Kicking it old-skool

[coius]

So, the vintage bug has bit me once again, so I decided to do some old-skool mac gaming with Mac OS 9 as the host.

The setup:

PowerMac Beige G3 Rev.2 board with Revision C ROM. Desktop Form-factor

366Mhz G3 CPU with 512KB L2 Cache

3x 256MB Low-Density, Low-Profile RAM (768MB Total)

Radeon 7000 32MB PCI video card with DDR RAM

Whisper Personality card (no need for Video in/out)

10/100Mb PCI Ethernet card (D-Link 530TX+)

36GB 10k RPM SCSI Drive (80-pin SCA) on the 50-pin SCSI bus

DVD/CD-RW Drive (Compatible with iTunes as well)

19" View Sonic 1440x900 LCD Monitor attached to DVI on Radeon 7000 card

I have a girlfriend that grew up using a G3 as a primary computer for a long time. I am going to do some old-skool gaming of games I grew up with to show her some of the stuff she missed because she didn't either have or know about the game.

Setting up the following games:

Widget Workshop

Sim-City 2000 w/ Urban Renewal (SKURK) kit

Diablo I and DIablo II with Lord of Destruction Expansion pack

Myst

Soulblighter II

Sim Ant

Escape Velocity and Escape Velocity: Override

A crap-ton of shareware

Terminal Velocity

Doom

Marathon

as well as any other things I can think of. I also have an old version of Photoshop and dreamweaver I will use on it as well to fart around

I already have the G3 but dropped $55 with shipping for all the other parts I needed. So I had to get a video card, as well as RAM and a new CPU since my old one kicked the bucket. I am OK with it being 366Mhz G3. I could bump it up to 400 I am sure, it's a 350Mhz ZIF CPU, and I couldn't get the 1MB version since they are getting a bit harder to source.

I already have the SCSI HDD with adapters. I will probably hook my old LC III up as well via Local-Talk or Ethernet (i have an LC PDS for the LC III) to play some networked games on it. I will also invite my friend Evan (Eisenfaust88 on the forum) to do some old gaming as well. Would be fun to do Diablo II with him

 

[coius]

So... All the parts finally arrived. I will try to get the computer assembled over the weekend or maybe even tonight and take pictures along the way. I found a friend willing to let me have his copy of Warcraft II to install. This is going to be a heck of a lot of fun. I can't wait to start some old-school gaming.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Very cool project. Sounds like fun, somewhere I have the ___?___ Mac Games CD. I should put the original, bought new, Quadra 630 rebuild back somewhere nearer the top of the list. We used to have family games night.

Maybe I should take that with me when I visit my son for Christmas! [] ]'>

I've been kicki' it old school doing Illustrator and GraphicConverter on the Pismo 500 lately. I never knew it was such a powerful little machine, I'm lovin' it!

 

[coius]

Bit of some disappointing news. I got the CPU in but I had to go on an emergency trip for a family member that went into the hospital (they are ok now thankfully) but last night I put the system together. The results are as follows:

The CPU they sent me was NOT 366Mhz, it was 266!! I have filed a complaint on ebay. The person listed it at 366Mhz and the CPU clearly shows it as 266Mhz. What's worse is that the CPU will not even overclock to 300Mhz. So I am stuck at 266Mhz. On top of that, I didn't realize when I bought it that the shipped was marked up (I was tired when I bought it) meaning the CPU with shipping cost me $25!!! I am going to want at LEAST half my money back. I could've bought a 266Mhz for $5 on ebay with shipping at that time. So it ticks me off

I think one of the RAM sticks that came in is dead. The system will not boot with it installed. I will try to troubleshoot more tonight. It's possible the slot is bad, or I didn't get it all the way in. I will report back later

the 36GB 15k RPM Ultra320 SCSI drive will not work on the 50-pin. I don't think the drive can speak in narrow SCSI mode. I found a 4GB SCSI drive that works fine (Ultra160) but the 36GB will not report. I have no way to put jumpers on the drive either to try to force it. I have done all the usual SCSI voodoo/etc... and it still can't be found. I know the drive works. I was using it on a 68-pin LSI MegaRAID card in a PC. The drive is good. The only way I might be able to get it working is to track down a Fast/Wide PCI SCSI Card. I might do that, but in the future. Gonna throw a 120GB Maxtor IDE/ATA-133 drive on the IDE bus for now.

I played some Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness last night. It felt there was a bit of a lag for some reason. It might be the SCSI drive. I tried a block verify and OS 9 said the drive had no bad blocks, but there was some delay on the disk reads.

I will play with it a bit more tonight, but for now that's all I have to report.

I do want to say, don't play with jumpers around cats. Both of mine kept grabbing my bag of jumpers and then taking off with it, leaving me to track down the cats to get it back.

Another issue I encountered was my system is a bit finicky when it comes to booting. It's very possible the PRAM battery could be the cause. If I power it up, sometimes I have to power it off and then again to get a boot chime and video. After that, it's pretty stable.

I also did have one issue with the 4GB HDD locking up, but I believe that was because of a bad SCSI cable. When I replaced the cable it seemed to work fine after that.

 

[coius]

So a bit of an update, and I will post pics tonight.

I cannot get the 36GB 15k RPM HDD working because it is a fully 16-bit SCSI drive. Which means it will not down-convert to an 8- bit bus like the onboard SCSI bus is. The only work-around would be to get a SCSI card. With resources a bit cramped because I had to get a new job that paid less, it reduced my Mac Funds™ that I have to work with.

I will at some point get a SCSI card but that is shelved for now.

The system does Diablo II well, and Warcraft II very well. I still haven't had a lot of time to play much with the system due to work and other matters. I will be making an announcement later on the board about the "other matters" but it's a pretty big thing in my life. So I am putting those as a priority before the G3 and gaming.

 

[max1zzz]

With the scsi drive, is it fully terminated? some drives don't work if you don't fully terminate it (including the 8 data lines that are not present on the 50 pin connector), you drive may be flat out not compatible, but it's worth a shot

 

[coius]

Yup. it's fully terminated. The termination is built into the cable which is a 16-bit SCSI cable (68-pins). So that's not the issue. I looked up the drive and it does not specify SCSI-2 as a standard is supposed. It's either Ultra160 or Ultra320 and that's all that is listed. So it's most likely not going to work unless I get at least an Ultra160 card. It does work with an ultra320 card I have for a PC, and that's using the same cable with terminator.

I will look later for the card. I am currently searching for a new job so I can get out of the hellish one I am in right now. I have one I think I will be getting, but I will find that out monday. It's at a cloud hosting provider where I am as an Admin/Support Admin