On Jun 3, 2005, at 9:09 PM, Brian wrote:
I'm new to this list, so please bear with me.
I just bought a G3 400 mHz r2 B&W Powermac (which has not arrived yet)
and have several ideas of what I'd like to do with it already, so I
thought I'd run it by the knowledgeable folks here since I don't have
alot of specific B&W info.
The main thing I'd like to do with this machine is make it my
"expanded legacy machine." This means I would like it to run every
major Mac OS release on it from 8.5 to present. I plan to do this
either with multiple hard drives (as many internal as is feasible) or
with one large hard drive and many partitions.
however, before that happens I need to worry about one thing in
particular: the optical drive. So far as I know, the rev. 2
motherboard 400 mHz models cam standard with a CD ROM drive. This
means I will have to upgrade the optical drive, and am not sure
exactly what I will need to do so. Is it just as simple as a drive
and a decoder that comes with the drive, or will I have to buy extra
components?
What are the options I have for installing hard drives on this
machine? Will I need anything in particular to make modern, larger
hard drives work with it?
What video cards are excellent choices for upgrade in particular?
What kind of card does it use: PCI of AGP?
Which of the ZIF upgrades is worth my attention? Do any of them have
any bugs/issues?
As you can tell, I'm a bit excited, and am eagerly anticipating this
package. Here is everything I know about the machine thus far:
B&W Rev 2 tower
400 mhz
zip drive
64 MB RAM
10 GB HD
ATI Rage Pro (Stock video card)
Tested using OS 9.1
All standard ports, 2 USB, 2 FW, 1 ADB, 1 Ethernet, 1 Sound out, 1 Mic
Power cord
Any opinions are welcome, keep in mind I plan to upgrade this machine
extensively as a project/hobby. It will serve uses beyond this, but I
enjoy tinkering with things like this and squeezing whatever i can out
of them. Cost factor and cost effectiveness will be considered, but
are not a primary concern.
Brian
First off, welcome to the list Brian. The B&W is an excellent machine
to experiment with. I have, in the past, run most of the Mac OS'es on
mine, as well as a couple of versions of Linux. The first thing you
want to do is upgrade the RAM. It will take up to 4-256 Mb sticks. I
recommend the OWC branded ones from OWC. They are cheap and work well
with the B&W. As for optical drive, you didn't really specify which
direction you want to go, but mentioning a decoder I would assume a
DVD-ROM drive at the least. I have a Lite-On 48x combo drive in mine
and works very nicely for both viewing DVD's and burning CD's. It's
also bootable on the B&W. If you plan to view DVD's in anything less
than OSX, you will need a hardware decoder board. I got lucky with
mine as it originally came with a DVD-ROM drive and also had the Rage
128 Pro with the decoder board. I have since upgraded the video to a
Radeon 7000 Mac edition (PCI) board with no decoder. I don't need or
want to view DVD's in OS9, so I put my Rage 128 in my old beige. I
believe that a 120 Gb drive is the largest supported with the on-board
IDE interface, but you can add a PCI ATA-133 card which will support
larger drives. There are many ZIF upgrades available for the B&W, but
do try to find one which takes advantage of the B&W's faster bus speed.
Some are limited for use in the beige models and therefore use the
slower bus speed. I have a G4-450 Mhz (Overclocked to 500 Mhz) Fastmac
upgrade ZIF in mine. There are much faster ones available, but cost
was a factor for me. I use broadband/ethernet, so I don't know much
about modem options. I think this covers most of your questions, at
least the ones I could answer from my perspective, I'm sure others will
reply as well. HTH
Just a message from Doug...
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