Beige G3 Conquest

[AusNick]

Went round to a mate's place today who I haven't seen for a couple of years, and he gave me a beige G3.

I haven't had a good look at it yet, haven't even dusted it off, but…

It has an internal ZIP drive.

Is has an AV panel on the back

It's has a sticker on it to to with a Sonnet upgrade.

It has an internal DVD-ROM drive. 8-o

Apparently it's running Tiger.

I can hardly wait to boot this beast! (If it boots)

Even so I am stoked

Before I saw it, I wasn't that fussed, the other Beige G3 desktop I have has nothing like this thing, so now I have one base config., and one that I hope kicks arse.

Got some other stuff too, but I have to see exactly what. whole bunch of CD-ROMs, maybe about 1000 audio CDs, though I think he may be exaggerating that number.

 

[LCGuy]

AV panel = Wings Card....possible Sonnet upgrade....DVD drive.....looking good so far! :O

Three questions about the DVD drive:

- Is it stock or aftermarket?

- Does the machine also have a hardware DVD decoder card?

- Is it SCSI or IDE? (hopefully SCSI....IDE DVD drives are a dime a dozen as you're no doubt well aware....SCSI versions are quite the opposite)

Either way...nice haul, best of luck getting it up and running!

 

[Dog Cow]

he gave me a beige G3.

They're not beige, they're Platinum. Apple hasn't made any beige Macs since the 1980's.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

he gave me a beige G3.

They're not beige, they're Platinum. Apple hasn't made any beige Macs since the 1980's.

I think when you go back far enough, we got the term "beige G3" from Apple. That's why I also use that technically incorrect term. When I see one, I instinctively think, "that's a beige G3".

 

[Mars478]

Yeah apple called them beige... After yellowing they do become a sickly beige color. Nice haul! :approve:

BTW: I read the title as "Beige G3 Contest"

 

[John8520]

They're not beige, they're Platinum. Apple hasn't made any beige Macs since the 1980's.

This is true, but as stated before both Apple and the general mac using public call them Beige G3s. Who cares if it's wrong, it's the name.

 

[Temetka]

Great score on a good machine. I myself am partial to the BeigeG3 Mini-Towers myself. Mine is pretty maxxed out at the moment, although it is sitting in the closet because it got replaced by a Sawtooth G4. I never use the sawtooth so I am contemplating on pulling it and putting the G3 in it's place because it's a killer machine and I just like it more than my Sawtooth.

 

[Bunsen]

Easy way to check for a Sonnet upgrade - if the heatsink is purple, you're golden

 

[AusNick]

I cracked the thing open and took a look at what was inside.

20 gig hard drive (ide)

All three PCI slots are filled, an Ethernet card, a USB card and a FireWire Card.

the Sonnet upgrade is there as well, an Encore G4, I'm guessing the 500 MHz version ( I looked it up.)

This thing is getting better all the time.

There was another hard drive installed at some point, I think, in the bay above the ZIP drive, the drive is gone, but the sled is there and there are mounting screws inside a resealable baggie taped to the sled.

I noticed on the Wings card, there are a couple of connectors, for what? Daughterboards? And also one that looks a bit like a PCI slot?

Also, on the motherboard, there is an SGRAM slot, which I guess is for on-board video.

I hope this thing boots.

 

[Bunsen]

Some info on the Wings card connectors, along with an interesting hack, here.

The PCI looking thing is probably the modem slot. It's similar to a Comm slot AFAIK. And yes, the SGRAM slot is for motherboard VRAM - you can upgrade it from 2MB to 6MB with a 4MB stick. I recommend you do if you're using onboard video. Same 4MB stick as goes in the tray-loading iMacs.

The onboard Ethernet is 10/100, so unless it's broken, or that card is a gigabit card (and you have a gigabit LAN) you don't need it. There's one PCI slot freed up (and some ebay buck$), and a generic combo USB/Firewire card will free up another.

 

[hilga007]

Did you end up getting it to boot? How's the performance with the G4 upgrade?

I know there have been reports of people successfully installing 10.5 on the beiges with G4 upgrades! Have you thought of doing something like that?

 

[AusNick]

Haven't played with it yet.

No space on the bench to set it up.

Leopard. Now there's a thought. I have a pre-loved 10.5 DVD, but I don't think the machine has the RAM.

It'd be a good brag though if I did it.

Nick

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Haven't played with it yet.
No space on the bench to set it up.

Leopard. Now there's a thought. I have a pre-loved 10.5 DVD, but I don't think the machine has the RAM.

It'd be a good brag though if I did it.

Nick

I bet you could boot 10.5 with 128MB RAM if you had a big hard drive and lots of patience. That would be a cool experiment, to find the absolute minimum RAM. I've NEVER seen Mac OS X completely fail to boot due simply to not enough RAM. I KNOW I booted 10.2 with 64 MB once on a bondi iMac. Slow as heck but it worked.

 

[LCGuy]

Back in 2006 when the 128MB DIMM I had in my iMac died, I booted it once or twice with the original factory 32MB of RAM. It took somewhere around 15 minutes for Jaguar to boot, and was practically unusable, but it worked.

 

[geeko]

as far as i know, leopard will only boot (at least from the dvd) w/ 512mb of ram. i got my emac for noting b/c the people before me were trying to make it boot a leopard dvd w/ only 256mb of ram.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Booting from a DVD may be different because there is no writable swap file on the startup disk. So install discs may not use virtual memory at all, being that there isn't necessarily any writable drive available. Maybe once Leopard is installed to a hard drive, where virtual memory is running properly, it will boot with much less physical RAM.

 

[geeko]

i got my imac g4 to boot leopard w/ only 256mb of ram! that is so cool!

if only leopard would boot on my g4 gb ethernet w/ 1.25mb ram... (i've tried in target disk mode, kernel panic on startup)

anyways, good luck on your beige g4, post back here if you have success, i would love to run leopard on my B&W g4.

 

[geeko]

wait, not mb, 1.25 gb of ram

now leopard on 1.25mb of ram, THATS impossible