[d_oob]

I'm thinking of upgrading to OSX but my machine is a Beige 266 G3. Is that even going to work? I mean I understand that it won't be as snappy but am I better off just sticking to OS9? or should make the jump?

Thanks for any input on this.

[almaink]

Many will say your Mac is to slow. I have been running OSX since 10.04 on my G3 266MT and I'd never go back to 9. It is not as fast but the OS has NEVER CRASHED. I don't do much except email and surf but I do have InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator installed and they all work fine, slow but not so slow as to make them unuseable.
almaink

[Musti]

Originally posted by d_oob:
I'm thinking of upgrading to OSX but my machine is a Beige 266 G3. Is that even going to work? I mean I understand that it won't be as snappy but am I better off just sticking to OS9? or should make the jump?

Thanks for any input on this.

There has been quite a discussion about this on Apple Support Discussions. Once you know it won't be "snappy" (and you already do) I think you should give it a try. It is like a 50-50 situation from what I've read. Some people are happy, giving up speed for stability and multi-tasking, some people say "it sucks".

Some caution in order, like the 8-GB first partition limit and such (OS X needs to be installed on the fist partition which should be less than 8 GB)

So...max out your RAM (or at least have 256 MB), overclock your processor by changing jumpers (see xlr8yourmac) and make sure you have a fast hard drive partitioned as mentioned. (Your other options are buying a Radeon 7000 that should give basic Quartz functionality, and investing in a g4 upgrade for around $200)

It has been mentioned that OS X 10.2.6 gives the best results on beige G3s.

Only you can decide if you'll like it better on OS X or not. So, experiment and tell us the results That's what I'll do with my backup machine, a G3 AIO 233 overclocked to 300.

HTH.

[d_oob]

The main reason for the upgrade question is this:

After purchasing a Belkin Wireless USB Network Adapter, the only available drivers for this is OS 9.2 or OS 10.2. The Beige G3 was running 9.1 So I did the upgrade to 9.2.2 to find out that 9.2.2 does not support the Keyspan USB card. And NO there are no drivers from Keyspan to support OS 9.2.2 because with this OS upgrade, downloading Apple's drivers are suppose to do the trick. BUT IT DOESN'T.

So now I'm stuck with an unusable USB card and USB Network adapter.

Any solutions?

[mitchell_pgh]

It depends on what you are using the system for.

eMail, surfing, chat, word processing = UPGRADE

photoshop, illustrator, quark = Stick with OS 9

It will be slow, but you will crash less and the system will be solid.

[bigcrabtree]

Took the chance and installed OSX 10.2 and all is well. It isn't as slow as i thought it might be. I'm impressed how well a lot of things are running. I have a Dual 867 G4 and Pismo with 10.2.8. The beige G3 seems to be NEW again! And now wite wireless internet hooked up to it, seems even snappier. Will install Photoshop 7 and see what happens. Mostly this machine will be used by my girlfriend to surf and do minor photoshop things. She takes tons of pictures so iPhoto will be very handy.

[Grrr]

Seems there is a bit of Holy grail when it comes to installing X on a Beige G3. I'd dearly love to have X on mine. But the damn thing stubbornly refuses it. And I really have tried everything.. So it's stuck with 9.2.2 If you can install it though, then i'd say go for it.
But while I am here.. Not only can you overclock the cpu on these macs quite easily. You can also overclock the main bus just as easily. Bus on mine now runs at 83Mhz, up from 66Mhz. Sure, It's not going to have any G5 owners quaking in their aluminium undies, granted. But every little bit helps. Plus it's been entirely stable for months.
Food for thought

[bigcrabtree]

I used to own another mintower G3 266 which i upgraded to a OWC G3 Zif 466 which was overclocked to 480 something like that. I had that running OS9.1 and it was great but I sold it to a friend. I recently tried to install OSX on that for him but it would not accept it. I guessed that it might be the G3 upgrade. I've heard of some solutions to do this, like taking out harddrive that you are going to install the OS on and plop it into another mac and install it there. Then put it back into your machine and see what happens. I hav en't tried that yet but it sound like it would work. I'm gonna try it soon with my friends mac. Hope that might help some.

[mjarski15]

I have a G3 266 all-in-one running 10.2.6 and it works just fine. No, it isn't the quickest thing but it is VERY stable and I am very happy with OS X on that computer. For people having trouble with installing X onto upgraded systems try using XPostFacto (search on versiontracker for it) and there is an "alpha" version for installing panther onto unsupported computers (such as all beige G3 computers). I haven't tried the alpha yet but I have read lots of good things about previous versions for installing Jaguar.

[bigcrabtree]

you didn't upgrade your all-in-one to 10.2.8? Is there a stability issue by doing so? I'm wondering because I'm about to install that (10.2.8) onto the Beige G3. And I don't want things to go weird. It seems pretty stable at 10.2.

[BurpetheadX]

Give your machine some RAM and overclock it to 315 and it will be fine. Your machine is super easy to overclock to 315 mhz, I did it on a dedicated webserver thats been running @ 315 for months with no problem.
http://xlr8yourmac.com/G3_OC/tims.html