[chris v]

I got given 2 B&W G3 towers today.

I've got two spare 20 gig drives, so I'm good there. Radeon 7000 video cards can be had on ebay for $20.00 RAM is cheap, these days-- I'm thinking I'll go 256 or 512 MB on each.

I'm looking through CPU upgrade options, and the two obvious (read cheap) options are
1. 500 mhz G4
2. 1 ghz G3

Which would be better in the long-run as far as CPUs in everyone's opinion?

Will the altivec & L3 cache on a G4 make up for the clockspeed on a G3? Also, having not owned a G3 machine in years, I'm not sure how constrained I'd be on applications. I can't think of anything that won't run, though, other than the latest games, and I'm not a gamer at all. These will be for my sales staff to recieve art files on, when they give bids and take orders, so they'll need to run Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop CS , Freehand MX, Word, Quark, & Transmit. They don't need to do these things super fast, they just need to function well.

(I'm trying to keep these cheaper than a brand-new mini)

[hardcat1970]

i've had a b/w g3 for 6 years and i remember i upgraded to newertech G4 400 on the third years. I prolong this machine as long as i could, like adding a pci card/2 more internal storages, usb2 card, and a radeon 700. However i am very disappointed with the machine's perfomance when running itunes, iphoto (the libraries getting bigger) and all the adobe cs apps, that i finally getting myself a new dual core g5.

I think it is really worth to buy the mac mini instead of wasting money to upgrade the b/w g3. If you have the first generation b/w g3 and want to add a bigger hard drive, you will have to buy a pci to ata card because of the widely known data corruption on this particular model.

[Dork.]

I have a 800 MHz G3 iBook as my main laptop computer, and I think it would handle all the stuff you mentioned. Not super fast, just function well, just like you said. I have Tiger running and my only complaint is that Safari is sometimes dog slow. But I think that's more of a Safari problem.

I used to have a B&W G3 as my desktop computer, and it ran things pretty well up to Jaguar. Ultimately, I sold it and used the proceeeds + a few hundred bucks to buy a Digital Audio G4. (This was before the Mini was available, or else I would have bought that instead.) The main reasons why I didn't stick with the B&W were the Rev 1 mobo (I needed a ATA PCI card to add a second drive), and the weak video card.

Also, the difference between 256 MB or 512 MB PC100 RAM is probably what, like 50 or 60 bucks right now? OS X needs all the RAM it can get. At least, if you don't want to spend the extra money, at least try to do 256MB in 2 128 MB sticks, so you can get more 128 sticks later if you like. (B&W's can take 256 MB sticks, but only in a certain configuration. Some configuations only show up as 128 MB. Unless you get a guarantee they'll work in your system, get 128's instead.)

[chris v]

Originally Posted by hardcat1970

I think it is really worth to buy the mac mini instead of wasting money to upgrade the b/w g3. If you have the first generation b/w g3 and want to add a bigger hard drive, you will have to buy a pci to ata card because of the widely known data corruption on this particular model.

Do you mean adding a second drive, or merely replacing the 6 gb with a 20 gb? These are most likely the first rev, as they're 300 mhz.

[chris v]

Well, if I go with the G4 500, the Radeon 7000 & 384 megs of RAM, it'll be a grand total of 240.00 each. That doesn't seem so bad to me.

I get to breathe some life into a couple of sad, neglected Macs, and it'll be a fun project.

I can defray a couple bucks by selling the 6 gb drives, the cpus an the vid cards on ebay. (people will buy ANYTHING!)

