[sarrett]

I have a G3 that I just got used. OS 9.2 was installed on it when I got it and it worked perfectly. When I installed OS X I ended up with a grainy greyscale screen. According to the apple tech the ATI 128 card installed on there should work fine with OS X. He pointed me to the list of monitors and the none of the two gateway monitors I have (Including a EV700 which OS 9.2 immmediately recognized) is on the supported list for OS X. In addition to the EV700, I have a Gateway 17" vivitron and a very old CTV CMS-1561. None of these three monitors works under OS X properly, they all have the same grainy grey-scale. His suggestion was to get another monitor (eg. a reconditioned apple monitor.) Has anyone gotten any of these monitors or similar ones to work under OS X or is he correct that a supported monitor would solve my problem?

Thanks!
Wendy

[Detrius]

Are there any monitors that you have tried that DO work with your video card? My guess is there might be something wrong with the card, as monitor support is not done in software.

FWIW, I don't think OS X can do grayscale.

[pat++]

Try to go in System Preferences->Universal Access and verify that the "Set Display to Grayscale" option is not enabled. What is the exact model of your G3? I know some iMacs require a firmware update before installing OS X. I don't think the monitor has anything to do with your problem....

[sarrett]

Thank you for your responses. The monitors work fine under OS 9.2. I have a B+W G3 Powermac. I mananged to reach a Friend who has worked as a Mac tech and she suggested a firmware update as well (although she wasn't sure how it would work as they always did the firmware updates before the OS X install.) I think that's my next step.

Thanks again!
Wendy

[Moonray]

And you did go to the monitor preferences and did see the resolutions and color modes and all?

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[pat++]

You may want to try these updates :

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58374
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58275

[sarrett]

Thank you Pat and Moonray for your additional responses. I looked at all three of the suggested links and the first two I had already done. As for the third,(The rage drivers) it was actually older drivers than what was on my system. I also looked into the "Universal Access" and that didn't seem to be the problem either. (although messing with the buttons did make things slightly clearer.)
The monitor preferences doesn't give me any options. It says 1024x768 as the only selection there and 256 for the colors. For refresh rate it say N/A. Also there is no "detect monitor" button which according to the tech means that it's not detecting the monitor correctly.
Frankly I'm still baffled. Wonder if somehow the OS X rage 128 drivers got corrupted?

Thanks again,
Wendy

[Moonray]

If I am right your video card is the original one installed by Apple and has already a VGA connector with three rows of pins so that you don't need this monitor adapter older Macs neeed to connect a normal monitor (or this could be a cause for trouble).

In this case it seems that OS X chose some 'safe' video output to display at least something. I don't know if or how much your video card supports DDC to detect a monitor, but if it does and your monitors are not like 10 years old it should get the info about allowed screen sizes and colors that way and also the model name of the monitor and display it in the window title bar of the Displays Preferences. However the ATI Rage 128 card you have should definitely suppoet "normal" screen resolutions and colors on all monitors so that I think there must be something wrong with either the card (or it's connectors) not telling OS X what it wants to know, or with the OS X drivers (not very likely if you just installed it). Another, newer monitor wouldn't save the problem in my opinion.

Maybe you'll find something interesting here: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/.

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[sarrett]

Thank you moonray.
I will likely add a new drive to my machine as it only has 6gb, so the link you provided will be very helpful. I contacted ATI this afternoon and they sent me back info that I need to take a look at. Someone also pointed me to a newsgroup message from several years back that spoke about doing several restarts in a row to fix it (I saw on ebay a imac with that issue.) Anyway, probably won't get to do too much else until Thusday as I'm finishing an online class (took an on-line live final tonight that went 2 1/2 hours so my brain cells are fried...final paper due Wed.)
Thanks again for your help.
Wendy

[southtdi]

there's alot more in-depth info posted here than I can provide but the EV700 works fine in OSX 10.3.2 I have a Gateway with that monitor and had it hooked up to my G5 and no problems whatsoever. I would tend to agree with everyie and it's realated to the card not the OS.

