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Power Macintosh G3 (blue and white)
- Thread starter antony701
- Start date
Yosemites can be good systems. Good thing it sounds like you have the revision with the IDE bugs worked out.
It used to be nobody would touch the B&W G3 anymore, now they seem to be collectable again. They are nice designs and the 450Mhz Rev 2 model is decent, slap a Mac Radeon 7000 PCI card that takes advantage of the 64 bit PCI slot and it is a fast OS 9 G3 machine (or G4 if you can find the ZIF upgrade like I did with one of mine). 1GB of RAM is cheap and easy to get a hold of now.
I think he was talking about after it was discontinued.
They have definitely regained popularity in the past year. I almost bought one for $10, and I'm kicking myself now for not getting it, but sadly I have no room. I was even contemplating getting rid of the Sawtooth for it, but I didn't see what good that would do me.
They have definitely regained popularity in the past year. I almost bought one for $10, and I'm kicking myself now for not getting it, but sadly I have no room. I was even contemplating getting rid of the Sawtooth for it, but I didn't see what good that would do me.
Its the natural progression of computers, useful for work then outdated, worthless nobody wants them even if free, recycled by the millions, people start looking for them, and finally they are collectable and worth a few dollars.
I recall seeing pallets of B&W G3s at a recycler and having 2 of them not giving them a second glance (and CPU upgrades would have ended up in the CPU tray to dig through later). Kind of like early G4 towers now.
There is nothing wrong with them other then having a few already. If anything I kick myself for not snagging a Beige G3 MT I seen at the same recycler because I had one already (I so much like the MTs more then the desktops which are still common).
Anyway I recommend snagging machines when they are worthless and playing around with them. If you like them find a spot to store them even if it is in a closet you never know when/if you might want to mess with them later. Not long ago IIgs were junked and now people pay a few bucks for them. Maybe I look back on before I collected computers and recall seeing tons of IBM XT's being junked and regret not saving one, I had to pay $30 just in shipping to get one in today.
I recall seeing pallets of B&W G3s at a recycler and having 2 of them not giving them a second glance (and CPU upgrades would have ended up in the CPU tray to dig through later). Kind of like early G4 towers now.
There is nothing wrong with them other then having a few already. If anything I kick myself for not snagging a Beige G3 MT I seen at the same recycler because I had one already (I so much like the MTs more then the desktops which are still common).
Anyway I recommend snagging machines when they are worthless and playing around with them. If you like them find a spot to store them even if it is in a closet you never know when/if you might want to mess with them later. Not long ago IIgs were junked and now people pay a few bucks for them. Maybe I look back on before I collected computers and recall seeing tons of IBM XT's being junked and regret not saving one, I had to pay $30 just in shipping to get one in today.
Very nice 
I saw that one on MacTalk and was thinking of going for it...but then common sense got the better of me and I realised that 1. I don't have the room, and 2. I already have a Beige G3. Good to see its gone to a good home.
But yeah, the life cycle of computers seems to be similar to that of cars, computers and cars both seem to go through the following phases:
- Brand new, latest and greatest
- Not quite current, but still pretty up to date
- Starting to get on a little bit and starting to drop in value, but still pretty useful, and pretty good value in the used market
- The "not-really-worth-anything" stage where they are seen as junk, useless, worthless. This is when most of them get scrapped.
- For the lucky ones, the "collectible" stage, where they start to become seen as vintage/classic, and slowly start to go up in value
As for cars...as I've made it pretty clear on here, I'm a Holden man...so to use an example - 10 years ago, the early Commodores, the VB - VK (1978 - 1985) Commodores were pretty much seen as worthless. Past their prime, you wouldn't have wanted one as a daily driver unless you couldn't afford anything better, and still far too new to be even considered as a classic - I mean the last ones had plastic bumpers! Unless it was something special, they were pretty much worth more as scrap metal than as a car. Now a lot of them have been crushed, good, straight, original ones are hard to find, and will go for a decent amount of coin. The fact that they're also slowly starting to be seen as "classics" is also helping.
