Beige G3 Desktop

[beachycove]

I received two of these a while ago in a lot, and spent part of this Sunday rehabilitating one of them. It was the first time I had worked on one, and I have to say that I rather like the thing. Though the case is based on the 7200-7600 series, examples of which I own, in fact it is different in one significant respect, in that the smaller logic board of the G3 means that there is a drive bay in the bottom of the case, meaning that one of these machines can accommodate as many as three hard drives, plus CD, plus floppy. Pretty good so far!

The one limitation, which I suppose is related to the size of the logic board, is just having three RAM slots. Why did the G3s come so under-equipped? Was it purely to keep the board small, or was there an actual technical reason? I have a boatload of small DIMMs that could have made a good RAM complement for the machine if I could only have put a sufficient string of them together, but very few large ones. I ended up popping in just three 64MB DIMMs. So that is a frustration, and a big disadvantage over against something like my 7500, which would have taken a respectable eight of them.

Now that it is working again, mind you, I've to figure out what to do with it....

 

[H3NRY]

The one limitation, which I suppose is related to the size of the logic board, is just having three RAM slots. Why did the G3s come so under-equipped? Was it purely to keep the board small, or was there an actual technical reason?

The RAM controller used in beige G3s could drive 3 slots by itself. It needed driver chips to handle more slots, and the driver adds a wait state to each memory cycle. Three slots is most common in G3 and G4 series.

 

[avw]

You could overclock your G3 Desktop. Some of them go really far! I made one of my 233 MHz a 292MHz wit 83MHz Bus speed! http://www.macinfo.de/tuning/tuning.html

 

[Bunsen]

Bumping that RAM up over 256MB makes OS X bearable, but it will creak along with as little as 192MB. Once you get over 300MB, you'll really start to notice a difference in responsiveness. Adding a faster hard drive, CPU and video card helps a lot too, but RAM is IMHO the best first upgrade, primarily because it's the best bang for the buck spent. Throw three 128MB sticks in it; they're essentially free these days. NB, 256MB is the largest stick that will work, and they have to be single-banked (usually single sided IIRC).

 

[beachycove]

God meant any and all beige Macs to run an OS prior to X. In the case of the beige G3, this providentially simplifies finding RAM for the thing, as finding 128MB or 256MB DIMMs physically small enough to fit in a G3 desktop is hard — they have to be low-profile in order to be able to close down and lock the drive shelf, and get the plastic top back on. So three 64MB DIMMs are fine, given that the thing will run MacOS 8.6 or 9.2 very well with that much RAM. God's ways are wonderful.

 

[Bunsen]

My understanding is that it's only the last RAM slot (away from the PCI slots) where this is an issue, so 2 slots will take higher DIMMs, and that removing* the fan guard makes the problem go away altogether. Hacker beware, this is only a vague memory.

* Snip it off with side cutters as close as possible to the outer edge, and fold any remaining metal flat out of the way. Grinding or hacksawing may lead to stray metal filings in the computer and/or power supply

 

[Temetka]

The RAM issue is the primary reason I purchased a Beige G3 MT instead of a desktop model. MY machine is cranking along with 768MB of RAM and loving it. Now if only I could cram 3 512MB modules (which I do have in hand) in there for a total of 1.5GB. That would be beyond sweet.

 

[yuhong]

God meant any and all beige Macs to run an OS prior to X.

Yea, these OldWorld Macs has the traditional Mac Toolbox ROM specifically designed for booting classic Mac OS. In contrast, NewWorld Macs has only Open Firmware in ROM, and it was specifically designed to make booting both classic Mac OS and Mac OS X easy. While all PCI Macs had Open Firmware since the beginning and that is how Mac OS X always boots even on OldWorld Macs, the OF implementations in OldWorld Macs was much poorer than those in NewWorld Macs.

 

[techknight]

then if you can get a decent mac PCI video card that has OSX drivers, it will really be snappy especially in the UI department. as i dont think OSX supports the on-board thats in the beige g3 series.

 

[Hrududu]

i dont think OSX supports the on-board thats in the beige g3 series.

Sure it does. I painfully ran Jaguar on my beige G3 desktop for a short while. Horrible little machine. It was later downgraded to 9.2 and then put into a closet where it sits today. I suppose with 768MB of RAM and a faster HD, you could Xpostfacto Panther onto it, but those things are meant to run pre-OSX software.

 

[trag]

Adding a faster hard drive,

The stock hard drives (shipped by Apple) are really painfully slow, even compared to the anemic built-in EIDE bus (16 MB/s). When I replaced my stock drive with a newer IDE drive in my Beige MT the difference was immediately noticeable.

It was as if Apple had gone out of their way to find the slowest drive in the world to put in the thing.

 

[Unknown_K]

Apple sold Beige G3 machines with an SCSI card and drive for those who needed speed, the stock IDE was slow for its time but was probably the same drive used in all PCs.

 

[techknight]

I thought G3 had on-board SCSI? I dont remember using a SCSI card.

 

[Unknown_K]

Beige G3 were IDE, they had external 5MBs SCSI ports.

 

[Dog Cow]

Apple sold Beige G3 machines with an SCSI card and drive for those who needed speed, the stock IDE was slow for its time but was probably the same drive used in all PCs.

You could be thinking of the high-end configuration of the b&w G3 from 1999.

I thought G3 had on-board SCSI? I dont remember using a SCSI card.

This is true.

Beige G3 were IDE, they had external 5MBs SCSI ports.

This is also true.

To add, there is an internal 50-pin SCSI port too.

 

[Unknown_K]

That internal SCSI port is the same chain as the external, same speed. The older Powermacs had dual SCSI one for external 5mb and one internal (10mb?).

Anyway running a SCSI drive with the native SCSI chain would be very slow for an OS drive.

http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/beige-power-mac-g3-1998.html <=== list a 4gb UWSCSI so they must have bunfled it with a PCI card.

 

[Bunsen]

http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/beige-powe ... -1998.html Yes, many of the Minitower Beige G3s came with them.

 

[techknight]

the beige G3 i had didnt have the SCSI card or drive in it. but it did have a 10/100 apple ethernet PCI card. funny thing is, it also worked in a PC when i used it. lol.