[sarrett]

Well, I did get a chance to play with it a little bit more. I installed the latested ATI drivers and tried rebooting immediately after a restart. I also spoke with someone I know who has Macs at home and he said he thinks it's either the drivers or the ATI card. I thought of getting a new video card but since the card works fine under 9.2 I'm not sure a newer card (eg. Radeon 7000) would fix it. I've seen some other ideas in searching the newsgroups on google about setting the display in 9.2 to the resolution I want and then trying to reboot into 10.3.2. Another option was deleting some of the preferences stuff to make it recreate it. Any opinion? Am I correct that a newer graphics card would do nothing except cost $$$? Does one ever need monitor drivers? (Someone suggested that as a possibility)

Thanks!
Wendy

[Moonray]

Wendy, I think a new card wouldn't be worth it, but if you run across a used Radeon 7000 you might be able to get it cheap.
However your ATI card *should* work. As it appears to be a known issue to some other B/W G3 users you might be able to find more help online, the "Smurf"-Mac wasn't unpopular.
As for your HD it is right you won't get very happy with OS X on only 6 GB. Maybe if you first get another one and install OS X there the spook is gone.

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[Cadaver]

Are you certain your installation of OS X is good?
An error during install could produce some strange results. Try a reinstall ("archive and install") or better yet wipe the thing clean if there's nothing of value installed presently.

[sarrett]

I did a clean install last night and it seemed to make no difference. I was hoping that it would solve the problem by getting rid of any bad configurations but that wasn't the case. I initially decided to try that because I couldn't do an su - root to delete any configuration files.

[sarrett]

More info. It looks like there are four memory chips in my video card. The impression I get is it can't have more than 8mb of vram and possibly only has 4mb. Seems kindof small for OS X. The apple page said that Quartz Extreme (the 2d engine) needs at least 16mb vram. I spoke to a higher level mac tech and he even suggested that perhaps it's a memory timeing issue with the standard ram but that doesn't make a whole lot of sence. to me. It seems like it's lacking vram and is going into a "simple" mode to deal with it, which is what moonray said initially. Again, I want to thank all of you for your advice

Wendy

[Moonray]

Wendy, you can use the System Profiler in Applications/Utilities to check how much VRAM is really detected by your system. From what I read I think it should be 16 MB, however OS X will run as well with less. Think of Quartz Extreme as a method to accelerate video output, nice to have but not necessary. The previous 'beige' G3 models came with no more than 6 MB of VRAM and run well with OS X.

If I look at the technical description of your Mac especially the page about Monitor Sense Codes, I see that the VGA connector still uses the old-style Apple hardware codes to detect the connected monitor type. It should not interfere with normal VGA monitors as long as pin 11 is not connected to anything which it usually isn't, but there might be a source of confusion or malfunction for the card (or drivers). If you are still in contact with ATI you might ask them about that. (The adapter mentioned on that page is to connect old Apple monitors with a 2-row 15-pin connector - you don't want or need it unless you have an old Apple monitor).

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[Cadaver]

Just a thought... There were some odd education-only configurations of blue & white G3s that actually had the Rage 128 replaced with an (older & lesser) ATI Rage VR card - these cards had only 4MB of VRAM and, AFAIK, are not supported by MacOS X.

Can you verify that you actually have a Rage 128? Either open the machine and look for the ATI Rage 128 logo on the graphics card, or use the Apple System Profiler to display the card's ID.

The Apple/ATI Rage 128 PCI cards have 8MB of VRAM. If Apple System Profiler reports less, your card is either faulty or not a Rage 128.

The blue & white G3s don't (officially, without a hack) support Quartz Extreme anyway, so the 16MB minimum requirement for QE is moot.

[Cadaver]

Also - the Rage 128's use a standard VGA connector, not the wider, old Mac-specific video connector.

If your machine uses one of these wider, non-standard video connectors (i.e., requires an adapter to connect to a standard CRT monitor), then you do not have a Rage 128 card.

[sarrett]

It was the video card! I made a pilgramage to MicroCenter this morning and got a Radeon 7000. Popped the thing in and end-of-problem.

Once again, thank you all for your suggestions. Now that I got this thing going I hope I will be able to recipricate.

Wendy

[Moonray]

Good to hear you got it fixed. Hope you got a larger HD too to enjoy your Mac more.

Happy happy joy joy

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