First to what you saw at the Compusa site. I did a lot of research on these for my beige project. There are two types of multifunction panels. Some of them have a regular USB port, among others, on the back of them and are designed to plug into a regular USB port and whatever other ports they have on the front. These are generically called a Transfer Panel. Others have a connector that plugs onto the internal usb pins on a pcs motherboard.What you want for your beige is a transfer panel, it transfers ports from the back of your computer to the front. You run cables from the back of your computer to the back of the panel, usually by replacing one of the covers over an unused pci slot.
You have to look closely at the picture to see what kind of cables the panel has with it. If the cables have regular USB connectors on one end you will be fine. Newegg.com has an assortment with good pictures mixed into the other items starting here and going on for 6 pages.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ ListProduct.asp?DEPA=1&submit=list&catalog=11&description=&sortby=22&ord er=0
I picked up one of these for my beige MT. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=13-999-201&depa=1
You don't want to use a bare memory card for storage because they are pretty fragile. What you want to get is a USB pen drive, basically a memory card with a USB interface that you just plug into a usb port to use. These are recognized in both X and 9 (assuming you have the usb card working) with no additional software or drivers. Compgeeks.com even has an analog watch with a built in 128meg or 256meg usb flash drive.
The card readers that say they will fit in a floppy drive bay are referring to a standard pc floppy bay that is 3.5" wide by 1" tall. The only way to get it into your beige's floppy bay is with some serious case modding. You can put one of your HDs up there, just check for cooling, you may need an extra fan.
If you don't want to put your drive in place of the floppy, some of the transfer panels have room to mount a hard disk on them so you don't need to use an extra drive bay.
As far as DVD drives are concerned, you have 2 options.
1) Just pick up an Apple branded one on the swap list and you won't have to do any extra hacking to get it to work.
2) Almost any generic IDE will play dvds since you already have a DVD decoder on the Radeon 7000, but you will have to hack Apple's DVD player to get it to recognize the drive. If you are running X, the Videolan client will play dvds, in 9 you have to hack apple's player. If you go this route, make sure you check out the compatibility list at xlr8yourmac.com.
Here is my setup in a beige MT running 10.2.8 (yes, I downloaded it when it first appeared, but had no problems with it) :
G4 533, 768meg, 80g on a Ahard ATA 133 card, Radeon 7000, Generic USB card, Useless floppy drive( I have not been able to get the SWIM hack to work yet), orig 24x cd, Toshiba 8x8x8x24 DVD/CDRW (it got better reviews than the faster drive at xlr8yourmac) and a multifunction transfer panel that includes USB, sound ports(in and out) and a temp readout along with unused firewire and game ports on the front.
Don't hesitate to contact me off list with other questions if you think they are too specific for the general list
HTH, Len On Saturday, Oct 4, 2003, at 12:48 US/Eastern, Matthew Lawrence wrote:
I saw something like this, as a feature of the eMachines system as it
appears for $648 in the current Wal-Mart ad. In looking at the CompUSA web
site, I found this one
http://www.compusa.com/products/ product_info.asp?product_code=299264&pfp=BRO
WSE
This seems like one option, toward moving away from zip disk storage, and
upgrading to a DVD drive, as well. I've read about a few folks, on this
list, that have even pulled the floppy drive from their beige G3, in favor
of another HD or another disc storage option. Could the floppy drive bay be
the best place for me to put the above card reader, then I could replace the
zip 750 drive with a DVD drive? Since I've already got an Apple 8x4x32 CD-RW
drive installed, what do I really need to look for, in a DVD drive, since
bootable is a non-issue?
Lastly, according to the CompUSA page about the reader, the interface is
USB. If I'm not mistaken, the Sonnet Tango (USB/FireWire combo) card has one
internal USB port, doesn't it? Yes, it's been a while since I've been inside
the box, after finally installing all of my PCI cards. The next time I go
into the box will be when I upgrade the processor (again), and upgrade the
internal HD's (again).
Matt in Indiana --
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