Routes to upgrade a B/W Powermac

[haemogoblin]

Hey guys

I'm thinking of bringing my old B/W out the attic and having a play around with it. Back when it was my main system, I upgraded it to a G4 500 ZIF, dont recall the make. It was a massive improvement over the G3 350mhz, but I'm wondering if there is anything else I can do to improve it.

I know I can replace the motherboard with the second revision, which doesn't suffer with the bad IDE controller. It also gives me AGP, which would be an improvement on the PCI I'm currently stuck using.

However would the B/W case accept the mobo from a G4 powermac? I only wondered, as I was thinking I could pick up a dual core board or something.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I'm not sure if it would or not.

You may consider a SATA PCI card to upgrade to speedier hard drives (I think I the Mac supports those). Better GPU and max ram would also be things to consider.

 

[max1zzz]

Yep, a sil 3112 based sata card will work in these guys, but i did get some oddities (sometimes it will kp on boot and the controller is quite picky about hdd's) this might be because I am using a modified PC card, or it might be down to the G3

A wile ago i did a similar thing to my G3 b/w, 500mhz sonnet G4 CPU, sil 3112 based sata controller, as much ram as I could find and a 60GB sata hdd

 

[ArmorAlley]

Hi haemoglobin,

Be warned about G4 processor-upgrades faster than 733MHz (I think it is). They cause the bus speed to reduce down to 66MHz. From what I have read, the sweet spot is about G4 700MHz.

As for speeding up your B&W G3, I would look for an ordinary G4 500MHz and set the jumpers accordingly. You will need a G4 heatsink. Actually, you've already done this.

Get 1GB RAM. Get a SATA-I card (mine is a SeriTek but the Acard 6880M work fine too - the former is 64-bit while the latter is 32-bit). A U160 SCSI card (Adaptec 19160, 29160 ATTO UL3D) together with an 80-pin U320 SCSI drive and adapter is also a good option. SATA gives you the option of SSDs and the quietness they bring.

Get yourself an ATi Radeon 9000 PCI card. The ATi Radeon 7000 and all of the 32MB nvidia GeForce2 are also OK. These cards have DVI ports and give crisper displays. They are also LCD friendly.

If speed and data throughput are important, then understand how your 4 PCI ports work. The small one is a 66MHz, 32-bit bus while the longer ones are 33MHz, 64-bit buses. As far as I know, the bus runs at the speed of the slowest card, so a 33MHz, 32-bit card will cause all cards to run at a maximum of 33MHz on a 32-bit bus.

all the best,

aa

 

[haemogoblin]

Hey

Thank you for the info, I will be taking the B/W out of the attic tomorrow and giving it a brush down. Fingers crossed it will work all fine and dandy.

Question how easy would it be to source a CPU greater then 500mhz? I have a G4 550mhz for my pismo and after a look online. I concluded I'm pretty lucky to have it. Wasn't sure how easy they are to source.

 

[Byrd]

If speed and data throughput are important, then understand how your 4 PCI ports work. The small one is a 66MHz, 32-bit bus while the longer ones are 33MHz, 64-bit buses. As far as I know, the bus runs at the speed of the slowest card, so a 33MHz, 32-bit card will cause all cards to run at a maximum of 33MHz on a 32-bit bus.

I thought only a handful of 66Mhz compliant PCI cards were ever made - notably Apple's Rage 128.  But it didn't give much of a performance boost.  Keep this card in the 66Mhz slot and all other slots run at 33Mhz.

 

[haemogoblin]

I'm pretty sure it is a ATI Rage that i have in the G3, but for some reason I keep thinking I did something with a Voodoo card..I'll know more when I bring it down out the loft.

Atm I'd just like to give it a speed increase, atm a G4 500mhz will actually be about the same speed as my Pismo, actually a little bit slowly as the PB is running a G4 550mhz. The G3 1ghz route sounds good, though I bet those chips are hard as hell to find these days.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

It depends on what you're doing. If you've got any AltiVec enhanced tasks the G4 will trash a faster G3. If you just need raw clock speed then the G3 might be better.

