[Dan Szwarc]

I might be able to get my hands on a G3 all-in-one (beige iMac?) for as little as free.

I did some checking on everymac.com and according to their spec page, it is OS X compatible, and at least 9.X.

Since it has SDRAM and 3 PCI slots I think I can upgrade it to one heck of a nice 'puter for either extra mac work or a nice machine for my dad. But first, some questions:
<UL><LI>What is the fastest G3/G4 zif I can put in it for an upgrade?</LI>
<LI>Can I put a new video card in it (I'm thinking VooDoo3 16MB) and still use the internal display (I'm not afraid of a harness kludge).</LI>
<LI>What's the maximum res of the 15" internal monitor? Is it 1024x768?</LI>
<LI>Does anyone know if I can put a 40GB IDE drive in it? Or will I have to partition it in 8GB sections?</LI>
</UL>

All help would be appreciated.

[Tristrami]

Fastest ZIF avaialble would be 500mhz, overclock at your own risk

Max RAM is 768 (note, they must be LOW profile DIMMS)

An EIDE 40Gig drive will do nicely, too, partition at will using HFS+

[Captain Obvious]

I know Sonnet upgrade cards have offerend support for X. I dont know about other upgrade cards.. check the site before you buy.
And the monitor.. I say the res all depends on the monitor in question. Again look at the manf site for your model.

[iKevin]

you can upgrade it to G4 500mhz with a 3rd party upgrade card. Another video card can be added....BUT it would have to run off an external monitor.

Yes it will support 1024x768

You can put a 40gb drive in it with no problem and no need for a zillion partitions...just make sure you run at least OS 9. I can confirm this works.

Those are great machines...the only thing that moved me to a newer Mac was the video. BUT, you can upgrade some of those to 6mb video

[Dan Szwarc]

Thanks for the info. Here's a little bit of what I found:

The AOIs are Gossamer based. Isn't this the same motherboard as the Beige G3s?

All AIOs are slave-IDE capable. Don't these things have two IDEs in them (one HD, one for CD)? Doesn't that mean I can put in up to three HDs?

Is anyone here actually running OSX on one of these things, upgraded or not? Even Apple lists them as being OSX capable.

Apple lists the maximum ram at 384MB, but everymac.com says 768MB (3 dimms). I know when these machines came out, 512MBs were either way too expensive or just non-existent. With prices so dang low, I'd prefer to buy 512s instead of 256s. Does anyone know what the real maximum RAM is by experience?

Thanks for your help people. While this is not a new system (now almost 3.5 years old) it will be quite faster than the wife's 7300/200 she currently uses for music. I'm geeked because I can play with it with little money invested.

Does anyone know if it is possible to overclock the 66MHz bus?

[JEB]

HI Dan,

FYI about the 'slave' thing . . . I did do an install for my mom's machine; it didn't have an internal ZIP drive when she got it. I went to a computer store (Fry's was cheapest by far) for an IDE dual-device ribbon, and a power source 'splitter' . . . I can't rememberr if these two cables were from the

1) ZIP through the CD-Rom

or

2) ZIP through the HDrive . . .

Anyways, it was totally do-able (quite a liberating experience, actually); I did seem to remember hearing about having extra HD's, but don't exactly remeber how much space was in there.

And now you will have the best of both worlds -- scsi and serial ports out the back, and room to add firewire and usb with the extra slots . . . The monitor is nice.

I thought it would be cool to add an LED light of some sort under the top clear-plastic of the AIO, to give it some sort of glow.

Cheers, JEB

[Paul S]

Not all G3 AIO models had IDE going to the Zip bay. As I understand it, and from experience, most had SCSI in that bay. We have several of that model in our office, all had Zips added (by me) and all took SCSI. This was also the case with tower and desktop beige G3s (which share the same logic board). Later revisions of the board added IDE to the Zip bay. Few AIOs got it because that was discontinued early when the iMac was introduced. The tower and desktop stayed several more months until the B&W G3 tower.

Those machines will take a maximum 256MB per slot. 512MB DIMMs have a higher density and won't work on any G3 (beige or B&W).

Sonnets upgrades are great. I had one in my beige G3 tower and a friend has one in an AIO. Never a problem.

[Mr_Solar_Wind]

<STRONG>The AOIs are Gossamer based. Isn't this the same motherboard as the Beige G3s?</STRONG>

Indeed it is. The only difference between the AIO and and the standard G3 motherboard is the included AV "personality" board which doesn't output to a standard VGA connector.

<STRONG>Is anyone here actually running OSX on one of these things, upgraded or not? Even Apple lists them as being OSX capable.</STRONG>

I am. Works great, even on my 266 MHz model with 160 MB of RAM. Because it uses a Rage Pro video card, there's no 3D acceleration, but otherwise it's definitely usable in X for most tasks.

One word about the ZIP drive-- most all of them I've heard about are actually SCSI based, which is great because it's possible to add a SCSI hard drive instead of a slower IDE...

You can find a lot of information on the G3 All-in-One Homepage.

[Walter J. Ferstl]

Originally posted by Dan Szwarc:
<STRONG>Thanks for the info. Here's a little bit of what I found:

The AOIs are Gossamer based. Isn't this the same motherboard as the Beige G3s?

All AIOs are slave-IDE capable. Don't these things have two IDEs in them (one HD, one for CD)? Doesn't that mean I can put in up to three HDs?

....

Does anyone know if it is possible to overclock the 66MHz bus?</STRONG>

IDE slave capability seems to be depending on the ROM version only.

Using Apple System Profiler, check the ROM version. If it says at least $77x.45F1, you have a Rev. B board supporting IDE slave capability.

On my G3 Desktop (Gossamer board as in the AIO) the pre-installed HD as well as the CD-ROM drive are IDE, so it will just depend on empty bays whether two additional IDE hard drives can be installed (provided you have at least the ROM version mentioned above).

There are techniques to push the bus clock up to 83 MHz (see Accelerate Your Mac!, www.xlr8yourmac.com), but I would not not do this on a machine that is meant for everyday work.

Regards,

Walter.

[ 11-05-2001: Message edited by: Walter J. Ferstl ]