kvanderlaag tries to buy a B&W G3 - hilarity ensues

[kvanderlaag]

I am the terror that crawls in the night. And by "terror that crawls in the night," I actually mean "loser who prowls the local Craigslist and Kijiji listings for old Macs." (Kijiji is a similar site owned by eBay, more popular in Canada than the States, I think.) Recently, I decided I needed a tower form-factor Mac that could run on the other side of my enormous desk in the study. There were a few G4s whose sellers never got back to me, and then this one 450 MHz Blue and White G3 that was selling for $45. Good enough, I figured, so away we went. Fired off an e-mail to the guy, he was out of town, but got back to me after the weekend inviting me to come pick it up if I was interested.

All right, he said he was going to be around after 6 this even. So, six o'clock rolls around, and I give him a call as I'm leaving. He stops me, though, telling me that his daughter needed a hand with something after work, and so it was going to be more like quarter to seven. All right, still good in my books. Turn around, come home, and work on my PHP web app a little more. 6:45 rolls around, so I call and check again. He's home, so I tell him I'll be there in fifteen minutes.

Driving there, I realize it's closer than I thought; great, makes my life easier! As I get closer, though, I start to get the vaguest feeling of deja vu. Pulling onto the street that the address is on, that sense becomes overwhelming. Thinking to myself, I eventually put the two together - this is the father of a female friend of mine, who actually recently lent me a SATA/IDE to USB adapter. Hilarity! Knock on the door, he answers it, tells me I made good time. There's a handshake, he invites me inside, and as I'd suspected, standing there in the kitchen, is my friend Ashley.

We all had a good laugh, her father goes to procure my G3, and her and I briefly catch up. He asks us how we know each other, and come to think of it, neither of us can remember. I think she's a friend of a friend I met...somewhere. I have no idea. At the end of the conversation, though, he looks at me, and tells me that I don't have to pay him for it. I insist, a little, and he turns me down again. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I collect my things, we share another laugh, and I take off.

At home, I now have this:

http://images.digital-angel.net/g3/set.jpg

http://images.digital-angel.net/g3/side.jpg

http://images.digital-angel.net/g3/front.jpg

http://images.digital-angel.net/g3/back.jpg

http://images.digital-angel.net/g3/open.jpg

450 MHz B&W G3, 128mb of RAM, CD-ROM and Zip 100 drives, the stock ATI graphics card - nothing special, but not a bad deal, I thought.

Installing OS 8.6 right now, which I suspect I will upgrade to 9.0.4, and eventually I might try an OS 10.4/9.0.4/PPC Linux triple-boot.

This should do nicely for all my Classic needs.

 

[kvanderlaag]

I am a dirty filthy liar. It's a 350 MHz B&W, not 450.

Other than that, though, everything checks out okay. 128mb RAM, 6 GB hard drive, and it's running 9.2 happy as a clam. Local shop sells 256mb PC133 DIMMs for $4 a piece, so I'm going to toss 1 GB of RAM in there, and then see what I have lying around downstairs for IDE hard drives. I suspect 20-40 GB will be the answer.

Finding a video card could prove slightly more problematic. The Rage is okay, I suppose, but I don't think it's going to like me very much when I try to run OS X. (I'm shooting for 10.4.) I'm thinking maybe a Radeon 7000 from a G4 is in order?

 

[LCGuy]

A Radeon 7000 from a G4 won't work - the Radeons used in G4s were AGP cards, and the G3 requires a PCI graphics card. Your best bet is to find either a Radeon Mac Edition card (good luck) or find a PC Radeon PCI card that you can flash.

 

[kvanderlaag]

Hurr, I suppose that's what I meant. My upgraded Power Mac 7600 is running a flashed Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, so I've been around the block a few times in this flashing game. Right now I'm sort of torn between one of the following:

- Radeon 7000 PC w/ 'borrowed' BIOS

- GeForce 2 MX (400) w/ flashed BIOS

- GeForce FX 5500 w/ modified 5200 Mac BIOS.

The 5500 would be awesome, since they come in a 256mb flavor, but I'm not entirely sure the ROMs that are available would work on that card. I'm not convinced I want to spend $40 to find out, though I could undoubtedly find a use for the card. The 128mb model would be nice, but they seem kind of pricey for what they are. A 64mb GeForce 2 MX would be all right, I suppose, but I really like the idea of a silly amount of VRAM.

 

[stevep]

Gee, "local" competition for Kijiji and Craigslist looking for old Macs! I'm in Red Deer and have driven to Calgary before to scoop up an old 68K Mac; I got my Mac Plus with the Brainstorm Accelerator in Calgary. Anyway I am glad to see another fellow Albertan on here. That makes 3 of us now I believe.

 

[kvanderlaag]

Heh! Yeah, I'm pretty lame, too, so I spend a lot of time on Craigslist and Kijiji. It's always nice to have some locals around, though we're pretty spread out, from what I can tell. I know there's a couple guys in Edmonton, one or two here, and then you, apparently.

Should get a swap meet/meet and greet going sometime.

 

[stevep]

A meet up would be a great idea!

 

[kvanderlaag]

Some updates to this machine, since I'm sure you were all waiting quite impatiently to hear about it! I mean, come on. It's been what, five months?

- Someone here was kind enough to sell me a 500 MHz G3 ZIF upgrade for cheap, so CPU speed is optimal!

- The RAM is now maxed. 1GB of PC133 low-density RAM clocking down to 100 MHz. Awesome!

- I think I've got a 40gb hard drive in it, but I'm also fairly certain I have a 60 and a 120 lying around that would go in here on the Rev. 2 IDE controller.

- One of the interceding G4s I bought had a PCI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition in it. How fortuitous! (It also had a 1 GHz OWC CPU upgrade, which was awesome, but I sold that machine since I already have a 1.25 GHz iMac G4 that is plenty desktop G4 for me, and looks better.)

- I threw a DVD burner in place of the stock CD-ROM drive. Huzzah!

Currently running 10.4 and 9.2 in a dual boot setup - it's nice to know that this thing will run anything from like, 8.1 all the way up to 10.4 quite comfortably, and has a little bit of graphics prowess to go with it.

 

[jruschme]

it's nice to know that this thing will run anything from like, 8.1 all the way up to 10.4 quite comfortably, and has a little bit of graphics prowess to go with it.

Actually, 8.6 is the minimum for a B&W (possibly 8.5 with an enabler). A fact that I learned all too well with my first B&W which would not install 9.1 without a firmware update while I only had 8.5 and 9.1 retail CDs.

BTW, can you still get 256 DIMMS that cheap?

John

 

[protocol7]

8.5.1 is the minimum system for a smurfmac.

 

[LCGuy]

I remember back in 1999 I read on the MacAddict forums that someone had managed to install OS 8.1 on a B&W G3...no idea how the hell he would have done it though. I know it was definitely 8.1 and not 8.5.1, as 8.5.1 was current at the time (this was before 8.6) and from memory he needed to downgrade it to 8.1 to run a certain application.

 

[protocol7]

Maybe some kinda ResEdit hack like the ones to get it installed on 68030 processors.

 

[kvanderlaag]

Very well! My mistake. And since I can't edit posts here, I will be forever shamed!

As for you, jruschme, the RAM in question pops in and out of stock here pretty regularly at the reseller I found it at. If you want, I can keep an eye on it for you and snag some if you need it.

 

[ChristTrekker]

As I was reading that and starting to see how the story was going, I thought you were going to finish by saying it was an old girlfriend's house whose dad hated you and would kick your butt if you showed up at the door.