Power Macintosh G3 Minitower Upgrades

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It is true! No prior machine was capable of Graphic Design Performance(TM) at all.

<snip>

I believe the target for the 4MB HPV card was 1152x870@Millions on the 20-inch Multiple Scan display that launched alongside the X100 Power Macs in 1994.

Nice snark! Love it. :lol:

You're wrong. []   Onboard video was just fine for palettes and spot color in graphic design since the 13" RGB ran off the IIci's horrid video subsystem, but POWER it wasn't.

1152x870@Millions on a 21" Monitor was required for Graphic Design Performance(TM) for pro level work much earlier than 1994.

edit: I certainly didn't need that kind of power in my work. 1152x896 on a 19" monitor in B&W rocked that in 1990.

 

[Brett B.]

would a beige G3 take a normal non-apple DVD drive?

Yes (kinda.)  I have used several over the years.  Pioneer and LG drives seem to work well.  Others, maybe, almost everything will read discs but a lot will not write, and even fewer will write DVDs.

 

[Jon183]

Yes (kinda.)  I have used several over the years.  Pioneer and LG drives seem to work well.  Others, maybe, almost everything will read discs but a lot will not write, and even fewer will write DVDs.

My g3 beige has a g5 tower superdrive installed but not tested yet.

 

[Unknown_K]

There are hacks for Apples burning app and most people just use Toast anyway for burning.

 

[Brett B.]

Forgot to mention that the other thing to keep in mind is whether or not the cover piece on the drive tray will fit through your bezel when the drive opens and if the eject button will line up.  A lot will be fine but I have a few that are just no go in all aspects. 

 

[boitoy1996]

Re: The drive fitting

I had a similar issue on my PowerMac G4. Since I had purchased this drive specifically for the g4, I was determined to make it work. what i ended up doing is removing the front door piece at the end of the tray. most of those come right off. They do serve a purpose, to stop dust and dirt from getting in the drive, but the G4 has its own little flap for the front. I know the Beige G3 does not, but, if you have a relatively clean environment, you should be just fine.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Later models came with the 4MB SIMM preinstalled, and are definitely good for Millions at 1280x1024. I haven't tested it, but I believe that they will do Millions at 1600x1200 as well. I can bring my Beige by the office at some point and hook it up to the 2007FP there and give it a go.

I'll have to give it a go, just checked my Plexi Boxed Beige and it has the 4MB VRAM card on board! []

 

[Dimitris1980]

Are there pci sound cards and what are these for?  I guess they have nothing to do with the games. 

 

[Cory5412]

I believe there are one or two PCI sound cards for Mac, I wouldn't bother. Most Mac gaming targeted whatever the cheap or highly available Performa/iMac of the day was, and so it's unlikely the games you want to play on Mac will have had like, high-resolution audio files or whatever it is the card will claim to do better.

 

[Unknown_K]

I think creative might have breifly sold a mac PCI card (Creative Sounb Blaster Live! for mac) but never actually seen one.

https://www.macworld.com/article/1020868/soundblaster.html

 

[Dimitris1980]

Interesting. I will test the powermac when I return from vacation. If it works I will try to put stuff on it. My purpose is to make it faster than my Imac G3 if it is possible. 

IMac configuration

G3 at 500 mhz 

1 gb ram 

40 gb hard drive 

16mb ati video card 

Slot cd Rom drive

 

[Dimitris1980]

So the best video cards for Mac OS 9 for the beige G3 are the Ati Radeon 9200 and 7000?

 

[ArmorAlley]

Bear in mind that the ATi Radeon 9200 came out in 2002 and, requires, if I am not mistaken, Mac OS 9.2.2 to be made full use of.

The Beige G3 is from 1998. It has a G3 300MHz processor and a 66MHz bus.

If you play games from 2002 on this machine, even with an ATi Radeon 9200, they may run slowly.

If you play games from 1998 (or before) with a 9200, they will run smoothly and quickly in Mac OS 9.2.2 (and maybe lower versions of the system software).

If you are going to stick to games around, say, 1999 and before, a 16Mb or 32MB card like the ATi Radeon 7000, Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3, ATi Rage and whatever nVidia had around that time will all do you very well.

