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kick52 · Mar 18, 2006, 01:13 PM

hi all.

today i found a beige powermac g3 minitower at the dump.i paid £3 for it.

i dont know the specs yet as i dont get home 'til tomorrow.
after spending hours identifiying it and finding the instructions to get to the logic board, i see that it has all 4 ram slots full, a vram upgrade and an agp connectivity board with 2 RCA thingys (red, white and yellow sockets) with 2 s-video out and ins.

looking at the manual, i could plug this in to the tv in my room.... looks good.

i just hope it works.

also, there were loads of apple drives at the dump. the were 4 zip drives and 2 other cds. also, there was a vintage old apple computer external hard drive that looked like it went with a mac se or older, it had wierd bus connectors at the back. it looks like this, ( http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/hd20.jpg )but plain at the front. the apple sign was a sticker saying apple computer.

with a little browsing, the external box was just like this one: (the box sitting on top of the left PM.)

http://www.wap.org/journal/creatingg...ingcables.jpeg

i'll get some pics soon.

kick52

kick52 · Mar 18, 2006, 01:21 PM

update on external box thing:

this is exactly the same as what i saw of the back of it:

http://popcorn.cx/computers/apple/pe...l-drive-03.jpg

bradoesch · Mar 18, 2006, 01:35 PM

Right on.

That's the Apple 20 MB SCSI drive. I have one. Those "weird bus connectors" at the back were Apple's high speed bus before FireWire. There were 2 connectors so you could daisy chain stuff together, just like FW.

It's pretty ridiculous looking by today's standards. It's massive and heavy, and best of all it's 20 MB! You can boot from the drive which is pretty neat.

kick52 · Mar 18, 2006, 02:10 PM

so it is an SCSI connector....
thanks!

i should of taken a couple of those zip and cd drives.
the PM is missing the 1 removable side, so i should of shoved all of em into it and acted like it was normal....

i'll have to plug the PM i got today into my TV, for output, and my PS2 into my mac. i hope it comes with some video software so i could record it.

angelmb · Mar 18, 2006, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by kick52

(…) and an agp connectivity board with 2 RCA thingys (red, white and yellow sockets) with 2 s-video out and ins.(…)

That has to be the an Apple personality card installed, I find really 'hard' to be an AGP board since it is a 1998 computer… Nevertheless, those G3 were really beautiful. Good find. Would be nice if you had also found an AppleVision display, yet designed by your compatriot Ive. Have fun!

Oneota · Mar 18, 2006, 03:42 PM

Ya, it's not AGP, not by a long shot. But, at least you got the best personality card out there.

Now the only question is, is it a Rev A or Rev B motherboard? The Rev B had a Rage Pro, which sucked a lot less than the Rage II on the first PMG3s.

vmarks · Mar 18, 2006, 04:28 PM

I have one of those 20mb SCSI drives- I gutted it and put in a 250gb and a firewire bridgeboard.

Firewire, 250gb, with the apple logo. Fun. If I had any more of those cases I would do the same- I have no need for SCSI anymore, but firewire and usb2 make those things fun gadgets.

euphras · Mar 18, 2006, 04:40 PM

Is this appropriate for the lounge? I guess it´s natively Powermac related. Are the mod´s sleeping? This place is decaying more and more

vmarks · Mar 18, 2006, 05:32 PM

Sure, it's powermac. but it also fits lounge as general discussion, less than troubleshooting. picky?

euphras · Mar 18, 2006, 05:37 PM

yes, picky!

lothar56 · Mar 18, 2006, 07:20 PM

Just to let you know, it has 3 RAM slots and a ROM slot. I've messed with Beige G3's a lot, I own five, so if you've got any questions about quirks or whatever, feel free to ask me. Those computers are fairly picky about certain things.

kick52 · Mar 21, 2006, 07:54 AM

thanks. i got it home. and it started, but it didnt boot.

i tried different hard drives and things but no luck.
i also tried booting from the os 9 disk. no dice.

i didnt even get the flashing "?"

then, i disconnected every drive until i got the ? floppy.

i then took the HD from my iMac, and it worked!

it turned out to be that the scsi cd drive stopped everything if it was pluged into the first scsi plug of the bus.

i have it pluged into the tv. its great , but i would like some software to re-position the picture. does anyone know of stuff like that?

i will post pics soon.

also: specs:

266mhz, 96mb ram, rage pro (i'll get back on that. i think its the same as the one in the tray imacs.)

for £3 (6$) thats good.

kick52

angelmb · Mar 21, 2006, 08:30 AM

I would give SwitchRes 2 a try…

http://www.madrau.com/html/SR2/indexSR2.html

discotronic · Mar 21, 2006, 10:45 AM

Overclock that G3!!

Here is a link that will tell you exactly how to do it. I have overclocked many of them to 315MHz stable.

http://www.drivejumper.com/ClockupG3/homepage.html

kick52 · Mar 21, 2006, 02:04 PM

i tried switch rez, but i need to position the screen...

pics:

http://kick52.drobe.co.uk then go to pictures and video.

kick52 · Mar 21, 2006, 02:05 PM

i tried switch rez, but i need to position the screen...

pics:

http://kick52.drobe.co.uk then go to pictures and video.

kick52 · Mar 21, 2006, 02:27 PM

and then on to PowerMac G3

mountainash · Mar 26, 2006, 07:09 AM

The SCSI connectors on the box are called Centronics 50pin. The connector on the PowerMac is 25pin D (or DB). There is a good site for SCSI stuff. http://www.scsifaq.org/ I bought the book on the main page. It is very useful.