[rich82fox]

Hi

I have installed osx 10.3.9 on my powermac g3 (blue & white) 350mhz 1GB RAM

I have installed a PCI airport card - the wireless internet is working

however I have several problems with the machine

- It has trouble opening several .dmg files

- It won't run Firefox

- Safari crashes when I go to youtube.com

- internet video plays very choppy and slow

I just wanted to use it as a secondary inachine for a bit of browsing and light photo editing

but

Am I pushing the limits of an old machine, should I just give up on it and get an iMac G5 or something?

rich

[OreoCookie]

The B&W G3s were introduced in January 1999, almost 12 years ago! Does that answer your question

So if the machine is too slow for your needs, I recommend you get a used Intel-based Mac. You can easily get used MacBooks or used iMacs for ~€500. I'm just looking at an ad of a black MacBook, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM for €550. I wouldn't bother with PowerPC-based Macs.

If you want to get a new (desktop) Mac, I'd recommend getting a new iMac.

[P]

The last version of Firefox you can run is 2.0.0.20, which you can find here. It is no longer a secure browser, as it hasn't been updated in two years.

Internet video will not work on that model - it is nowhere near fast enough. The other problems can probably be fixed, but I agree that you need to look at something faster. As OreoCookie says, older Macbooks are often a good way to go, especially if the battery is gone and you can get it cheap.

[Lateralus]

Pushing the limits of a B&W G3 would be installing a 750GX G3 1GHz upgrade, overclocking it to 1.1GHz > replacing the stock Rage card with a 128MB Radeon 9200 > augmenting the I/O with USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 cards > Replacing the stock disc drive with a fully supported high-speed Pioneer SuperDrive > and pairing two 250GB S-ATA drives with an S-ATA PCI controller.

Which I did.

Surprisingly peppy machine.

That said;

Problems opening disk images is not something that will be hardware related. Might wanna do a clean install.

In regard to internet issues, upgrade to 10.4 and check out http://www.floodgap.com:80/software/tenfourfox/

You really should consider the 1GHz upgrade if you're interested in keeping the machine. They're only $99. And, like I said, you can probably squeeze another hundred MHz out of it.

[angelmb]

Latest and greatest iCab web browser builds do work under 10.3.9

[Waragainstsleep]

You should hunt around for a G4 ZIF chip. One from an original G4 tower or an aftermarket upgrade. They should be cheap and G4s are much better at handling video due to Altivec.

Sonnet Encore Mac G4 500/1M ZIF CPU Upgrade 500MHz on eBay (end time 30-Dec-10 20:11:39 GMT)

SONNET ENCORE G4 ZIF EG4-1000-1-B02 1G 1000M G3 UPGRADE on eBay (end time 29-Dec-10 07:28:46 GMT)

That last one is a G3 with a much higher clock.

[OreoCookie]

Although I don't think upgrading such a machine in 2010 (almost 2011) is a good investment. Unless, of course, one sees this as a hobby and the machine as a pet project

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

You should hunt around for a G4 ZIF chip. One from an original G4 tower or an aftermarket upgrade. They should be cheap and G4s are much better at handling video due to Altivec.

Sonnet Encore Mac G4 500/1M ZIF CPU Upgrade 500MHz on eBay (end time 30-Dec-10 20:11:39 GMT)

SONNET ENCORE G4 ZIF EG4-1000-1-B02 1G 1000M G3 UPGRADE on eBay (end time 29-Dec-10 07:28:46 GMT)

That last one is a G3 with a much higher clock.

A 750GX G3 @ 1GHz would probably still come out on top against any of the available G4 upgrades. Points of comparison against both of those^ upgrades;

1) The G4 upgrades with a clock speed of 550MHz or less all run 1MB of backside L2 cache, which runs at half or less of the processor speed, whereas the newer G3s utilize just as much L2 but it's on-die and runs at 1:1. So take into account the 100%~ clock speed advantage of the 750GX upgrades and you've got twice the horsepower + 4x (or more) the L2 cache speed.

2) The 1GHz G4 upgrade from Sonnet drops the clock speed of the G3 B&W to 66MHz from 100MHz, which completely negates the gob of backside L3 cache that's thrown on board. Taking that out of the picture leaves you with a 7-stage CPU (the G3s are all 4-stage) with an insufficient amount of cache, a significantly higher power consumption, and the requirement to perform system-hindering firmware update before using it.

AltiVec doesn't wipe the slate clean of that much poo.

And outside of AltiVec, I would wager without a second thought that its short pipeline stage and abundance of fast L2 cache has 750GX doing more work per clock cycle than any other PowerPC chip seen in a Macintosh, ever.

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Although I don't think upgrading such a machine in 2010 (almost 2011) is a good investment. Unless, of course, one sees this as a hobby and the machine as a pet project

An upgrade is a hundred bucks (or less); there are far worse ways to burn that much.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by rich82fox 

Am I pushing the limits of an old machine, should I just give up on it and get an iMac G5 or something?

rich

Are you sure you want something as modern as an iMac G5?

[is not]

Maybe he is buying on a budget ??

[kbear2]

Four years ago I purchased a G3 like yours and a DA to fix up and donate to someone who needed a Mac. I sent off the G3 and since then they added a new processor and are using it daily, albeit not with high end apps, of course.

The 9600 that I was running (upgraded heavily and running Panther) at that time seemed to be coming to the edge so I decided to keep the DA. After putting in a 1.5 G processor, 1.5G RAM, SATA, new video, new drives, USB2, etc. I ended up with a great machine that I'm still using today with 10.5.8. It can handle all I throw at it except being slow with 3D rendering. For that I "fall back" on my MBP.

My point is that the money I spent back then ($600 including original DA purchase) would not make sense now. Even though I still have my 9600, a Wallstreet (running Panther) and two Clamshell iBooks (Tiger), I wouldn't put any major $ into non-Intel Macs. Sooner or later they will all become doorstops or museum exhibits. Sadly so.