[suprz]

i was just given a old beige G3 (supposedly) i havent even seen it yet. all i know is that there is no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, and no power cord . . and i was told by the non mac person, that it "doesnt work" so as you can see i might have some work to do. i need a good source for parts for older mac and spec pages etc... upgradeability etc, etc, etc,......ANY help is much appreciated. i just cant see an old mac die of neglect.

FYI:
http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/oldmac.shtml

[-Q-]

Another good place to check is LowEnd Mac.

[suprz]

thank you! now i just have to wait and get it and get the serial/model# off it to see just what i have...

[Walter J. Ferstl]

Originally posted by suprz:
<STRONG>i was just given a old beige G3 (supposedly) i havent even seen it yet. all i know is that there is no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, and no power cord . . and i was told by the non mac person, that it "doesnt work" so as you can see i might have some work to do. i need a good source for parts for older mac and spec pages etc... upgradeability etc, etc, etc,......ANY help is much appreciated. i just cant see an old mac die of neglect. </STRONG>

I have seen some Macs that "did not work" according to non-Mac persons



If you have to shop for a mouse and keyboard, take a look at the ADB ones from MacAlly (http://www.macally.com/products.html). They have pretty good quality at very modest prices. Mice by Kensington (http://www.kensington.com/) are more expensive than MacAlly's, but they are top quality.
If you are looking for an original Apple keyboard (second hand) and you are given the choice, take the Extended or Extended II, both of them are far better than the Apple Design keyboard.

What you get in the end, time (and Apple System Profiler, preferably v2.1.2 and up) will tell...

Best regards,

Walter.

[Walter J. Ferstl]

Originally posted by suprz:
<STRONG>i was just given a old beige G3 (supposedly) i havent even seen it yet.
....
spec pages etc... upgradeability etc, etc, etc,......ANY help is much appreciated. i just cant see an old mac die of neglect. </STRONG>

A good tool when considering an upgrade for any Mac is GURU by NewerTech
(current version 2.9, http://www.newerram.com/Memoryguide/guru2.asp for download). It will tell you all about RAM upgradeability and then some. The G3 will take up to 3 SDRAM modules at 256 MB each, although some G3s can only deal with two of these high capacity RAMs so they max out at 512 MB RAM.

The beige G3 (I do have two of them) is also easily upgradable by exchanging the processor using a ZIF module. You can use a G3 or a G4 ZIF module according to your needs. I have upgraded one of my G3s from 233 to 466 MHz two years ago and still like the speed. See the comprehensive G3 section at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/cpucards.html

As posted before, Low End Mac is an excellent site for older Macs, although I would not call a first generation G3 a low end machine at all.

By the way, the G3 will need Mac OS 8.1 or higher (and as there are neither mouse nor keyboard, don't expect a System CD ROM to come with it )

Regards,

Walter.

[suprz]

thank you all for your replies! i have the mac home now , no keyboard, mouse, or power cord, or monitor (however, while i wsa talking to the "non mac person" he did advise me that he will GIVE me the blue and white 17 studio monitor for free next week..SCORE!!!) anyways, on the back of the mac, it says "powerpc G3 300mhz, 1MB cache / 64mb / 8GB / 24X CD / AV / 6RV / ZIP"
the "non mac guy" said tht he knows that it has 128mb of ram. i'm going to take a picture of the back so that one of you gurus can tell me where the keyboard, mouse, monitor etc.. goes. and i dont think there is a modem in this machine. the only thing i see that resembles a phone hookup is the ethernet port. he did say that there was a NIC card in it and it was set up for broadband, and the only reason it was not being used is that the hard drive was making a funny noise... thanks again for you help!

[ 01-26-2002: Message edited by: suprz ]

[suprz]

her's the pic...(sorry about the quality, it was taken with my webcam)


[ 01-26-2002: Message edited by: suprz ]

[suprz]

o.k. here's an update....BIG MESS!!!!! friend brought over a monitor and mouse. (forgot the keyboard!!??) anyways, the computer started up just fine and it had os 9.1 in it, but there where all kinds of conflicts! well, we hosed the drive (initialized it therefore wiping it clean) of course AFTER we did that we then realized that he did not have a os install cd except for my imac os 9 install cd. we put it in after disconnecting the power to the hard drive and it booted up from the cd. BUT everytime we hit "install" from the cd it comes up with a message stating it cannot be installed and to check the pdf document on the install disc. we copied over the system folder from the cd to the hard drive which is now called "untitled hd" and we shut down the computer and reconnected the hd power and upon startup we were greeted with the bomb and a message which read "the system software on the startup disk only functions on the original media, not if copied to another drive" we trashed everythign in the hard drive, and then we tried to copy over the system file and system folder from my imac hard drive itself onto a zip disk and again disconnected the hard drive and used the zip disk to start up from and installed the files into the hard drive "untitled" again, and shut down and reconnected the hard drive. and again we got the same error bomb message " the system software on the startup disk only functions on the original media, not if copied to another drive" is this telling me that i had to use a generic os9 or os8 start up disk ?????? can somebody please help me out

[-Q-]

Yeah, that's what it's telling you. Each mac now requires a ROM file that is machine specific. Because your OS CD came with your iMac, the ROM that's on the CD will only work with an iMac. So you're out of luck in that regards. You will need a generic OS 9 CD.

