Resurrecting a blue/white G3 motherboard

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Shortly after buying my Blue/White G3 the motherboard was replaced with a Revision 2 motherboard. After disappointing results with my Beige G3, I thought I would try to get the original motherboard from the blue/white G3 working.

Consulting the article from

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/MacinPC_ATX_case/Blue_G3_to_ATX.html

I modified an ATX power extenstion to allow it to be used with it and connected a power switch to two wires on the front panel connector. At home I turned it on and saw video but none of the loose CD-ROM drives I had there would boot an OS 9 CD.

I brought the stuff to work to set it up here and connect the Beige G3's CD-ROM drive. While it will power on, no video appears on the screen.

So far it has the original 300mhz processor, 2 128MB PC100 SD-RAM modules, the original ATI Rage128 PCI video card, a 6.4GB laptop hard disk, the CD-ROM from the Beige, a CPU fan from an old Pentium heatsink and a power supply from a prototype HP server. The power supply is not in a standard ATX form factor but has the proper cabling.

Any ideas on bringing it back to life?

 

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Answer: replace the video card with a Mach64 one.

 

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The first time the Mach64 video card was used the picture was fine. Now it is garbled. The Rage128 card still shows no video. I did find a Radeon 7000 32MB card that should be flashable for use in a Mac.

 

[Rodus]

Have you tried the video card in the slower 33 mhz PCI slot instead of the 66 mhz one? My mach 64 wouldn't play nice in the faster slot but was ok in the slower.

 

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I tried it in the slot next to the shortest one. After moving it to the slot nearest the IDE ports the video appears OK on the Mach64 PCI card. The Rage128 card is still not working.

 

[Rodus]

I don't think the Mach 64 can handle a 66 mhz slot as it's a pretty ancient card. Could the 128 be dead?

 

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I moved the Rage128 to the slot nearest the IDE connectors and so far it works.

On to locating an ATX case to hack up and locating a hard disk larger than 3.2GB...

 

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It lives!

A CD-ROM drive has been added to the table since then, but it works OK.