B&W G3 or B&W G4, which is more fun?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I "need" to get a B&W to go with my Carbonite Encased DOA DA and my Quicksilver'02, so the question arises:
Will it be more fun to have a G3 and ADB as a bridge to my Rainbow Macs or to play with pretty much the same MoBo without ADB and a G4 tacked on?

Has anyone played a lot with both? I'm set on eventually sourcing the last/fastest of the MDDs that supports my beloved OS 9.2.2

But which B&W should play D'Artagnan to Athos, Porthos, and Aramis?

[MacJunky]

You could put a B&W motherboard into a G4 PCI GFX graphite case and then stick a G4 CPU in it!

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nah! It's the B&W case that's important . . .

Blue-n-White
Graphite
QuickSilver
MDD Chrome/Silver

. . . and the more that I think of it, the ADB connection may turn out to be the deciding factor.

Dunno, but having all the "flavors" of the SuicidDoorTower™ Series will mean I should have a functional OS 9.2.X workstation or two on hand at any given time.

Leaded Solder = Built to Last!

[MacJunky]

Ahh, I thought you wanted graphite to match your other stuff.
Well then, get a Rev 2 B&W, patch the firmware for G4 CPUs and dump a G4 in!

[Unknown_K]

You can stick a G4 ZIF into a B&W G3 board easily enough (I have one G4-400nhz of my B&W G3's), you just need a firmware update.

The speed difference isn't that much Ghz to Ghz.

[jruschme]

You can stick a G4 ZIF into a B&W G3 board easily enough (I have one G4-400nhz of my B&W G3's), you just need a firmware update.

The speed difference isn't that much Ghz to Ghz.

The usual warnings apply here:
1) Get a rev.2 (or a Yikes!) if you want to use IDE drives.
2) Be wary of installing an OEM Apple G4 into a rev. 1 B&W. (MY experience, ymmv)

Raw speed is about the same at the same Ghz. You see the difference if/when you hit a piece of software which is Altivec aware. That said, there is not a lot of reason to *not* have a G4 over a G3.

JR

P.S. I have one you can have, but it is all the way up here in Joisey and probably not worth shipping.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

My parent's 60th Wedding Anniversary is a week long family reunion at a timeshare at the Delaware Water Gap in July.

If I drop off the Micro Channel Quadra 950 and a bit more in the Banked Karma category . . .
. . . the grlf won't even mind me picking up another box!

Shoot me a setup floppy and I'll test it for you.
I've been dying to try Rob's Micro Channel Radius VidCard in it!

If it doesn't work, I can hack it without feeling bad about it and deal with the grief!

[jruschme]

If I drop off the Micro Channel Quadra 950 and a bit more in the Banked Karma category . . .
. . . the grlf won't even mind me picking up another box!

Ah, but my wife would be upset with me adding rather than subtracting. You really need to find someone else for the IBM. Please.

These days, I prefer my karma in small pieces- odd USB devices, interesting PCI cards, maybe the odd bit of usable RAM (really need to find some more PC2700 one of these days) or a working mATX motherboard to go in the eMachines case I've been hanging on to. No more boxes, though...

I'll keep the B&W waiting for you, though...

JR

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Maybe I should just hack my Dual CORE ATOM Micro-ATX board in there just for $#!^$-n-giggles.

[theos911]

In my B&W I've had a G3 400 & a G4 450, soon to be a G3 500. The G4 shines with X or Altivec Applications. If you use neither of these, the G3 will be fine ...unless you want to do super floating point heavy sciencey stuff with it.

[Anonymous Freak]

I like my G4-upgraded B&W G3. ADB for my Apple Adjustable Keyboard, LocalTalk-compatible serial port by replacing the modem with a gPort, and oh-so-wonderful blue. Can run Mac OS 8.5 all the way up to Leopard.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yeah! I snagged a pair of Adjustables and one of them mostly works fine. The other is headed toward an Alps Mechanical Switch makeover with full size function keys and an ADB/USB switchable interface for use with my hierarchical KVM setup.

I'm really looking forward to a "murderer's row" of all four variations of the clear handled dropsides. one day!

[Emehr]

I upgraded my B&W with the fastest G3 processor I could find (1.1GHz). Why? Because it would bug me if I had stuck a G4 in there when the tower says "G3" on the side. I only run Mac OS 9 on it so I don't think it would benefit much from a G4 anyway. Plus, for my G4 needs I have a Dual 1GHz Quicksilver. On that I dual boot Tiger and OS 9. Makes a great bridge from Intel Macs to the vintage Mac OS 9 and earlier Macs.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Great point about the G3 on the side, not that it'll ever show. I've got a G4 card for one of my Rainbow Boxen (or the PEx board if that ever achieves bootable status) so I think I'll leave te B&W stock when I get one. This is more of a toy for playtime that'll round out what I feel is the best case design Apple ever released.

The Sonnet Crescendo G3 in a 6360 got me through the entire G3 era without buying one from Apple just like my Radius Rocket Pre-Dated the Quadras and got the IIx through the 68040 era and to the 6360 refurb.

I think I like hacking old Macs so much because I almost always had to run older machines bought with the plan to upgrade them with an accelerator. That was easy for me to get away with because I never really did Pixels, just Object Oriented Graphics to feed the CAD-CAM beast. A fast CPU doesn't really need the faster I/O subsystems necessary for PhotoShop when running Fontographer or Illustrator.