You can get one with Mac OS X, but that's a big expense for a free computer (although your machine can run OS X, although until you upgrade the 128 MB of RAM, it won't be pretty).

Send me an email. I might be able to help you with the OS 9 CD.

[suprz]

that's what i thought! e-mail is on it's way!

[ 01-27-2002: Message edited by: suprz ]

[suprz]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Walter J. Ferstl:
[QB]

I have seen some Macs that "did not work" according to non-Mac persons



thanks for the info, and also the machine is fine! there is nothing wrong with the hd at all. it isnt loud and the floppy, cd, and zip drives all work fine. (i checked them before i hosed the hd) the only thing it doesnt have is an internal modem ( i checked) but there is an adb port that has the "modem" icon on it. (external modem?) but i will probably just buy a modem card and toss it in

[Mac-Guy]

For excellent overviews of every Mac ever made, don't forget EveryMac.com. Very handy, clean, well laid-out site.

[suprz]

one more question (well, probably not) but anyways , i notice on this g3 before i hosed the hd that it had an extension that had a icon of a TV on it. what exactly is that and what does it do? and of course how do i get it back when i install Os9 on the hd?

[drewman]

Your beige Mac has an AV card according to your description of the back panel - it has the video in and out and audio in and out with RCA connectors. If you don't see this, then the card has been removed.

You can watch any video you like with Apple's Video Player which is included with Mac OS 9 or any other version of Mac OS after 7.6

Andrew

[VRL]

[quote]Originally posted by suprz:
<STRONG>

Originally posted by Walter J. Ferstl:
[QB]

I have seen some Macs that "did not work" according to non-Mac persons



thanks for the info, and also the machine is fine! there is nothing wrong with the hd at all. it isnt loud and the floppy, cd, and zip drives all work fine. (i checked them before i hosed the hd) the only thing it doesnt have is an internal modem ( i checked) but there is an adb port that has the "modem" icon on it. (external modem?) but i will probably just buy a modem card and toss it in</STRONG>

How about introducing us to your friends??

Actually, I've been given a few Macs (older ones), and once I removed the pirated junk (etc) from the hard drives and installed a clean OS, they both worked fine ... and today, both are working 24/7.

Also, I plugged in a descent set of speakers (I had sitting around) into the 630. Nice sound. And I found out (by accidentally shutting off my Performa!) that my Sony remote controls the computer (and CD), so I'm lovin' it even more

Have fun.

[jeromep]

I couldn't help but notice you saying that you had an adb port with a modem icon on it. That port is a serial port, along with the one that has a printer next to it. You'll also notice a different pinout. The serial ports have 8(9) pins and the ADB has 4. These two ports are basically interchangeable in usage.

Get an external modem, preferably from Global Village. Their fax software is the best in the business, and their modems are very reliable. I would not try to go for any type of internal modem in that vintage of machine.

I also wouldn't run 10 on it. My experience with platnum (its not beige, unless you let it sit in the) G3s is that they can run 10, but not well. 10 is optimized for G4s. G3s just don't perform very well with that OS. Too slow for all of the intense graphics used in basic OS operations.

[-Q-]

Originally posted by jeromep:
<STRONG>I also wouldn't run 10 on it. My experience with platnum (its not beige, unless you let it sit in the) G3s is that they can run 10, but not well. 10 is optimized for G4s. G3s just don't perform very well with that OS. Too slow for all of the intense graphics used in basic OS operations.</STRONG>

The stock beige G3 doesn't run X well, but pop a radeon in and max the ram and it runs just fine. Well, it ran it fine until I see a dual GHz G4 running OS X.

Suprz--never heard back from you...

[suprz]

Q, i just sent you another e-mail, if you dont get it, give me a e-mail at [email protected], or even [email protected]

thanks

[firefly]

This may help...



The only internal modem to work with the beige G3 is the Apple/GV 56k (v.90) modem. It was never sold as a retail part and could only be bought through some Apple specialists as a service part (I was able to get one from Smalldog.com back in December 1999). It is fine and reliable, but you aren't likely to find one anywhere so you may as well just get an external serial modem.

The 'icon of a TV' is probably the Apple Video Player Extension (used with the Wings AV card). It comes with all Mac OS versions (except X obviously).