Interested in finding one, scraping the info from everymac.com would be a PITA if only to find a definitive breakdown. Very interested in component level info on the boards, eg. video chipset.
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Definitive listing of Beige G3 models/features?
- Thread starter Trash80toHP_Mini
- Start date
The complete list of BTO options seems lost to time, but the following PCI cards were available to order:
-10/100 Ethernet card (documented elsewhere on this site)
-ATTO UW SCSI card
-Unknown PCI video card (likely ATI)
-Firewire 200 card (my machine has this)
Other options:
-Comm Slot modem card
-Zip 100 Drive
-DVD-ROM drive with Bordeaux personality card.
LOL! That's why I asked! Noggin's shut down for the day.
Ouch! That was my opinion when I happened to be collecting some other items from a fellow 68lmla-er a few years back, but he had a minitower that he was offering for a good price and it has been a terrific machine. Its not overly large, and works as a great bridge machine, replacing the 7600 I lost a few years ago, plus the IDE channel handles newer storage options.
I retrobrited the plastics on mine last year and it did require some internal cleaning/upgrading, but its in terrific shape.
Maybe, but there were still a few other manufacturers around in 1997/8. I'd bet it was likely the ixMicro TwinTurbo 128 w/8MB VRAM from the 9600, or possibly a Number 9 card of some sort.
The 83MHz variant of the beige G3 was planned but dropped, even though many early machines were already built with the 83MHz Grackle. Steve felt there were too many configuration options and told them to streamline the lineup, so they all got the 66MHz configuration.
You could also get the TV Tuner card on some models, though whether that was a factory or dealer option, I couldn't say.
The "Wings" A/V card supports an external TV tuner adapter. ATI sold it as an option for their cards (ATI XClaimTV) and connects via the S-Video input with extra pins. I have one of these boxes as it came with my XClaimVR 128 card. The manual clearly states that the Beige G3 is supported.
The add-on video option was maybe the ATI XClaim 3D Pro? It is powered by the same Rage Pro as the onboard graphics, but does have additional memory available (8MB vs. 6MB max).
The add-on video option was maybe the ATI XClaim 3D Pro? It is powered by the same Rage Pro as the onboard graphics, but does have additional memory available (8MB vs. 6MB max).
That’s fun! Just a shame there’s no more analog TV signal to pick up.
The Beige G3 keeps on giving.
I have a beige G3MT with internal Apple TV tuner. It's basically the same tuner card as that used in the 55/6500 models, with a ribbon cable going to the personality card. I don't know whether it's Apple factory or a dealer option, though, because it looks a little janky: the tuner card is mounted to a 3.5" Apple drive carrier and double-sided-taped to the inside of the case, with the coax cable installed where the Kensington security lock should go. It's a pretty clean install, just a bit unusual. I'll see if I can find which box it's in and take a picture.
I like the tower version better simply because they have more options for drive expansion. There were a bunch of different drive bezels available back in the day and it was pretty cool to have a couple of CD/DVD drives, a tape drive, Zip, etc and have it look like it should be there.
@Franklinstein hmm I would have to say it for sure was an unofficial dealer modification as the beige g3 didn't have the rear cutout necessary for the tv tuner option unlike the performa systems
(although I have not ever seen the rear of an aio so I don't know if it was a different story with that particular model or not, as I recall something about that these tv-ready wing cards originally were specifically only found with some aio's back then?)
the only thing the g3 and performa didn't always directly share was the modem card itself, as there is actually two different generations of comm slots (and I right now can't recall if any later performa models had the second gen slot or they were always first gen all the way)
(although I have not ever seen the rear of an aio so I don't know if it was a different story with that particular model or not, as I recall something about that these tv-ready wing cards originally were specifically only found with some aio's back then?)
the only thing the g3 and performa didn't always directly share was the modem card itself, as there is actually two different generations of comm slots (and I right now can't recall if any later performa models had the second gen slot or they were always first gen all the way)
Or even just a home-made mod?
