On Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 10:32:17 AM UTC-4, BurfordTJustice wrote:
Nonsense...not much different from a PC.










"trader_4" wrote in message
...
: On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 10:25:10 PM UTC-4, J.Albert wrote:
: On 10/22/17 11:22 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
: Got a ten year old iMac sittin' here , my d-i-l wants me to
: wipe it and reset to as-new for my grandson . Problem is
: that I know nothing about Apple comps and can't find much
: info online about one this old . Any Apple users out there
: care to help ?
:
: First off, a good place to look for info is:
: http://forums.macrumors.com/
:
: Unless it's one of the last PowerPC iMacs (called the g5),
: it should have an Intel processor in it.
:
: Is it a "white colored" iMac or one of the first "aluminum"
: ones?
:
: You can find out what version of the OS is on it by going to
: "About this Mac" directly under the Apple menu.
:
: We need to know just which iMac before recommending an OS.
: Again, go to "About this Mac", and see if it offers you
: "more info" (or go to the Utilities folder in the
: Applications folder, and look for Apple System Profiler).
: Open the System Profiler.
: Look at the "hardware overview".
: Look at "Model identifier". It should say something like
: "iMac6,x"
: What is that number?
: It identifies exactly what you have.
:
: If it's a 2007 (white) model, you can use up to OS 10.7 "Lion".
: If it's a 2008 (aluminum) or later, you could use OS 10.8
: "Mountain Lion".
: Either would do well to revive it.
: On the 2008, it might even run OS 10.11 "El Capitan". But
: Mountain Lion will run better.
:
: Did the place you got it from give you any System DVD's?
: If not, sometimes you can get the OS software from Apple,
: but for an older Mac, this might not be possible.
: In that case, I can think of two ways to get a copy of the
: OS installer you need:
: - ebay. Some folks will sell you a USB flashdrive with the
: OS installer pre-installed. Just boot and install
: - the torrents. When one can't find what one needs anywhere
: else, one does what one has to do.
:
: More recent Macs can do something called "internet
: recovery", but yours is too old.
: Forget that, won't work.
:
: It's not really all that hard to erase the internal drive,
: then put a clean copy of the OS and basic applications onto
: it -- IF one knows what to do. The Mac is different from the
: Windows world in that respect.
:
: What I would do if you put it into my hands (I've been a Mac
: user for 30 years, don't touch Windows):
: 1. Download the OS installer I needed. THIS HAS TO BE DONE
: ON THE MAC, you can't do it on a PC
: 2. Get a USB flash drive (should be 16gb) and create a
: bootable flash drive installer
: 3. Boot from the flash drive (reboot and hold down the
: option key immediately, and keep holding it down until the
: startup manager appears -- then click on the USB drive to
: select it and hit return)
: 4. Use Disk Utility to erase the internal drive, and run
: "repair disk" on it a few times for good measure
: 5. Use the installer to install the OS
: 6. When the installer is finished, you should be presented
: with the setup screen. At this point, create a user account
: and password.
: 6a. If it's "for kids", you should create an administrative
: account for yourself, and then create "standard"
: (NON-administrative) accounts for each of the kids.
:
: Hope this gets you going.
:
: The above process makes me glad I've always bought Windows based PCs.

Ten year old PCs generally have a recovery partition that will restore
the PC to the as shipped software with just a couple keystrokes.