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chadm · Jul 27, 2004, 07:36 PM

Does anyone have some suggestions of what I could do with an old Beige G3 minitower I have sitting around? Its a Rev.C I believe, 366mhz, plenty or RAM, a 40gb HD, A/V Personality card, DVD, etc. Currently this is my only Mac, but it is not suitable for desktop use anymore (I plan to get a new Mac once they stuff a G5 into a notebook) so I was wondering if there is anything cool I could do with it like a music jukebox, file server, etc. I am willing to totally modify the case/put the hardware in a better looking case and stuff like that, but I am just curious what other Mac users have done with some of their old Macs. Preferebly it will run OS X (its a pain to get this thing to boot the X CD for some reason though, really tempermental). Any thoughts/links or anything like that are appreciated!

discotronic · Jul 27, 2004, 10:09 PM

Find some kid that would love to have a computer but can't afford one, especially a Mac, and just give it to them. There are plenty out there. I've got one that I am about to do the same thing with.

chadm · Jul 28, 2004, 12:52 PM

Well I was hoping for some sort of DIY project, as I only have the machine, no monitor to go with it, and plus it is currently my ONLY Mac so I would like to hold onto it for a while longer.

konakazi · Jul 28, 2004, 03:57 PM

When my damn 2.5 comes, I am giving my current beige G3 (desktop) to my girlfriend so she can stop hassling me to check her email/download a song when I'm trying to do design work at home!

I had even tried to sell it before but it's not worth it really.

I'm running OSX on it but it also goes to sleep quite often when I'm trying to work on anything substantial.

Come on 2.5! SHIP ALREADY!

Lateralus · Jul 28, 2004, 07:35 PM

My Beige G3 266MHz is my OS 9/old games box.

She is equipped with a Voodoo 5 5500 video card.

TimmyDee51 · Jul 29, 2004, 08:38 AM

I have a friend with one of those (no DVD, though) and he uses it as a jukebox for his room with the controls through ARD (although VNC would work fine). Since you have the DVD, you could run OS 9 on it and use it as an entertainment center. The RCA jacks would be great to have for that setup.

konakazi · Jul 29, 2004, 09:15 AM

ARD? VNC? Assume some of us are not replying from inside our Macs

lenox · Jul 29, 2004, 11:30 AM

ARD = Apple Remote Desktop
VNC = Virtual Network Computing
Google = your friend in these situations

-Q- · Jul 29, 2004, 12:16 PM

I use mine as my backup server and MP3 jukebox. Seems to work great for all of that. And I run it w/out a monitor as ARD serves my purposes just fine.

olePigeon · Jul 29, 2004, 12:52 PM

When I get my PowerBook (it still hasn't shipped *sniff*) I'm going to keep Mac OS 9 on it and play all my classic games on it.

Mine has the personality card on it too. I stuck a SNES emulator and MacMAME and use it for a game box. Bought a $4 USB card and 2 $10 USB gamepads. Works great!

chadm · Jul 29, 2004, 02:54 PM

I like some of these ideas, I never thought of setting it up headless and using VNC or ARD to control it. Maybe I will go with an Mp3/backup server in the living room. Possibly control it on the TV sometimes and use the DVD functionality. Any more ideas are still welcome, thanks!

Grrr · Jul 31, 2004, 08:26 AM

I have a G3 mini tower. It now has a 500Mhz G4 Zif in it, and I clocked the bus up from 66mhz to 83mhz (easy mod). I cant manage to Install OS X on the damn thing, but it's certainly very zippy in OS 9. Also has a combined USB/FireWire pci card in it.
It's the perfect Mac for running pretty much anything that is still OS 9 only. I believe you can get 1ghz G4 zifs for these now too.