PCI Performas had the Comm Slot II - but the Beige G3 doesn't have a real Comm Slot II as it's missing all the PCI control lines. So it can use CSII modems, which use serial lines, but not Ethernet cards.
ah thanks @croissantking that makes sense regarding csi for nubus and csii for pci
didn't know about regarding specific incompatibility in name of ethernet..but..in the spirit of a sitcom character who is very idiosyncratic one could say "excuse me but what is the actual point? it has ethernet right there!" you know?
didn't know about regarding specific incompatibility in name of ethernet..but..in the spirit of a sitcom character who is very idiosyncratic one could say "excuse me but what is the actual point? it has ethernet right there!" you know?
Not according to @StevieC, who says that we were robbed of full CSII functionality in the Beige (they wanted to have a 10/100 upgrade without using one of the three PCI slots).
@croissantking I tried look this up for a little awhile tonight but hm didn't get far..
not knowing anything about the chipset itself (other than that obviously its a yosemite) I wonder if the chipset architecture was limited with the various onboard devices to manage and yet still providing 3 slots at same time..and so apple wisely didn't want to have to cripple the g3 to only 2 slots just simply to provide a very optional network upgrade that they knew not many people would ever peruse - in contrast to that people would be finding out they can't even have a customary 3-cards setup even for non-audio purpose and end up just simply buying a still-newish non-g3 mac instead which is not exactly what apple would had wanted to do when they were trying to introduce the g3 itself
(and ok so yeah I know there were actually a small number of people that specifically kept to their 6-pci towers since they had a very massive pci setup requirement and didn't want the throughput issues that a pci-to-pci funnel of a magma external box would had induced otherwise, but these are likely a very small % of users compared to 3-not-2-pci-slots users otherwise)
this is just my own nightly opinion btw!
not knowing anything about the chipset itself (other than that obviously its a yosemite) I wonder if the chipset architecture was limited with the various onboard devices to manage and yet still providing 3 slots at same time..and so apple wisely didn't want to have to cripple the g3 to only 2 slots just simply to provide a very optional network upgrade that they knew not many people would ever peruse - in contrast to that people would be finding out they can't even have a customary 3-cards setup even for non-audio purpose and end up just simply buying a still-newish non-g3 mac instead which is not exactly what apple would had wanted to do when they were trying to introduce the g3 itself
(and ok so yeah I know there were actually a small number of people that specifically kept to their 6-pci towers since they had a very massive pci setup requirement and didn't want the throughput issues that a pci-to-pci funnel of a magma external box would had induced otherwise, but these are likely a very small % of users compared to 3-not-2-pci-slots users otherwise)
this is just my own nightly opinion btw!
Here are some pics. I don't really know much about it other than I bought it in Japan (probably off Yahoo! Auctions but maybe at a HardOff) about 6 years ago. The card works just the same as a TV tuner card in other Macs. You can see how it looks indistinguishable from a normal GM3T with a Wings card except for the coax input.
They use a Grackle (MPC106).
That’s an interesting theory since there were no other Macs with both a CSII slot and 3x PCI. The Power Macintosh 4400 came with either a third PCI slot or a Comm Slot on its riser.
However, the G3’s PERCH slot (used by the Personality card) is essentially a 4th PCI slot - technically it is a superset of PCI. That’s why the USB mod can work, because it uses those PCI signals. It would make sense that a full Comm Slot could also have tapped in to PCI.
@Franklinstein thats for sure an interesting non-original mod especially with somehow combining the two different card antenna ports into a single case antenna port too (one tuner is for tv and other tuner is for fm, two very different radiowaves) .. sorry for a long reply but: just for comparison sake I give you this https://computers.popcorn.cx/apple/powermac/6360/pm6360-02.jpg which is the usual nearly-low-spec performa setup with only the modem not being blank over .. performa-specific video-in card would be the more square rectangle toward left side and the tv tuner naturally goes into that bigger 'bay' left of the small monitor-out 'bay' on right toward the top there .. I can't recall right now where the video-out option sat at rear-wise but I think it for sure "stole" the bottommost or rightside blank for itself (and before you ask, even the 6400/6500 were more or less the same configuration as the non-tower except that these towers did not use a bezel around the monitor-out daughtercard itself)
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