the iMac PPC machines could run MacOS9 and earlier software in OSX but they needed parts of OS9 installed to be able to do so. In my installation I didn't have this, hence the failure to run the installer for Sim City 3000. When I got the iMac I did a fresh installation of OSX 10.4 which did not (or at least I can't remember it) give me any options to actually install or set up this functionality.

Below is the procedure for how I manged to install the Classic environment and make it work. I have recorded it here as it took me bloody ages to find it out and it needs a specific file to be downloaded from the Apple website. The link for that file is here but note that I can't guarantee it'll be there forever as it seems to be one of the very few bits of MacOS support that they haven't just binned from the website.

1) Download the file either directly onto the iMac desktop or copy it onto the desktop from a USB stick

2) The file is a .dmg file so mount it as you would any other disk image (on your Mac - duh!)

3) Head to the 'English' folder and look for the file called 'NetBoot.pkg'.

4) Right click (or ctrl+mouse button) and choose 'Show Package Contents' from the menu.

5) Go to the 'Contents' folder, then into 'Resources'. Find the file that is named 'NetBoot.pax.gz' and drag it onto the desktop.

6) Double click the file and extract the folder named 'NetBootInstallation'. If you get an 'Access Priveleges' error then you need to give yourself read/write permissions. Do this by right clicking (or ctrl-left click) and click 'Get Info'. In the window there's a section that says 'Ownership and Permissions'. Set it to 'read and write'.

7) Open the NetBootInstallation folder and find the file called NetBoot_HD.img and double click it to mount.

8) Find the 'System' folder and drag it to the iMac's hard disk.

9) Finally (phew!), go the 'System Preferences' and on the 'Classic' pane, click 'Start'. 

There should be some update messages, I certainly got a few, but after a minute or so the Classic environment should be running and voila! You should now be able to run Classic MacOS software. (Steps based on an original post from the Apple forums located here.)

Did it work for Sim City 3000?

Oh, yes. :)

Conclusion

The iMac G4 looks cool. It does some stuff OK but there are compromises. It's an OK retro machine but, even though it may still look modern, it is not so don't expect too much of it. With a bit of work it is an entertaining (and cool looking - did I mention that?) machine to use. If one comes along cheap, it's worth a shot.