[digerati]

I just got an old Power Computing Powercenter 132 and was wondering if I had any upgrade options for the system.

I'm not looking to boost it to current power levels (and am not crazy enough to think I could if I wanted to) just to improve the performance ability of what I have.

I know the basic stats on the system, and am wondering if I could stick an old agp vidcard in there (ala ATI rage 128) to upgrade the video and maybe replacing the CPU card with a faster one and upgrading the ram.

If I did do all this, is there something I would need to do to turn off the onboard stuff and could it then run MacOS 9.1?

Just looking for a few pointers on where to start.

I know it would probably be smarter to just get a new system, but I guess this is part just cause I want to try.

Thanks!

[chris v]

That machine definitely does not have an AGP slot. I had a Power Center 150 with a Twin Turbo video card in it that was pretty spiffy for '96. I bet there's some of those laying around in repair shops here and there.

You can probably find a G3 upgrade for it, though. I've seen them advertised in the last few months. Try Sonnet.

People have even been known to get those old things to run OS X, but you'd certainly want to max out the RAM for that. I think those take at least 128 MB of RAM, if not 256.

Whether that box will run OS 9.1 or not is iffy. It varies from box to box. Some of them will run it fine, and for other people it becomes progressively more unstable and weird. I had to back mine back down to 8,1 after a few weeks of OS 9.

CV

[digerati]

thanks for the reply.

i realized after i posted, that the thing has no agp slot, just 3 pci slots.

I thought about getting a g3 upgrade, but arn't there stability issues with that? and is the price pretty high?

I want to upgrade the memory, I have 48 megs in there now (1 32mb dimm, and one 4mb dimm, and 4mb onboard) but the right memory seems pretty high. I can get current memory of way bigger size for less.

I also wonder if there is any t100 ethernet pci card or pci based vidcard that would work with the thing.

the onboard t10 is just slow.

[Eric E.]

I'm not too familiar with a Power Center 132, but go to www.sonnettech.com for compatible G3 (or even G4, but I doubt it)processor upgrades. As for video, the best you can get right now is a ATI Radeon 7000 PCI Card. Check into www.xlr8yourmac.com for information on other upgrades - firewire & usb cards, 10/100 eternet cards, etc. - that you can do to your computer.

Running OS 9.1 is possible, but it will take a little tinkering around. You will most likely run into problems with the CD-Rom drive, and you can fix that by using CD-Rom Extension/Driver from FWB, Toast, OS 7.6, or Intech.

My semi-retired Power Center Pro 210 has a Newer Tech Maxpowr 500mhz G3 Processor, 512 mb of RAM, OS 9.1, and a ATI Radeon with 32 mb of video RAM.

Eric

[terrancew_hod]

You can also take a look at XPostFacto. It allows certain clones to run OS X. There is also a link around the same site to run OS 9.2 on these machines as well. May not run anywhere near the performance of AGP-based mac, but may breathe some new life in it...

Terrance

[tooki]

On those Macs (the ones with the CPU on a daughtercard), the G3 upgrades are just as stable as the factory CPUs.

Those Macs are, IMHO, the most upgradeable... no-hassle CPU upgrades, generous RAM capacity, SCSI bus(es), PCI slots that work fine with USB, FireWire, and ATA cards (and the cards that combine all of that!).

That said, for the price of ALL those upgrades, you can buy a used Blue G3 or early G4.

tooki