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G3 All In One AIO Molar Mac personality card intercompatibility?

T

Trekintosh

6502
Howdy yall, just wondering if the A/V in/out personality card from any beige G3 will work in the Molar Mac, or do the others not have their prerequisite internal headers for the CRT? If they don’t, does anyone know if the AIO wings card actually does anything more than the internal video, or does it handle other things, e.g. front panel volume and headphones, etc. I don’t mind if it doesn’t do video because I was planning on putting a PCI video card in mine anyways, but I would rather not lose other functions.

Thanks!
 
I think I have one of the Beige G3 cards downstairs, I can look at it tomorrow to see if it has internal headers for a CRT if no one else beats me to it.
 
I was surprised to discover that Beige G3 will not boot without some version of personality card on board. Guess now is that the problem was my OS9 install? BG32U rackmount project has been bumped to BG3-3U form factor until I can make a left angle riser or hack a couple of cable based risers to do the job temporarily. Has anyone found a fix for running OS9 sans personality card?

Pretty sure sound will be a lost feature? If you can get past that thing's too small CRT and ugly tree mishap, looks like it may be fun! ;)

Beige G3 Startup and Disk Read Problems

Hi all! I've been having some strange issues with a 266 MHZ beige desktop G3 I recently bought. It had a bad power supply so it is using a modern ATX power supply with the motherboard jumper switched over. It also didn't have a hard drive with it when I got it so I gave it a 40GB hard drive...
68kmla.org 68kmla.org
 
nathall said:
I pulled the personality card from my defunct Beige G3 desktop, and can confirm it does, in fact, have a AIO VIDEO connector on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for cheap beiges of all flavors.

Don’t worry, if I get one, it’ll get the whisper card from the molar and get sold on at consignment at VCF or similar.
 
I don't know anything about them but a quick look at the personality card's density seem to suggest that theres something else on the card that the g3's logic board is always looking for all the times. even the most basic audio-only personality card still has quite more chips (nevermind varying passive components but a few of these can be attributed to the comm slot perhaps) than a random basic 4-audio-and-midiport pci card has
 

Getting G3 Whisper Perch USB working

Right, following on from the discussion in the PowerMac forum, this project deserves its own thread. Later revisions of the Personality card (Whisper, Wings and Bordeaux) that comes with every Beige G3 have footprints for a single USB 1.1 socket and supporting circuitry, similar to that found...
68kmla.org 68kmla.org
 
You’ll just need a V2 Wings AV or Whisper card. Those are the ones with the AIO header onboard, any* Beige with a Rev B or C ROM will have this fitted.

*except of course if it’s got the coveted and rare Bordeaux card.
 
croissantking said:
You’ll just need a V2 Wings AV or Whisper card. Those are the ones with the AIO header onboard, any* Beige with a Rev B or C ROM will have this fitted.

*except of course if it’s got the coveted and rare Bordeaux card.
Click to expand...
Noted. Are there any external identifiers? Don't really wanna ask random folks on craigslist or ebay to check their ROMs, lol.
 
Trekintosh said:
Noted. Are there any external identifiers? Don't really wanna ask random folks on craigslist or ebay to check their ROMs, lol.
Click to expand...
Yes, you can tell which revision the personality card is by some subtle details on the back panel.

- on both models of the V1, the modem blanking plate is exposed metal, whereas on the V2 it has a grey sticker with a stippled texture the same as the rest of the back panel
- on the V2 Whisper the audio minijacks are off-center, making space for a USB port that was planned but not fitted
- on the V2 Wings A/V the labelling on the back sticker is arranged a bit differently, notably leaving a gap between the S-video ports and the modem opening, again, where a USB port was planned.
 
croissantking said:
Yes, you can tell which revision the personality card is by some subtle details on the back panel.

- on both models of the V1, the modem blanking plate is exposed metal, whereas on the V2 it has a grey sticker with a stippled texture the same as the rest of the back panel
- on the V2 Whisper the audio minijacks are off-center, making space for a USB port that was planned but not fitted
- on the V2 Wings A/V the labelling on the back sticker is arranged a bit differently, notably leaving a gap between the S-video ports and the modem opening, again, where a USB port was planned.
Click to expand...
Thank you! Btw I ordered the parts from your project for putting usb back on the whisper my molar came with, so thanks for that! I’ll do the same if I ever get a Wings card.
 
Trekintosh said:
Thank you! Btw I ordered the parts from your project for putting usb back on the whisper my molar came with, so thanks for that! I’ll do the same if I ever get a Wings card.
Click to expand...
Cool! Let me know if you get it working, so far I don’t know of anyone else who has modded their card yet.
 
croissantking said:
Cool! Let me know if you get it working, so far I don’t know of anyone else who has modded their card yet.
Click to expand...
Surprising since it looks like the schematic has been out for some time.

I have to replace the flyback in the Molar first but the soldering for the whisper card doesn’t seem too difficult and I can do that at work when I’m supposed to be doing company boards ;)

I’ve got my best through hole gear at home and my best smd gear at work, just worked out like that.

But yeah I’ll update your usb thread when I do it.
 
Trekintosh said:
I have to replace the flyback in the Molar first but the soldering for the whisper card doesn’t seem too difficult and I can do that at work when I’m supposed to be doing company boards ;)

I’ve got my best through hole gear at home and my best smd gear at work, just worked out like that.

But yeah I’ll update your usb thread when I do it.
Click to expand...

Excellent. Do you have a plan for cutting the opening in the back plate? That’s the annoying part of the mod!
 
Trash80toHP_Mini said:
I was surprised to discover that Beige G3 will not boot without some version of personality card on board. Guess now is that the problem was my OS9 install? BG32U rackmount project has been bumped to BG3-3U form factor until I can make a left angle riser or hack a couple of cable based risers to do the job temporarily. Has anyone found a fix for running OS9 sans personality card?
Click to expand...

You are correct in noting that without a Personality card fitted, OS 9.x will refuse to boot up on a Beige. Specifically, I believe it crashes with a type 11 error when it tries to load the Apple Audio extension. Perhaps you could try removing this extension and seeing if that helps?
 
@Trekintosh just in case you might be wondering about this too, I don't know if this applies to all of them or not but if your a/v card doesn't have a 10-pin header for the apple tv-or-tvfm tuner daughtercard then it is only a few passive components and a new header (or I guess one can hotwire a permanent ribbon to the wing card itself instead if one really wanted to) to add physical support onto the card - the data support is already there in the first place afaik
 
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