Apple iMac G3 Ruby Red Thrift Store Find!

I admit it, I'm an Apple fanboy. I have an iMac and an iPhone. I even have an old shuffle I still use from time to time. I wasn't always this way... it just kind of happened.

I think the fact that I enjoy nicely designed objects is what finally got me to switch. I'll choose a beautiful object over a plain one almost always.

That leads us to my latest find: an Apple iMac G3 (2nd generation) in Ruby Red. I have to say I was a bit skeptical when I saw this sitting with the old monitors at the Savers on Warm Springs. I assumed it was damaged beyond repair or simply did not work at all. I took it over to the testing station, plugged it in, and hit the power button. We have power! A good first sign. After waiting about 3 minutes, it finally booted up to the welcome screen. It was asking for the password of the user "hollywood", which no one knew. This was a problem... to others.

To me, I knew it was an easy fix, and decided to make the purchase. It was quite cheap, and even if I couldn't get it to work I'd hollow it out and make a fish tank or something fun out of it. Upon getting it home, I inserted my newer iMac's OSX disc, hoping it would boot. It didn't. No worries, other things can be done. I restarted the G3, held Control +S and booted to the DOS screen. After entering a few lines of text, I was able to boot the computer as if it came straight out of the box. It asked me to create a new user account, and then the iMac started up with me as the main user. From there I deleted the old "hollywood" user account, and it was smooth sailing from there on out!

I decided that since it was in such nice shape, I'd set it up more as a display and then have the option to use it to check email, etc in a pinch. I think it fits quite nicely on our "showcase" wall of stuff!