[MacNZ]

I'm running a B&W G3 with G3/1Ghz upgrade as a backup server on home network. Read my sig for specs. I've also just put in a spare Pioneer DVR-108 Superdrive in it and a Superdisk floppy drive in the 3.5" bay. Here's a run down on performance, running OSX 10.4.3:
-iTunes, Office, general browsing, filemaker, freehand, network tasks etc run great.
-iPhoto, DVD, Photoshop can get pretty choppy in Tiger.
-Anything video related or Altivec reliant slows it to a crawl or won't run, obviously iDVD, Toast 7 etc.
I think Quark and Illustrator wouldn't be too bad...manageable. To be honest, my Pismo (upgraded to G4/500) ran these programs smoother than the G3 but at the same time sometimes slower. The G3 upgrade will be snappy but at the same time choppy with many tasks. Under Tiger mine takes ages to boot too.
Things to check out:-
- There were two Rev's of B&W. Rev 1's (what you have) are picky about what memory they accept and the ATA bus is buggy. You can't easily add a second drive, as chris v. stated as the ATA controller cannot deal with slave mode properly, ending in corruption on the slave drive. Buy an ATA controller and you can add new drives no prob.
- The PCI bus on these machines is slow. Means graphics performance is going to be pretty second rate. My Radeon 9200 has DVI and pushes an LCD pretty nicely but anything too demanding will choke the system, especially as it doesnt support Quartz Extreme (PCI extreme hack it does but with the PCI bus as it is will starve other cards you have, like ATA controllers) or Core Image.
Sorry, that was a bit of a long ramble. I think I would personally go for the mini, but at the same time I have enjoyed hanging on to my tower and maxing it out. i wouldn't want to deal with the mini's lack of storage (yeah yeah...i know u need the ATA controller for the G3, but once you gave it you can put in three drives).
All the best with it!

[chris v]

Cool, thanks for the detailed run-down. Seeing as how these things were free, and are already here in my garage, I think I'll go for it. I'll probalby do the G4 because Photoshop's got so much Altivec optimization. There won't be any reason to run iPhoto or iDVD, and no games.

I'm just going to yank the 6 gb drives, and replace them with 20 gb drives, set as master to avoid the master/slave problem. 20 gb should be fine, since all I'll need is an OS install (will probably just do 10.3) a few apps, and enough storage for email, and a few day's worth of files. Incoming files will pass through sales on to us in art, and I'll just mount a remote drive on these where they can drop files once orders are placed.

The cheapest refurb. Mini is $380.00 so X 2, I'm saving $280.00 overall, they'll have 7200 rpm drives, and more ram than the mini.

[Lateralus]

The 750GX G3, which is used in the 1GHz upgrade, is the fastest clock-for-clock PowerPC ever built for anything that doesn't exercise AltiVec heavily. It supports that very large 1MB on-die L2 cache, which runs at the full 1GHz as opposed to the 1MB L2 on the G4 ZIFs which only runs at around 250MHz because it isn't integrated into the processor.

And even with AltiVec taken into account, a 500MHz G4 7410 gets its ass handed to it by a 1GHz G3 750GX. Because to the same level that AltiVec plays in the G4's favor, the fast 1MB L2 plays in favor of the G3.

And every 1GHz G3 I've seen runs flawlessly at 1.1GHz.

[chris v]

Hmmmm... *rubs chin*

[hardcat1970]

Originally Posted by chris v

Hmmmm... *rubs chin*

check out this article before upgrading the hard drive.

http://xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/IDE/

if you have the first generation like i do, you can't just swap the original hard drive out with the new one. Otherwise you will have data corruption later on. After adding the ata controller, it is pretty much the same of buying a first generation mac mini.

Like the other said, the b/w g3 with the upgrade was running fine right before 10.3.5. But itunes starts showing its age right after you have 7000+ songs and it runs photoshop 7, illustrator 10 and classic fine but not the latest version like CS, CS2 and Quark 6.

[hardcat1970]

forgot to mention that it is not easy to "deep sleep" the mac once you have added the pci card and other stuff. But if you have the mac mini, you can put it to sleep and save energy. (i might be wrong though cos' i heard some stories regarding the VGA monitor and the mac mini)

[mduell]

Between the price of the RAM and CPU upgrade, I think a $400 refurb Mac mini is a better use of your money.

