croissantking's repair journey

[Callan]

With many thanks to @Callan for proxy shipping them to me.

You're very welcome. Glad I was able to help!

 

[croissantking]

I picked up a very nice Beige G3 DT locally today. One owner. Hardly been fiddled about with at all, just a RAM upgrade and that’s it. Production date is November 98, so a very late model.

I wanted it for the case - the one I have was severely battery bombed and although I’ve tidied it up significantly to the point you can hardly tell, I’ve never felt entirely happy with it.


This one has all its original metal shields in place and an intact power-on button.


The specification label on the back says ‘MSO’ at the end - does that mean it came with Microsoft Office preinstalled?


Floppy drive has a missing dust flap. CD-ROM drive looks different…


I didn’t know that any Beige G3s came with Sony CD-ROM drives, I thought they were always Matsushita.


The Sony drive tray (top) has a more perfect fitment against the CD-ROM bezel than the Matsushita drive tray (bottom).

They’ve also gone back to the eject button design that’s seen on the 7200-7600 PowerMacs.


Interior looks very stock. The WD drive is on its last legs, but boots, just about. Being a November 98 model, the ATI chip is labelled Rage Pro Turbo.


Bomb is defused.

 

[Phipli]

View attachment 101089
I picked up a very nice Beige G3 DT locally today. One owner. Hardly been fiddled about with at all, just a RAM upgrade and that’s it. Production date is November 98, so a very late model.

I wanted it for the case - the one I have was severely battery bombed and although I’ve tidied it up significantly to the point you can hardly tell, I’ve never felt entirely happy with it.

View attachment 101090
This one has all its original metal shields in place and an intact power-on button.

View attachment 101102
The specification label on the back says ‘MSO’ at the end - does that mean it came with Microsoft Office preinstalled?

View attachment 101099
Floppy drive has a missing dust flap. CD-ROM drive looks different…

View attachment 101092
I didn’t know that any Beige G3s came with Sony CD-ROM drives, I thought they were always Matsushita.

View attachment 101103
The Sony drive tray (top) has a more perfect fitment against the CD-ROM bezel than the Matsushita drive tray (bottom).

They’ve also gone back to the eject button design that’s seen on the 7200-7600 PowerMacs.

View attachment 101091
Interior looks very stock. The WD drive is on its last legs, but boots, just about. Being a November 98 model, the ATI chip is labelled Rage Pro Turbo.

View attachment 101097
Bomb is defused.

@croissantking - that's something I've never seen before, quite interesting! It is a 266MHz but with 1MB cache! The 266MHz machines usually only had 512k. It must be a build to order? Or a late model upgrade or something?

 

[Phipli]

64MB RAM is also more than usual. Unless I'm being daft I'm not sure what the "MSO" option is.

 

[croissantking]

@croissantking - that's something I've never seen before, quite interesting! It is a 266MHz but with 1MB cache! The 266MHz machines usually only had 512k. It must be a build to order? Or a late model upgrade or something?

Yes I quite agree, I always thought 1MB cache was 300MHz and above. I’m assuming it’s a late lifecycle spec bump, possibly even just a UK/European one? No clue about MSO, it sounds like Microsoft Office but that would be funny on a hardware label.

 

[Phipli]

Yes I quite agree, I always thought 1MB cache was 300MHz and above. I’m assuming it’s a late lifecycle spec bump, possibly even just a UK/European one? No clue about MSO, it sounds like Microsoft Office but that would be funny on a hardware label.

Exactly - I have a 300MHz with 1MB, but the rest of my beige G3 CPUs are all 512k.

Really annoying, because now it means I'll need to check the cache size of every 266 Zif I see for the rest of time on eBay! For upgrade potential

 

[Durosity]

I bet it's a 300MHz CPU that's been underclocked.

 

[joevt]

I picked up a very nice Beige G3 DT locally today. One owner. Hardly been fiddled about with at all, just a RAM upgrade and that’s it. Production date is November 98, so a very late model.

Which ROM revision (ROM checksum)? Can you get probe-ids output?