Both seem to have sucky optical drives - neither iMac likes booting from these. So it's time to drag my old FW DVD burner, and see how it fares. I suspect I'll be able to get a really nice machine out of these two for my parents to use.

JB

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Hi JB, congrats on your score and great about the loose RAM solution. Those are handsome machines. I concur about the optical drives in the slot-loading era, - I suspect it's about heat in those fanless convection-cooled models. Another chapter in the Jobs-ian sacrifice-for-aesthetics mantra. We had a beautiful Ruby 450Mhz DV+ I picked up for our daughter many years ago when she was 9, as her first Mac. Although it came from the desk of a very reputable acquaintance in the MUG who runs his own maintenance/repair/consulting biz out of his garage (loaded with working systems + piles of not), after a couple years the drive slowly went south and wouldn't read discs, especially DVDs. It's made me glad the G4 iMacs went back to the tray loaders, all 3 of ours are still working fine.

cheers