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Beige G3 motherboard in 8600 case?

Quadraman

Well-known member
Since one of the biggest complaints about the beige G3 is how much smaller the case is compared to the 8600/9600, I wondered if anyone had mounted a G3 motherboard into the older, taller case to be able to add more drives to their G3.

 

alk

Well-known member
Have you looked around on www.accelerateyourmac.com? Also, I'm pretty sure this topic has been discussed at length here and at AppleFritter. Short answer is that it is not a drop-in replacement.

Peace,

Drew

 

Maccess

Well-known member
There are lots of places to add extra drives in a Desktop G3:

-Where the Zip drive is and above that (make a special bracket)

-Where the floppy drive is, another Optical drive can be placed there if the front of the case is modified. You'd switch to a USB floppy since the internal floppy isn't supported by Mac OS X.

-Along the floor, where the internal drive is located, you could get a smaller drive and place two in there.

The problem is that the power supply can't handle all those drives. You could use a PC power supply: The conversion is reportedly easy and also involves moving a jumper on the G3 motherboard.

 

LCGuy

LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
I'd like to confirm what alk said...it is possible, no doubt, but its also very difficult, as the 8600 is based on a Tsunami form factor, whereas the G3 is based on a PC ATX form factor. It is possible most likely, but it would require SERIOUS modding.

Maccess: You most certainly can use any standard PC ATX power supply on a G3 very easily...the power supply just drops in, you don't have to cut any wires or mod it or anything, and there is a jumper on the mobo that has two positions: "MAC" and "PS2". For operation on an ATX PSU, move it to "PS2".

 

Quadraman

Well-known member
I'd like to confirm what alk said...it is possible, no doubt, but its also very difficult, as the 8600 is based on a Tsunami form factor, whereas the G3 is based on a PC ATX form factor. It is possible most likely, but it would require SERIOUS modding.
Maccess: You most certainly can use any standard PC ATX power supply on a G3 very easily...the power supply just drops in, you don't have to cut any wires or mod it or anything, and there is a jumper on the mobo that has two positions: "MAC" and "PS2". For operation on an ATX PSU, move it to "PS2".
Is the 390W PSU from a Kansas motherboard machine usable?

 

Maccess

Well-known member
Maccess: You most certainly can use any standard PC ATX power supply on a G3 very easily...the power supply just drops in, you don't have to cut any wires or mod it or anything, and there is a jumper on the mobo that has two positions: "MAC" and "PS2". For operation on an ATX PSU, move it to "PS2".
Can you point me to a page for exactly that mod? I'd like to read some documentation about it before actually doing it.

 
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