 

[haemogoblin]

But are high speed G3's easy to come by?

 

[ArmorAlley]

That's hard to say. Scour the country specific eBay sites (do *not* log in; search for within that country only) every day, When I was looking, I checked out the sites for the U.S., Canada, France, the U.K., Germany, Italy and Australia. Many sellers mark the sale as being within the country in question but, when asked, will ship overseas. What is a bigger problem in the U.K. and the States is eBay's Global Shipping Program. Here you will not get the option of the cheapest postage and you will have to pay customs (as against taking your chances with customs). eBay's Global Shipping Program is expensive and very buyer-unfriendly.

My Sonnet Crescendo 1000MHz G4 cost me almost $100 and that was before shipping and customs and then it slowed by bus-speed down by a third.

Go to the xlr8yourmac website. You'll find speed comparisons between the various G3 and G4 processors on the B&W G3 and on G4s. There isn't that much of a difference. You have a 500Mhz G4. I'd stick with that.

 

[haemogoblin]

Thanks for the advice, the more that I have looked in to it. The more I've concluded I've got the best setup I can have, in terms of CPU.

Really if I'm after something that will be as quick as my 1.33ghz iBook, I should probably be looking towards a dual core G4 500 or single core 1ghz. If anyone is sat reading this and thinking, why not get a G5. The reason is because of its size, the G5 case as I recall it, is pretty damn big and will look out of place sitting on my desk. Where as the old B/W form factor is a little more manageable and really easy to work on!

 

[ArmorAlley]

How about the last MDD?

 

[haemogoblin]

I had considered the MDD

 

[Unknown_K]

I was never one for spending crazy money on single upgrades so one of my B&W G3's has a G3-400 or 500 and the other has a G4-450 from what I recall. Max RAM and Radeon 7000's plus misc cards work well. ZIF processors are hard to find these days and tend to be expensive once you get out of the stock models. You can get a fast G4 machine for what you would pay for a G3 upgrade for a B&W (at least for the moment).

 

[MikeatOSX]

Thanks for your posts, which I've read just in time.

I still have my old PowerMac G3 b/w 350 in the cellar, which was replaced by the first G4 Mini, ten years ago.

So it's my beloved Mac, which I upgraded a little many years ago (SCSI card, USB 2.0 card, Stealth serial port instead of a modem - so I could use my US Robotics v.everything - the best and most expensive user modem at this time).

A half year ago I persuaded someone to sell me his Sonnet Encore/ZIF G4 800MHz (the 66MHz bus thing...) and now I have little time to blow the dust of my G3.

I've got 4x 256MB Ram, a new and silent harddisk and ordered a ATI Radeon 7000.

So I'm ready to read, what you'll write in this thread, what will be as usefull as the posts before.

 

[Gorgonops]

I've got 4x 256MB Ram, a new and silent harddisk and ordered a ATI Radeon 7000.

Just an offhand note: don't expect too much from a Radeon 7000. I have one in my old B&W and I think for OpenGL-ish things it ran... I dunno, maybe 30-ish% faster than the Rage 128?, with no significant difference I could see in desktop UI performance. Having it will let you play with enabling Quartz Extreme, but the general consensus is that doing so hurts more than it helps.

(The 7000, aka "Radeon VE/RV100" is a really stripped down card compared to the "real" R100 Radion or the improved RV200/Radeon 7500.)

Having the 7000 in the 66mhz slot and the Rage in one of the 33mhz slots did work fine for providing extra monitor support.

 

[MikeatOSX]

I'll use the Radeon 7000 for OS 9.2.2 most times. How will it work with it?

 

[Gorgonops]

Well... I never actually got it to completely cooperate with my installation of 9, but I didn't try particularly hard. (I pretty exclusively used "Classic" to run older software.) Maybe in part my issues might have been due to the fact that my 7000 was a stripped down OEM model sold for use in Xserves, not the retail Mac Edition 7000?

(It was a long time ago, I just vaguely recall the particular ATI driver installer I tried not liking what it saw so I shrugged and moved on.)

 

[MikeatOSX]

Ok, I'll try this soon, when the video card is here.