Power Mac G3 worth it?

[mattsoft]

A local seller is offering a Power Mac G3 in working condition for $50. This is the original beige desktop model, with built-in ZIP drive. Never had one of these BITD, instead opting for the cheaper iMac back then. But looking at it now, it looks pretty cool with PCI slots, CD, floppy, and ZIP drives, SCSI & IDE. Do these beige desktop G3s make good OS 9 machines for playing late 68k and early PPC games? Are there any gotchas with these machines like extra brittle plastic tabs or notorious leaking capacitors (more so than other machines of this era)? Just looking for any opinions on the matter. Thanks!

 

[Cory5412]

These are great machines for OS 9. As you mentioned, PCI slots means you can add video cards, SATA/IDE upgrades, or USB. They use slightly more common RAM than their predecessors and were a huge speedup.

The biggest gotcha is absolutely the plastics, especiallyin the desktop model. They're near universally bad, on all 72/3/5/600 desktops and the beige G3 desktop, as far as I can tell. There's levels to it and the G3 desktops I've seen are merely falling apart around the edges and are still solid to put monitors on top of, but it'll be a long-term issue. Fortunately, these boards are common with the towers so it shouldn't, mid-long term, be unreasonable to just drop the machine in a new case. (Not easy, but not impossible either.)

At $50, and conditions/coordinating and budget allowing, I'd say yeah, go ahead and go for it. They're great machines in their own right and they are fabulously good bridge machines and the case, well, is going to be tough to gauge because my impression is that not all of them aged the same and so you might luck out or you might see the entire outer shell disintegrate on its wayhome.

The good-ish news is that the 7x00/G3 desktop chassis, below that plastic skin, is incredibly sturdy and to be honest you could cut down a particleboard shelf, slam it on top of the bare metal chassis and it would run/work fine. (Though, uyou'd want to restrict how big a monitor you put on that particleboard shelf compared with the original machine, which supported up to ~17-inch ish monitors, officially, IIRC.) (Heck, at that point just put rubber feet on the side and run it as a minitower /s)

 

[Unknown_K]

None of my 3 desktop Biege G3's seem to be as brittle as my 7500's are.

They use very common IDE HDs and CDROM drives compared to SCSI for the earlier models.

The desktop models can also use a common ATX power supply if you move a jumper on the board.

Downsides are there are a few revisions of the machine that might not allow you to use both channels (master and slave) of the IDE cables and the ATA speeds are very slow (ATA-2 max of 16.6MB/sec).

Most G3 ZIF upgrades come out of B&W machines that have a 100 FSB while you are stuck with FSB 66 on the Beige G3 (or maybe 82 depending on revision).

PC100 SDRAM (OK it came with PC66 but 100 is compatible and easier to find) is pretty much dirt cheap still compared to anything used on prior machines.

 

[demik]

For $50, go for it !

As @Unknown_K said, It's one of (if not) the easiest Mac to find ports for. Besides the motherboard and CPU, everything was used on PCs (RAM, Discs, PCI cards, etc…)

- Generic PC USB PCI cards will work if they are OHCI based

- Put an ATX PSU if yours fail (as stated above)

- Same with FireWire cards, most will work

- You can use cheap IDE to Compact flash (Similar to SCSI2SD) if needed

- For the video part, you can upgrade the onboard VRAM or Flash a Radeon 7000 PCI (I've the ROM somewhere, if needed)

Regards

 

[mattsoft]

Thanks for the great advice and opinions all, sounds like it would be a worthwhile Mac to add.

 

[LaPorta]

I'd say if you don't currently have something filling that niche, it would certainly be a good add. Those damn plastics, however...

 

[dzog]

You sound convinced but I'll happily pile on the "go for it!"

I acquired one myself earlier this year and find myself using it quite a bit. It's a great 'in between' machine right at the end of the beige line: has both SCSI and ATA, has built-in serial ports and also built-in ethernet (only 10BaseT but convenient nonetheless), has ADB and USB is easy to add. It's the last machine to use the old world ROM! It's also quite upgradable: the RAM maxes at 768 (monstrous for the era - came with 32 or 64), big IDE drives are cheap and plentiful, the CPU is on an easy ZIF socket and upgrades aren't hard to find, there's jumpers for tweaking bus and CPU speeds, the on-board VRAM can be expanded, and of course the PCI slots. The minitowers have their proponents, as is understandable, but I quite like the compact desktop case that sacrifices little in terms of features for a much smaller footprint, and puts the front panel drives at easy reach. The main things to be careful about in the desktop chassis is RAM height (must be low-profile to clear the cover - OWC stocks 'em for a great price) and cable routing if you try for adding extra internal drives. The early production runs do have a lesser GPU (Rage II instead of Pro) and some other oddities (IDE slave doesn't work, VRM that may not handle CPU upgrades well). The VRM module is swappable, as is the ROM, and I think a ROM swap can fix the IDE slave issues as well but not sure on that. FWIW, mine is a late-revision even though it's a 266 model - some folks note that a 300 MHz model guarantees you a later revision, not sure if that's 100% true but as the 300 model came out some 4 months later it would make sense. 

Though not as ridiculously brittle as some of the older machines, a lot of the inside plastic bits are indeed small, fiddly, and easy to snap. That said, disheartening as it may be, it ultimately often doesn't too matter much in terms of functionality if you accidentally snap a few small tabs here and there on the inside. Some people just remove a bunch the 'helper' plastic, even. 

 

[dzog]

edit: derp, double-post

 

[Dimitris1980]

Although my favourite of my Macintosh computers is the Macintosh Performa 6116CD (with Sonnet G3 installed), i believe that my Power Macintosh G3 Minitower is a better choice for 68k and PPC games. The big difference is the video card. I have the on board card with 6mb full vram and also the Ati Radeon 7000 Mac edition 32mb vram. The computer runs perfectly games from Monkey Island era (Day of the Tentacle, Flashback, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Blackthorne etc.) and also later titles that support 3d graphics. Some examples: Carmageddon 2, Quake 3 arena, Quake 2, Tomb Raider, Dracula the Last Sanctuary etc. The price you payed was really great, an opportunity that shouldn't be lost. It's an amazing game machine. Personally I prefer it than the Blue and White Powermac because it supports also Mac OS 8.1 which i find it very stable for classic gaming. Also i love the retro beige feeling although later Macs are more beautiful (G3 blue and white, G4 etc ).

 

[Franklinstein]

The worst plastic bits for the G3DT are the power button and the air deflector over the PCI slots (both usually broken if not missing). Also the little flip-out support stand and its associated prop on the underside are often broken. Not that they're essential but it's often annoying if they're missing and you're trying to do stuff to the logic board.
Other bad things about the DT:
You need low-profile RAM or it'll hit the upper section of the case when it's closed up.
You can't use a bigger heatsink on the CPU for the same reason.
Fewer drive bays available compared to the MT (though it has one more than the AIO does).

They're probably the easiest of the beige G3s to get into, though: remove the monitor (or whatever may be on top of the computer) and pull off the top of the case. The MT needs lots of space to be laid down to get into it, and the AIO needs to (probably be turned around and) have its entire back section pulled out to get to anything.

Is $50 worth it? As long as it works and the battery hasn't exploded, sure, it's not a bad deal.

 

[mattsoft]

Wow! This post got necro-bumped. I did end up buying the G3 desktop (2 of them actually) and combined them into a single, very nice specimen. I do love the machine, just wish the plastics weren't so brittle.