Biege G3!!

[iamdigitalman]

Got one of these on a call today. They had a B&W G3, and a biege. They wanted one of them for their family (still running off a PM 6100 which I may be able to have later as soon as I burn the HD contents to a CD.)

it's a sweet machine, close to my dream mac 9600. it's got built in video, a single serial port (wtf? the other one has a blank), a built in modem, a second video card and a USB card. Need to fire it up yet. I like the way the thing opens up. Not as clean as my B&W, but still sweet.

I plan on getting Mac OS X running on it, possibly dual boot 9 on it, and give it to my parents, who are still running on a PI dell, and this thing totally smokes it.

Not sure how much HD space it has, but it has 2 of the 3 stick of RAM. Dunno what CPU speed it has either, I will find out when I boot it. Gotta go dig out a ADB keyboard and mouse set, and get my old 12" Apple CRT. It has 2 mac monitor ports and a VGA port (VGA and mac port on the video card, mac port on the built in video).

any other ideas as to what to do? If I feel so brazen, I might even get panther on it with xpostfacto [:O] ]'>

-digital

 

[aftermac]

Nice pick up!

 

[John8520]

a single serial port (wtf? the other one has a blank), a built in modem

Just answered your own question

I'm willing to bet the serial port with the blank is the one with the modem icon next to it.

 

[Bunsen]

I've never heard of a beige with a single serial port. There are two built in to the motherboard. The modem lives on the PERCH card, so that's not it.

What the hell, punch out the blank and see what's behind it.

 

[John8520]

No no no, what I meant was, if you have the modem in the slot on the personality card, why would you ever need a modem serial port?

That's why apple put blanks over the modem ports on macs that came with a modem.

My performa 6200 had one, and I've seen pictures of Beiges with them.

 

[iamdigitalman]

so there is a second serial port behind that? I will open her up tomorrow and look.

oh, forgot to mention it's the minitower, not the desktop

yeah, the modem looked to be on a card when I was in it.

also, did the 9600 not offer built in video? I seem to remember either the 8600, 9600, or BG3MT had a blank over where the video port would be.

-digital

 

[John8520]

Yes, there is most likely a port behind it. I suppose apple didn't want people to connect their old external modems and have it conflict with the internal modem, that's what the problem with the Performa 6200 was.

Also, I don't think the 9600 has internal video. I know for a fact that my 9500 does not, and my Beige G3MT has internal video, as do all others.

 

[LCGuy]

Nope, 9600s don't have internal video. I think the 8600 does, and can confirm that the G3MT definately does.

 

[Unknown_K]

Yes, the 8600 has internal video. None of the 6 slot PCI Macs (9500, 9600) have built in video or any A/V functions so those ports are blocked off.

 

[iamdigitalman]

Alright, had the chance to boot it. Looks to be a video editor machine. Has a 100mb image of commercials, dunno if they were made by them or not, but the HD is labled "E. D. Jacobs Graphic Design".

It has a 233mhz G3, 160mb of RAm, a 128mb and a 32mb stick. Has Mac OS 9.0.4 and a bunch of Adobe apps, old version of stuffit. Looks like a CD burner and a scanner were hooked to it at one time. A 4gb HD in this one, little more than 900mb free.

But the biggest surprise is it has a working copy of Mac OS X Public Beta on it. The OS 9 System Folder is actually in /Mac OS 9/System Folder. Pretty cool. Unfortunantly, I could not log in to OS X because you have to type the name, the way it's set up. OS 9 has a spare account, so I can log in.

Any thoughts as to what to do with it now we know the specs? I am leaning more towards parent's computer.

Oh, I am using my B&W LCD (VGA) hooked to the ATI video card in the bottom PCI slot. When booting, I get some bad rasters, but they go away after the extensions start to march and the ATI drivers load. With OS X, I did not get any video until the progress bar. Shame, i wanted to see smiling mac with the circle thingy. Oh well.

-digital

 

[The Macster]

Any thoughts as to what to do with it now we know the specs? I am leaning more towards parent's computer.

Get a little bit more Ram and put Tiger on it - with Tiger they're very modern and useable machines. You might also want a better CPU as you can drop in the faster G3 CPUs from later Beiges or the B&W for a very cheap performance boost.

 

[Bunsen]

if you have the modem in the slot on the personality card, why would you ever need a modem serial port? /
My performa 6200 had one

Because you might have more than one serial device that isn't a modem?

 

[Mike Richardson]

Any thoughts as to what to do with it now we know the specs? I am leaning more towards parent's computer.

Get a little bit more Ram and put Tiger on it - with Tiger they're very modern and useable machines. You might also want a better CPU as you can drop in the faster G3 CPUs from later Beiges or the B&W for a very cheap performance boost.

I have found the Beige G3s to be quite overclockable too. I have a 233 MHz machine running comfortably at 300 MHz. It's running Panther, with a Radeon 7000 card.

 

[Unknown_K]

A 233Mhz G3 seems to be very slow for OSX to me. I would run OS 9.2.2 on it and dig out some old OS 9 Apps for it, the thing would fly. A little more RAM would probably be nice, also get a larger HD.

 

[Quadraman]

The beige is easy to overclock. All you need is a jumper block from a faster machine and hope the CPU can handle it.

 

[The Macster]

It's easier just to dig the jumpers out of the block with a pin, I found they came out quite easily. I was changing it to make it accept the B&W's CPU though, personally I wouldn't risk overclocking my CPU or bus, but then I'm not a risk-taker

 

[alk]

The modem slot on a beige G3 isn't really a CSII slot, it's just CSII form factor. It is really a serial port. When you put the modem in the modem slot, the modem port stops working. Thus the blank.

You can have either a modem internally or a working serial port, but not both.

Peace,

Drew

 

[Franklinstein]

If anybody is interested, I know some interesting tidbits of information concerning clock speed modifications on beige G3s (specifically, ID'ing components to determine whether or not higher bus speeds are possible). It won't work on every beige G3 (usually just the first two revisions), but when it does, it works perfectly. Any interest and I'll put it in the G3 section.

 

[alk]

What do you mean? If you identify the spec on the MPC106 ("Grackle") chip, you can usually figure out what a good possibility is for overclocking the bus. The MPC106 came in 89 MHz rated parts on early G3s, but later ones were limited to 66 MHz. The 89 MHz part has significantly more overhead...

Peace,

Drew