[krillbee]

Chris,

I am in a similar boat as you. A couple months ago I wanted to delve into the Mac world just a little, so I bought a used B/W G3 from my school for $15.

The thing came with a g3 300, and 64 mb ram. I had some extra memory lying around so I upgraded that to 512. I also had an extra 20 gb hard drive that I put in the mac which helped a lot. Mine is Rev 2, which is also nice so i dont have to worry about data corruption. I also bought a radeon 7000 pci off of ebay for $20. Unfrunately like others have said though, the pci video cards dont run quartz, so while my comp runs a little better with video its no where near what i want it to be. I havent tried the pci quartz hack yet.

Running Tiger on there has worked pretty well for me so far. I thought about going further and buying a faster processor but instead I decided to try and sell this mac and buy a low end sawtooth to play with instead (then i can put my extra agp radeon in that machine) and if i want i can upgrade the cpu to a g4 2 ghz later.


The thing about the B/W g3s is that you cant run a G4 on there with 100 mhz bus at any speed faster than 500/600 mhz. So you either have to buy a G3 1ghz upgrade chip or a lower speed G4 upgrade chip, like others have said. Both of those cpus will run you around $200.

And if you want to you can easily find rev 2 b/w motherboards on ebay for $25 or so.

The other thing you could do is buy a G4 400 zif cpu off of ebay to put in here (which can be done with a bios hack) ive seen those cpus go for $60-65.

Or you could do replace the inards with a sawtooth motherboard and 400-500 mhz g4 cpu, which may run you a little more ($100 for the board, $20 for the cpu)


I guess you have lots of choices. If you dont mind the tiny-ness factor, Mac mini is probably the best idea if you are already planning on spending close to $300 in upgrades.



If you want to spend as little money as possible, but keep these computers, I would just buy a rev 2 b/w motherboard, and get a ZIF G4 cpu on ebay.
Or try to find a good deal on a sawtooth mobo and cpu to put in your computer case.

Oh yeah, and then get the extra memory too of course! I wouldnt recommend running Tiger with anything less than 256 mb ram.

[hardcat1970]

Originally Posted by krillbee

Chris,

I am in a similar boat as you. A couple months ago I wanted to delve into the Mac world just a little, so I bought a used B/W G3 from my school for $15.

The thing came with a g3 300, and 64 mb ram. I had some extra memory lying around so I upgraded that to 512. I also had an extra 20 gb hard drive that I put in the mac which helped a lot. Mine is Rev 2, which is also nice so i dont have to worry about data corruption. I also bought a radeon 7000 pci off of ebay for $20. Unfrunately like others have said though, the pci video cards dont run quartz, so while my comp runs a little better with video its no where near what i want it to be. I havent tried the pci quartz hack yet.

Running Tiger on there has worked pretty well for me so far. I thought about going further and buying a faster processor but instead I decided to try and sell this mac and buy a low end sawtooth to play with instead (then i can put my extra agp radeon in that machine) and if i want i can upgrade the cpu to a g4 2 ghz later.


The thing about the B/W g3s is that you cant run a G4 on there with 100 mhz bus at any speed faster than 500/600 mhz. So you either have to buy a G3 1ghz upgrade chip or a lower speed G4 upgrade chip, like others have said. Both of those cpus will run you around $200.

And if you want to you can easily find rev 2 b/w motherboards on ebay for $25 or so.

The other thing you could do is buy a G4 400 zif cpu off of ebay to put in here (which can be done with a bios hack) ive seen those cpus go for $60-65.

Or you could do replace the inards with a sawtooth motherboard and 400-500 mhz g4 cpu, which may run you a little more ($100 for the board, $20 for the cpu)


I guess you have lots of choices. If you dont mind the tiny-ness factor, Mac mini is probably the best idea if you are already planning on spending close to $300 in upgrades.



If you want to spend as little money as possible, but keep these computers, I would just buy a rev 2 b/w motherboard, and get a ZIF G4 cpu on ebay.
Or try to find a good deal on a sawtooth mobo and cpu to put in your computer case.

