Robert, The B&W is a nice machine... I have two of them.
Lessee... You can max out the ram to 1 GB (4 x 256 MB) There are some processor options. You can go to an Apple 450 MHz G3. You can install a 450 MHz G4 CPU from the first gen. G4 machines... the Yikes/PCI graphics. (Note: Going to a G4 CPU will most likely require a firmware update to unlock G4 compatibility and it cannot be installed in OS X) There are other CPUs available from suppliers such as OWC and Sonnet up to 1 GHz. (My twin Smurfs have the G4/450 CPU and performed admirably) Hard drives... The B&W has two different motherboards Rev. 1 and Rev. 2. The Rev. 1 is ===notorious=== for being finicky with anything but the original HD. The Rev. 2 resolved this problem. (To identify your system see: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/newfeatures.html) The B&W is limited to to a maximum 128 GB, although this can be gotten around by using an add-on PCI/IDE adapter card. (OR using external USB or Firewire drives. At one point I had two 500GB USB drives connected.) Optical drives: Since I upgraded my machines, things may have changed, but at the time some DVD drives were not bootable in the B&W. Some research would be prudent. FWIW, I found a Lite-On drive that was bootable and burned all CD/DVD media. (Lite-On SHOW-1693S) Graphics: The stock video card had 16 MB VRAM and, in my case, worked just fine for most purposes. I did upgrade one machine to a Radeon 7500 (I think) w/64MB VRAM, not so much for the extra video memory, but it had two video outputs and I love having two displays to work with! ;-) Wireless: There are some options here... check eBay. I only had wireless on my B&W for a short period, because a the network switch was less than a foot from the machine and b I needed the card for a peecee I was using for a media center. I was using a Netgear card with a driver from OrangeWare (~ $15)... Seemed to work fine. That¹s about all that comes to mind at the moment... Perhaps more caffeine will jostle a thought or two loose! Amanda My Macs: Mac SE Superdrive (Sylvester) Powerbook G3/266 Wallstreet (Waldo) iMac G3/266 (George) Powermac B&W G3 w/G4/450 x 2 (Bruce and Bryce) Powermac G4 Sawtooth 1.6GHz (Gregory) Powermac G4 GigE dual 450Mhz (Gene) Powermac G4 Digital Audio 733MHz (Dave) Powerbook G4 15² Al 1.5GHz (Albert) iMac G5 20² 1.8GHz (Warren) iMac Intel 20² Core 2 Dou 2.4 GHz (Irving) -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
