Hello everyone,
After lurking for a while on this website and forum I can now finally post something relevant.
I had this beige PowerMac G3 when I was a teen and really loved it. Overclocked it and even swapped my main board with that of my parent's G3 which had the newer ATI Rage Pro chip onboard. I loved the machine.
In my thirties, I had to make room and dismantled the machine to only keep the innards and discard the case. Weird decision....
So forward to 2026. Age 41. Was feeling a bit nostalgic when I saw this beige PowerMac G3 for free on an online marketplace. Had to drive for 1,5 hours and back again to see that it needed work. A lot of work.
The machine hadn't been used for quite some time obviously and must have been in industrial storage or had been used in such a space. It was full of black particles on the inside like it was in a fire or something. I took the whole machine apart, deep cleaned it, put it back together and tested it. It worked. But had video glitches, a purple and green image from the onboard video.
It came with just 128mb Ram, 2mb VRam, a non working (or not installed) USB PCI card and a nice surprise in the form of a ix3d ultimate REZ video card featuring 6mb of VRam.
Putting all my parts together in the best possible fashion like a real Dr. Frankenstein resulted in:
- A quite clean and beige, PowerMac G3 desktop case.
- 512mb Ram
- Ati Rage 6 SDR 32mb PCI video card (from my box of G4 parts
- cpu running at 300mhz
- working usb HID and storage
- CD reader/writer
It also came with a very very dirty (understatement here) Apple Keyboard MO118.
(Alps Salmon switches)
Took it apart, cleaned it, cleaned all the caps, lubricated. Caps are drying now.
Ordered parts to MacGyver an ADB to USB converter to make this keyboard my daily driver.
Also ordered a VGA to HDMI converter so I can keep this Mac closer to me in my office.
Very nice project
After lurking for a while on this website and forum I can now finally post something relevant.
I had this beige PowerMac G3 when I was a teen and really loved it. Overclocked it and even swapped my main board with that of my parent's G3 which had the newer ATI Rage Pro chip onboard. I loved the machine.
In my thirties, I had to make room and dismantled the machine to only keep the innards and discard the case. Weird decision....
So forward to 2026. Age 41. Was feeling a bit nostalgic when I saw this beige PowerMac G3 for free on an online marketplace. Had to drive for 1,5 hours and back again to see that it needed work. A lot of work.
The machine hadn't been used for quite some time obviously and must have been in industrial storage or had been used in such a space. It was full of black particles on the inside like it was in a fire or something. I took the whole machine apart, deep cleaned it, put it back together and tested it. It worked. But had video glitches, a purple and green image from the onboard video.
It came with just 128mb Ram, 2mb VRam, a non working (or not installed) USB PCI card and a nice surprise in the form of a ix3d ultimate REZ video card featuring 6mb of VRam.
Putting all my parts together in the best possible fashion like a real Dr. Frankenstein resulted in:
- A quite clean and beige, PowerMac G3 desktop case.
- 512mb Ram
- Ati Rage 6 SDR 32mb PCI video card (from my box of G4 parts
- cpu running at 300mhz
- working usb HID and storage
- CD reader/writer
It also came with a very very dirty (understatement here) Apple Keyboard MO118.
(Alps Salmon switches)
Took it apart, cleaned it, cleaned all the caps, lubricated. Caps are drying now.
Ordered parts to MacGyver an ADB to USB converter to make this keyboard my daily driver.
Also ordered a VGA to HDMI converter so I can keep this Mac closer to me in my office.
Very nice project