Oh yeah, and then get the extra memory too of course! I wouldnt recommend running Tiger with anything less than 256 mb ram.

you are right, the G4, except for the yikes version, is a better buy because you can put in a much faster G4 chips, even the dual g4 chips, and it can also boots into OS9.

[MacNZ]

Lateralus - the 1Ghz G3 does go along just fine at 1.1Ghz, your right! Having both the G3 1Ghz and G4/500 Pismo, as I mentioned, the G3 still seems 'choppy' in Tiger, as I mentioned. It ran Panther beautifully but I still think the 'slower' G4 upgraded Pismo is a better experience, from using both of them every day. If you like playing around, upgrade the B&W G3's...if you want the best value for money, as mduell said, go for a refurbished mini.

[krillbee]

Originally Posted by hardcat1970

you are right, the G4, except for the yikes version, is a better buy because you can put in a much faster G4 chips, even the dual g4 chips, and it can also boots into OS9.

yeah, I would say that a sawtooth upgrade (either motherboard, or case and mobo) would be the best thing for this person. Then again, I'm biased, because thats what I did.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by MacNZ

Lateralus - the 1Ghz G3 does go along just fine at 1.1Ghz, your right! Having both the G3 1Ghz and G4/500 Pismo, as I mentioned, the G3 still seems 'choppy' in Tiger, as I mentioned. It ran Panther beautifully but I still think the 'slower' G4 upgraded Pismo is a better experience, from using both of them every day. If you like playing around, upgrade the B&W G3's...if you want the best value for money, as mduell said, go for a refurbished mini.

Glad to see yours is running at 1.1GHz as well. Free MHz is always nice.

And there has to be something wrong with your B&W. A while back, I owned a B&W G3 with a 500MHz G4 in it which I later replaced with the 1.1GHz G3. There was absolutely no contest when it came to performance. Everything from iTunes frame rates, to video games, application launch time... double that of the G4.

[chris v]

As to the firmware on these: can it be updated from OS 10, or does it need to be run from OS 9 prior to upgrading them to OS 10?

[Lateralus]

Has to be done in OS 9.

[chris v]

Not like I don't have plenty of OS 9 install disks laying around. Thanks. I'm taking the cautious approach-- I've ordered just enough RAM to run these things one at a time, and I'll boot 'em and give 'em the once-over before I commit to much more.

[krillbee]

Originally Posted by chris v

Not like I don't have plenty of OS 9 install disks laying around. Thanks. I'm taking the cautious approach-- I've ordered just enough RAM to run these things one at a time, and I'll boot 'em and give 'em the once-over before I commit to much more.

I think thats a good choice. The nice thing about memory is that you can use it in another more powerful system if you do decide to upgrade say the motherboard to a sawtooth board or something. Memory is flexible and can be used many places, except u cant really put SD-ram in a DDR-ram system, but of course thats obvious.

And incase you havent installed them yet, the 20 gb hard drives should also increase the speed quite a bit. I noticed a decent jump when I went from a 6gb drive to a newer 20gb drive.

[chris v]

Really, worst-case is, if I'm not happy with them after finishing the upgrade, I part 'em out on eBay People will buy anything. But I've got an iMac G3 350 in my ink room, and it's running 10.3 acceptably well. I think these'll be fine for the tasks I have in mind.

But I am going to make sure they work before I order a bunch of parts.

How's the firewire on these things? Can you boot 'em offa firewire drives, or is it buggy otherwise? It looks really cobbled on, to look at the motherboard.

[MacNZ]

Can't boot off the Firewire bus on B&W G3's...as far as I know, the only model with built in FW that won't as far as I know. It can be a bit of a pain if you are wanting to boot off Tiger DVD's etc. There's threads around the net on this issue but you can usually find a solution switching drives etc...let us know how you go!

[dave49er]

I have an OWC G4/500 ZIF with the jumper block and a Radeon 7000 64MB video card if you're interested. You can PM me.