Pin slot on G3 Whisper Perch?

[Phipli]

This makes a lot of sense actually.

The Beige G3 has a few other prototyping quirks, like the cache slot and PC floppy footprints.

Are there any other notable examples of this sort of thing on Old World Macintoshes?

There are footprints that were never used.

Off the top of my head, and I could be wrong, the 8600 is the most feature rich version of that logic board, but still has a very obvious unpopulated chip? I... would check a board but I'm trapped.

 

[Phipli]

Nope, this 8600 board is fully populated :

 

[Fizzbinn]

Is their any speculation on why they didn't include USB to start with?

Don't forget the software development, it might not have been far enough along to support the hardware being offered. If I remember correctly it was very basic when the first iMac came out, later versions adding more HID classes supporting things like mass storage.

I wonder if the pre Steve Jobs conservative plan was something like:

Power Macintosh 7700 8700 (which became beige PM G3) with perch cards we know.

Power Macintosh 7800 8800 (speed bumped PM G3) with perch cards having USB when the software was ready.

 

[mg.man]

Are there any other notable examples of this sort of thing on Old World Macintoshes?

The much maligned PM 4400 [7220?] springs to mind. The 'board was designed by Apple, but initially for the "clone" manufactures. It has all kinds of extra pads, passives and port connections that were / weren't used depending on 'who' was building them. For example, there are pads for both a DB15 and HD15 (VGA) display connector, "PC" and "Apple" floppy connectors, IDE and SCSI, I believe the PSU connector is ATX, and probably lots of other 'extras'. @max1zzz recently 'converted' a PM4400 'board for me to "clone" spec so I could replace the dead one in my StarMax.

 

[croissantking]

Damn, I got outbid on that Wings card on eBay.

I’m nearly finished drawing up the schematic. It’s actually a useful exercise in a) learning KiCad, b) understanding how USB 1.1 cards work.

 

[croissantking]

I started a separate thread about getting USB to work:

Getting G3 Whisper Perch USB working

Right, following on from the discussion in the PowerMac forum, this project deserves its own thread. Later revisions of the Personality card (Whisper, Wings and Bordeaux) that comes with every Beige G3 have footprints for a single USB 1.1 socket and supporting circuitry, similar to that found...

68kmla.org

Already had some success tonight.