I have been given (for free!) a blue & white G3, 400 mhz I think. I dunno
what difference the color makes. My friend is not a Mac person at all but
thinks it has OS9 on it plus some fairly major design software. So it's
really a pig in a poke for me but at least there's no money involved. Yet.
It does not have a monitor, mouse, or anything else, just the unit itself
and a Macally keyboard of some unknown provenance, and a power cord.BW basically designates the model of PowerMac G3.
There was the PowerMac G3 [Beige - Desktop, Minitower, All-In-One] and the PowerMac G3 [Blue and White / Yosemite - Minitower].
Up to now I have been using a Umax Supermac C500 (purchased new in June
1997), currently with 8.6, and upgraded to a G3/280, the max 144 mb RAM, and
a 20gb HD.
This will be a very large step up performance wise. The BW G3 will take up to 1GB of RAM using 4x 512MB DIMMs, has a 100MHz system bus, and higher system throughput.
This G3 is completely new territory for me. How do I find out what this thing does? If anyone could offer me the most basic guidance on how to proceed I would really appreciate it.
Well, it does a lot. It has ADB [standard Old World Mac connection for keyboards and mice], is also has USB, FireWire, ATA/33 for hard drives,10/100T Ethernet, and a PCI video card [ATi Rage128 16MB].
For instance, I assume my current monitor would work, but will the keyboard
and mouse from my C500 work with it? If not, what kinds should I be looking
for (or avoiding) and what might they run me?
Since the BW G3 has an ADB port that same mouse and keyboard should work fine for you. Any Mac compatible [nearly any USB keyboard at all basically ...] USB keyboard or mouse will work. All major brands are supported under Mac OS X [some advanced features on some mice and keyboards require drivers], under Mac OS 9 and earlier drivers may be required depending on model.
Also, is there a way to get manuals for the unit itself and whatever software it might have?
The manual is on Apple's site, do a search at http://www.apple.com/support and set the pull down menu to manuals. No way to know what software he has loaded but to ask or look since it sounds like your friend has loaded more than the stock system software package on it.
You should know that it will run Mac OS X v.10.3.2 [the current version] quite nicely given that it has enough RAM [performance wise most people want a minimum of 256MB if not more, 512MB runs quite nice].
My thanks for any information, thoughts, leads, etc.
Everymac.com, Apple.com/support, MacTracker, all have specs and information about the BW G3. Since yours is a 400MHz model it probably has a DVD-ROM drive installed as that was standard equipment on that speed unless your friend got it BTO. The DVD-ROM drive requires a hardware decoder card which would be a black card plugged into the video card inside. That is only required to play DVDs under Mac OS 9 and earlier. Mac OS X will play DVDs without the decoder card.
If your BW G3 is a revision 2 model then it supports slave drives [ie, two drives connected on each hard drive cable]. You can look up how to tell the revision in the FAQ at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com, hope this all helps.
BWs are very nice Macs. Both myself and a friend run a BW G3 400 as a Mac OS X Server v.10.3.1 system currently, no problems for either of us.
David
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