- Will this 24 year old iMac run "Minecraft"? Well, the answer is... Yes. But the real question is, can you actually play it? Well, I hope so, man, because it took so many late nights, a complete tear down, a CD drive repair, and a sneaky hack that Apple does not want you to use. And don't forget, a lot of blood, sweat and plenty of tears. Sounds a little dramatic when I say it out loud, but for real, how hard could running "Minecraft" be? So the obvious first thing to try is downloading "Minecraft". And trust me, I gave it a red hot go, but as you may have guessed, it did not run, not even a little. And I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the outdated version of Java running on this Mac. Okay, cool. So all we need is a new version of Java and we'll be good to go, right? Incorrect. I wish it was that easy. This iMac can only run at most Mac OS X Panther, and to get a new version of Java, you guessed it, we need Mac OS X Tiger, which in case I wasn't clear enough, this iMac doesn't support. And I get it, it may be an iMac G3 from 1999, and it may have a 6GB hard drive and 180MB of RAM, as well as a CD drive that definitely does not work, it's clearly capable. What else could you need? Other than a newer version of Mac OS X? I'm gonna need to find another way. Tell me, what do you really know about programming languages? Because I don't know a lot, it's not my specialty, but what I do know, however, is over the last 12 years, a bunch of versions of "Minecraft" have been released. And on top of that, there's a rich community of people making versions of "Minecraft" for different platforms, just like "ClassiCube". Now, according to their website, "ClassiCube" is a sandbox block game inspired by other sandbox
block inspired games. In other words, I'm pretty sure it's just "Minecraft". But instead of being written in Java, it's written in the
programming language C, which means technically, technically it can run on my iMac because it doesn't require Java. And I'll do you one better. An absolute legend from the community made a version of "ClassiCube" for PowerPC iMacs. So I downloaded it onto my iMac and- Wait a second, that's not good. If I just scrolled down the page a little further, I would've seen this
very crucial sentence. "Requires Mac OS X Tiger." Dang it, man. But all hope is not lost for "ClassiCube". According to this forum post, it may be able to be
recompiled for Panther. Oh, man, this is getting tricky. See, I'm not, not technical, but I'm not the most technical, but surely it's not that hard. I gave it my best shot, but I just kept getting error after error. But alas, no luck. What am I doing, man? I really gotta make this work because I've been posting about this iMac for a hot minute, and I've literally spent hours looking for weird workarounds and hacks to see if I can get "Minecraft" to run on this iMac, which probably sounds nuts, because it freakin' is. I got this iMac for $5 when I was 11, hoping to use GarageBand and iMovie, but by the time I got it, the hardware was already outdated, and so my iMac just sat in the cupboard for 15 years or so collecting dust. But honestly, I can't help but feel guilty. There is another version of "Minecraft" that actually seems pretty promising. A version of "Minecraft" for PowerPC kept coming up, but I disregarded it as an option because it required Mac OS Tiger to run. Man, this whole operating system thing is causing me so much trouble. It feels so close. I'm gonna be honest, I took a few weeks off from working on this project. I hadn't completely given up, but I was getting pretty close. Until one day I was scrolling YouTube and this video came up in my feed. This guy got his iMac G3 updated to Mac OS X Tiger. What the crap? Well, it turns out he was using this software from 2006 called XPostFacto. Back in the day, other people were pretty frustrated that they couldn't upgrade to Tiger, and so they made this software that can bypass Apple's restrictions. And look, as much as this sounds like "the solution to my problems," I have a much bigger problem. Even if I wanted to try this, my CD-ROM drive is completely dead, cooked, toast, donezo, smoked, completely dead. I even tried to find a replacement disk drive, but, man, they're so hard to come by. I also tried booting from USB, but I had zero luck there. The only way to install Tiger is to use CDs, which means I have to find someone to repair the CD drive. So what if I just open it up? I'm really not much of a technician, so what you're about to see could be a little bit disturbing. For good measure and to give my iMac a fighting chance, I also installed 1GB of RAM. These iMacs were built like tanks, but you could get into them with a simple set of screwdrivers. Thank goodness for the internet because I would have no idea how to put this thing back together. Now, I don't wanna open
the top of the iMac 'cause it's not a great place to be. There's components in there that you do not want to touch. So I'm just gonna stick
to underneath the iMac, that's where the problematic CD drive is located, anyway. And dang, this thing is in there good. Screw after screw, I finally got the main hard drive and CD-ROM drive compartment out. I should say, I've never done this before, ever. It took me a while to
get the CD-ROM drive out, and even once it was out, it was impossible to get these little, baby screws undone. But shout out to my wife. Between the two of us we were able to get them unscrewed. And check this out. I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what I'm looking at here. The disk is definitely
not seating properly into the drive. Is that the right word to use? I got no idea. And because it's not
sitting on the spinner, it doesn't spin, in my professional opinion. I tinkered around with it for a while to see if I could get
things working properly. But the only way to find out is to put it back together and turn it back on. I honestly don't think I fixed anything, but what's the worst that can happen? After putting it back together, I turned it on, and ah, man, the same problem. Oh, boy, this is becoming painful. But that's when something nuts happened. (computer whirring) This is gonna sound crazy, but I just used these to knock the disk in after rebuilding it. I literally do- I mean, it works. I can't believe it works. Okay, frick, I need to (indistinct). Not only did the disk go in, but it showed on the desktop. The last piece of the puzzle is to run XPostFacto. And the first go didn't
work out real well, but the second go did, and I couldn't believe it. All I could think was, we have a chance at making this work, "Minecraft" could run on this iMac. Mac OS X Tiger was installing on my 24 year old iMac. I actually can't believe it. I am freakin' out. The hours I've spent to try and make this thing work, and this is the most positive- I nervously installed each disk. First disk done. Second disk, third disk, fourth disk. No way. I couldn't believe it. Come on, baby. We're so close. We are so close. Come on. (suspenseful music) (triumphant music) Mac OS X Tiger has installed on my iMac. Let's freakin' go! I cannot believe it. All right, here we go. Literally the moment of truth. Let's start with "Minecraft PowerPC Edition". This is like the "best version" of "Minecraft" I can maybe get to run on this. It does say here that sub 867 megahertz machines should do super flat worlds only. This iMac is only 350 megahertz, so... Let's just see what happens. Installing "Minecraft PowerPC Edition". It's right there, this is the closest I've been. All right, here we go. No. Bro, what the heck? Come on, baby. Come on. You can do it. No freakin' way. I mean, let's just do it. Let's just go full in. It's really trying. Come on, baby. If something is happening right now, it's doing it very slowly. I think it crashed on me. Flip. That's okay, I kind of half expected it to be too much for it to run. But we have a trusty alternative to try. I downloaded "ClassiCube" again and ran it. (upbeat music) Oh, man. I mean, it's (indistinct). That isn't bad. What the heck? I am freakin' out right now. Is it good? Nope. Is it working? Kind of. "Minecraft" on my Mac. Oh my gosh, dude. I'm getting crazy nostalgia and I didn't even play it on this iMac. There's just something about "Minecraft" and the Mac. We flippin' did it, buddy. I don't even know what
to do with myself now. We did it. We did it. What are the chances this thing can run "GTA"?
