Beige G3 running 10.2

[mwdmeyer]

Hey All,

I recently got my Beige G3 powermac up and running.

It is the slowest Beige G3 with the only upgrade being 128MB of ram.

I have just successfully installed Mac OS 10.2 and made a video of the process:

It is surprisingly quick! Keen to upgrade the video card and memory.

Any suggestions for what video card would work well with both 9.2 and 10.2?

 

[feeef]

A Radeon 7000 is very quick for 2D and 3D and would still work even if you decide to install Mac OS 8 on that Mac.

I also suggest you put the maximum 768MB of RAM in this machine. OS X will be very happy!

 

[Unknown_K]

Radeon 7000 PCI Mac editions are not that common but you can flash a cheap PC one. Max ram is super cheap and easy to find (make sure they are not too tall if you have the desktop model) so that is a must. You might have HD corruption depending on the ROM revision and HD size. My Beige G3's run OS 9.1 mostly.

 

[register]

Consider to additionally look for a FW/USB combo card (like OrangeMicro) and FastEthernet card (any cheap PCI-card with RTL8139x chip should do). The inbuilt FloppyDisk drive will not be usable with 10.2. If FD support is needed, look for an Imation SuperDisk USB version, that could be dismantled and installed inside the Mac (given, you installed a working USB host adapter with internal ports).

Edit: the above mentioned FastEthernet card will be suported using Mac OS X 9, also, with appropriate driver extension present.

 

[Unknown_K]

Now that newer OSX machines are dirt cheap do people go back to OS 9 on Beige G3's? I could understand when the G3 was all people had wanting to run the new OSX. Both the Beige and B&W G3's rock with OS 9 OS and era apps.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I would run OS 9 on it.

 

[CC_333]

Agreed. In this day and age where pretty much all G4s are basically dirt cheap, it makes no sense to run Mac OS X on anything less (and every G4 aside from the Yikes! model can run at least Tiger (or Leopard with LeopardAssist).

That being said, the original poster can do whatever he/she wants, including running OS X 10.2 on a beige G3.

c

 

[register]

A major reason to keep a beige G3 operational might be to have a unit that will be able connect to nearly any other computer Apple made. It may sport RS422, ADB, USB, FireWire, SCSI, IDE, SATA, Ethernet, audio and video in and out, internal ZIP drive, Floppy Disk, CD/DVD read and write capabilities, multiple boot options, runs VirtualPC and performs pretty well under Mac OS 8 or 9 in stock configuration. It makes a good data relay station to exchange data and media, bundled in one case instead of using a bunch of adapters and external drives.