 

[Dimitris1980]

So. I took my powermac from the basement. I was hearing the start up sound but no screen. Until i disconnected the one stick of 128 mb ram (now it has 256 mb ram) and it worked but the disk appeared because no hard drive. The dvd drive was also not connected so i plugged it in but i couldn't boot with apple legacy cd that i have. Then i tried some hard drives  from Imac G3 and suddenly with the 20gb hard drive the macintosh booted at 9.2 OS (i had this OS installed for my imac g3, also has a version of mac os 10). It is a powerpc 333mhz, 256 ram and video card with 6mb ram. It was really fast in mac os 9.2, i tried some installed games. I can say that quake 2 ran greatly. For the monitor i used the macintosh color display. It needs a pram battery because it resets the date and time. After all these i couldn't do anything. I tried again the dvd with no success, i disconnected again the hard drive to test others with no success again. I would like to ask if it is important which cables do you have to use for the connection of the dvd and the hard drive. The only thing that i managed is to connect my 20gb hard drive but a white screen comes with the following:

open firmware 2,4

to continue booting the macos type:

BYE (return)

to continue boot from the default boot device type:

BOOT (return)

For open firmware serial I/O type:

TTYA IO (return)

ok

when i type "BYE" it starts

when i type "BOOT" a msg comes up"boot CLAIM failed

when i type TTYA IO the screen becomes black

i disconnected all again (no hard drives, dvd etc) and left the mac with the 256 mb of ram but at this time the mac couldn't start, only black screen

 

[Dimitris1980]

Well, i connected the hard drive with the master/slave ide cable and with the P3 cable and it works. I reset the date and the battery works. I still haven't managed to run both hard drive dvd drive. The dvd drive works when the ide cable is connected and with the p3 or p2 cable but only when the hard drive is disconnected.

 

[Zippy Zapp]

Is the hard drive and DVD drive connected to the same cable?  If they are and it doesn't work then perhaps you have one of the earlier G3s that didnt support master and slave but rather only one device per cable.  

 

[Unknown_K]

Ati Radeon 9000 works with OS 9.2 native and is the last model to do so.


Oddities


Early Beige G3s could not support slave drives, as these machines (generally) had Rev. 1 motherboards and Rev. A ROMs. Later Beige G3s with Rev. 2 motherboards and Rev. B or C ROMs do support slave drives. Although the inability to support slave drives under the Classic Mac OS is inherent in the Rev. A ROM, OS X has a mechanism for supplementing the ROM code and allowing the use of slave drives.

You can use the Apple System Profiler to identify which ROM version you have:

• Rev. 1: $77D.40F2
  
• Rev. 2: $77D.45F1
  
• Rev. 3: $77D.45F2
  

Because of its issues, we consider the Beige G3 with a Rev. 1 motherboard a Limited Mac.

If you have an IDE hard drive larger than 8 GB, you should partition is so that the first partition is under 8 GB in size (for simplicity, we suggest 7 GB). Failure to do this could eventually result in an unbootable computer, as all system files must be within the first 8 GB of drive space. These Macs may work successfully with larger drives for a while, but once any system files goes outside of the first 8 GB of space, you’ll have nothing but problems. This applies to both Mac OS X and the Classic Mac OS.


Mac OS X


If you have a hard drive over 8 GB in size, you must partition it or you will not be able to install Mac OS X. If you are creating the partition within OS X, it must be smaller than 7.4 GB as reported by Disk Utility (because sometimes a GB is billion bytes and sometimes it’s 1,073,741,824 bytes); we suggest simply setting it at 7 GB to avoid having to redo the whole installation if the partition ends up bigger than specified (it happens). Mac OS X must be completely within the first 8 GB of space on your hard drive or you will not be able to run OS X.

You can only boot OS X from a “master” drive in the Beige G3. This applies to hard drives and CD-ROM drives. If the CD-ROM is set to slave, you will not be able to install OS X. If the hard drive is set to slave, you will not be able to boot from it.

Non-Apple upgrades and peripherals (such as unsupported USB devices, replacement drives, and third-party memory) may cause problems when installing or booting into Mac OS X, so you may need to remove them.

Be sure to read and follow Apple’s “Read Before You Install” instructions to increase the likelihood of getting OS X installed and running on the first try.

The Beige G3 is not officially supported under OS X 10.3 Panther, but it does work with 10.2.8 Jaguar and earlier. Panther can be installed using XPostFacto 3, although built-in video is not currently supported.

 

[Dimitris1980]

Finally i managed to make it work properly although it has some issues. I have this computer at the basement since 2009. A friend gave it to me and told me then that it does not work.

 

[Dimitris1980]

Is an ATI Radeon Sapphire 7000 64mb PCI ( probably a PC version that's been flashed) suitable for the G3 Beige Minitower 333mhz?

 

[ArmorAlley]

If it has been successfully flashed for the Mac, then yes, it should be a great card for the G3 Beige MT.