I recently resubscribed to this list when I bought a biege G3 for my sister. It was a pretty stock tower, 266Mhz, 128M RAM 6G HD, Zip dirve, and full A/V (added bonus, didn't know it had that when I bought it!)
After asking a few questions here, I was told that revision A ROM's won't accept USB; looking on Apple's discussion page for a second opinion made me more optimistic. I currently have a 2 port USB card installed on this machine and it appears to be working fine, at least for the intent it will serve. I just want it to drive a printer for her, as serial printers are getting old and hard to find. Apple System Profiler also sees my USB CD burner, though I haven't tried to burn a disc with it (don't feel like installing Toast just to see if it works). Here's what I did to make this work; hopefully someone here can benefit from this: I purchased a USB card from Circuit City (other stores in the area sell them too, but they all had Belkin cards, which I understand is best to avoid). The card is made by ADS and is model number USBX-500. I installed in in my G4 to verify it worked before going any further. The G4 wouldn't go to sleep, it would lock up when tried. I figured if it did the same in the G3, oh well, she's upgrading from a 7100, which doesn't have a sleep option anyway. When the G3 arrived, I did a clean install of OS 9.1. It had 9.1 on it originally, but this came from a school surplus, and wanted to make sure there were no password protections to cause me grief later. I then put the USB card in the machine, in the slot closest to the ROM (slot 1 or A?). ASP recognized the card, but didn't see anything I plugged into it. I then trashed the HID Lib extention, and installed USB Card Supprt 1.4.1. It works fine now. It can print to my printer (hopefully to whatever one she decides to buy as well), and can see the CDRW I hooked to it as well. I didn't try the scanner, or the optical mouse I currently have hooked to the G4, as these devices aren't going to be needed right away anyhow. The G3 also goes to sleep when told to do so, unlike the G4; I haven't tried to let it go to sleep due to inactivity. I currently have that set to "never" anyway. My sister isn't very computer literate, and I can picture the phone call when it shut off by itself :) Well, that's the end of the procedure. Other things I've done to the machine thus far include: Installing the usual complement of software (internet, word processor, games, etc.) I pulled a 32M DIMM from it and replaced ot with a 64M pulled from my G4 (it now has 224M of RAM, plenty for what it'll be used for) Set up Remote Access, TCP/IP, and Modem CPSs to work with her (our) ISP and modem. Verified that the Zip and floppy drives read and write. Verfied that the CD-ROM reads. Set the DIP switches on the monitor adapter so it can work with a SVGA monitor. I picked up a 15" SVGA monitor for her at Goodwill last weekend for $2.64! And it works fine, such a deal. Burned copies of the software I'm giving her, so I can install them on the G4 if needed (for "tech support", I've already got newer versions for the G4) I did the same with the software I've given my Dad, and haven't had to do anything with those yet. Hopefully, I've just wasted a bunch of CD-Rs :) Noticed something truly sad. After installing everything I can see her wanting to do with this machine, I've only used 600M of HD space. I'm writing this on an SE/30 that has a 1.2G external HD on it that is more full than that! My name is Jason and I'm a Mac a holic... Hope this may help someone out there, J White Buy American S.O.S. Save Our Steel -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