In much the same way - 10 years ago, you couldn't have even given away say, a Classic. Heck, the RAM expansion board in the thing was seen as being worth more than the entire machine. Now most of them have been scrapped, and its rare to see one go for under $100 on eBay.
I saw that one on MacTalk and was thinking of going for it...but then common sense got the better of me and I realised that 1. I don't have the room, and 2. I already have a Beige G3. Good to see its gone to a good home. But yeah, the life cycle of computers seems to be similar to that of cars, computers and cars both seem to go through the following phases:
- Brand new, latest and greatest
- Not quite current, but still pretty up to date
- Starting to get on a little bit and starting to drop in value, but still pretty useful, and pretty good value in the used market
- The "not-really-worth-anything" stage where they are seen as junk, useless, worthless. This is when most of them get scrapped.
- For the lucky ones, the "collectible" stage, where they start to become seen as vintage/classic, and slowly start to go up in value
As for cars...as I've made it pretty clear on here, I'm a Holden man...so to use an example - 10 years ago, the early Commodores, the VB - VK (1978 - 1985) Commodores were pretty much seen as worthless. Past their prime, you wouldn't have wanted one as a daily driver unless you couldn't afford anything better, and still far too new to be even considered as a classic - I mean the last ones had plastic bumpers! Unless it was something special, they were pretty much worth more as scrap metal than as a car. Now a lot of them have been crushed, good, straight, original ones are hard to find, and will go for a decent amount of coin. The fact that they're also slowly starting to be seen as "classics" is also helping.
In much the same way - 10 years ago, you couldn't have even given away say, a Classic. Heck, the RAM expansion board in the thing was seen as being worth more than the entire machine. Now most of them have been scrapped, and its rare to see one go for under $100 on eBay.
Actually, the B&W has a well-deserved reputation for being... quirky. Perhaps not as quirky as the Beige G3, but the system's inflicted with a number of design and firmware peculiarities that in some circumstances make it less reliable or "well-baked" than the later "Post-Jobs" Macs. Off the top of my head:
1: As noted, two major motherboard versions, the difference being the accessory UDMA/33 IDE controller that was slapped on to distinguish the system from the Beige G3. The early version suffers data corruption issues.
2: Firewire is an accessory module. It's not uncommon for it to go bad, causing the system to mysteriously die.
3: Reliability, performance, and compatibility are all NOT strong points of the PCI implementation.
4. The B&W is fanatically picky about memory modules, and incompatible modules usually don't fail memory tests. Instead they just randomly crash your system and corrupt your hard disk. (speaking from experience.)
5: They're just plain... finicky. There's a number of people on this board and others who can attest how they'll just fall into these comotose states sometimes and then magically feel better after being left unplugged overnight, things like that.
I would certainly second/third/whatever the theory that the only reason they appear "desirable" at all again is because they're finally starting to get rare. They were *dirt* common not long ago, and the most insidious B&W in that regard was its evil silver cousin, the "Yikes" PCI video G4. Many a person was burned thinking they were getting a Sawtooth for a steal off eBay only to have it turn out to be one of those boat anchors. Undoubtedly given enough time there will be someone out there who's crazy enough to want one on purpose to fill a hole in their collection...
Thank you for the insights of this B&W G3. This is really new to me. Back then, I was still a PC user and only used Mac in university.
I bought my first second-hand Mac in mid 2003, and got my first new Mac in early 2004. I still remember how stupid I was, I ordered a PowerMac G4 (dual 1.42 GHz) after the G5 was out. I really do not like the noisy of that G4 dual 1.42GHz, and I am still surprised on how quiet the iMac G4 is.
I bought my first second-hand Mac in mid 2003, and got my first new Mac in early 2004. I still remember how stupid I was, I ordered a PowerMac G4 (dual 1.42 GHz) after the G5 was out. I really do not like the noisy of that G4 dual 1.42GHz, and I am still surprised on how quiet the iMac G4 is.
I guess it depends on your luck. Years ago my MDD died and funds were very tight so I used the best Mac I had left, a B&W G3. It had maxed out RAM and a 1ghz G3 processor. I also moved the DVD burner, SATA card and drives from my MDD. I digitized video, burned DVDs, and used it as a PVR. I had zero complaints
