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meall · 01:58 PM

Hi,

I put my hands on a used PowerMac G3 (desktop) that I want to upgrade a little bit.

The Internal ATA HD was working well when I didi received it, but now seams to have left the life. At least, thete is a problem with it. The head is "clapping" and sometimes it work, sometimes it don't. So it is a need for a replacement.

What kind of HD can be installed in this model? I mean, does any today's ATA HD will just fit in without any problems?

I have a zip drive included in it. I'm not familiar with it, but I suppose it is a Zip100 disk drive. The cable can support 2 SCSI device.

Up the Zip drive, there is a free connector available for another SCSI drive. Would it be interesting to have a SCSI drive instead? Will the cost be higher for SCSI drives?

I have a PCI card and an external enclosure of 2 SCSI drives. Those drives are only 2 GB, which is not very high... The connector is not compatible with the internal SCSI cables in the PowerMac. (I think one is called HD50, while the other is called HD68 or something like this.

Also, what about upgrading the CD-ROM to a DVD burrner? Would be usefull to have a burning DVD only computer (from a disk image for example).

The computer had 160meg of RAM. I've installed memory I had up to 768meg. Was supported so far with the OS 9, when I try to install Jaguar on the external SCSI (supported on this model) the installation stall after a while (at 6 minutes of the end). Can it be related to memory issue?

Also, to add another HD on the bottom of the zip drive, I need a plastic slide-in module. Where this can be found?

Thanks

Mac Hammer Fan · Aug 3, 2005, 02:18 PM

If the PowerMac G3 Beige is revision 1 ROM $77D.40F2 then it has a bad ATA controller and doesn't support slave drives and is not compatible with fast hard drives. (>20GB)
You can see it in the system profiler in OS9 or when you open your Mac.
If there no connector for an additional ATA drive after the CD-ROM, then you have Revison 1.
You can use DIMM First Aid to check your RAM, and the memory test in GAUGE.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/15583
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5714
But as far as I remember, I tried to install once a 256 MB RAM module in a revision 1 and it didn't work.
It worked however, in my G3 Beige Revision 3
If I were you, I wouldn't spend too much money on a legacy Mac now.
Good luck