Blue and White G3 - OSX or OS9?

drunkmac said:
However, I tried throwing in a 2nd 80gb hard drive and it bugged out at me and wouldnt boot up. So....if you have any idea why, lemme know.
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You should check the master slave settings of both drives.
 
Good point Chevy. I only checked the 80gb that I ripped out of my old PC. That was set on Slave but I never checked the Master inside the G3.
 
Some early versions of the B&W G3 machine (dubbed "revision 1" or "rev A") cannot handle more than one hard drive. Later versions ("revision 2" or "rev B" machines) can handle two hard drives just fine.

Here's one way to tell (by looking at markings on the IDE controller chip):
http://www.applefritter.com/node/5748
 
Trying to run OS X on my B&W G3 drove me nutts... I loved OS X, but it was frustratingly slow, and I had 750MB of RAM and 50GB drive.

It's what finally triggered me to buy the G4 I have now.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Some early versions of the B&W G3 machine (dubbed "revision 1" or "rev A") cannot handle more than one hard drive. Later versions ("revision 2" or "rev B" machines) can handle two hard drives just fine.

Here's one way to tell (by looking at markings on the IDE controller chip):
http://www.applefritter.com/node/5748
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exactly. some even have troubles with one. the rev. B board was better and because of that it was used in the first G4 powermac (yikes)

fastmac now has G4 500 zifs for 99$. think it ends soon so if you can upgrade now.
 
Im liking the G4 500 upgrade for such a low price! But I have bad news!!!

Yesterday I was installing OS X and halfway through it, my monitor went ZAP! and now doesn't work anymore! What the heck happened?! Now my G3 is sitting around doing nothing...argghhhh!
 
The monitor I had...was some generic beige KDS 17" monitor. Im just gonna go drop $100 on a new one tomorrow..but I wish i didnt have to. It keeps clicking in the back.
 
Get a flat screen if you can afford it (and if you don't need true colors): it's some much smaller on your desk, better for your eyes (no flicker) and needs far less power.
 
TommyWillB said:
Trying to run OS X on my B&W G3 drove me nutts... I loved OS X, but it was frustratingly slow, and I had 750MB of RAM and 50GB drive.

It's what finally triggered me to buy the G4 I have now.
Click to expand...

Yes, 10.0 and 10.1 were slow on G3s. 10.2 and 10.3 are much better.
 
Yet another UPDATE:

Best Buy has this nice 17" black CRT for $99 with a $20 mail in rebate...so score. Except I paid $30 in cab fees between getting there and back to my apartment, but whatever. Did I mention the goods? The auction said the following:

+No Zip Drive included
+6.4gb hard drive
+No OS

It came with a Zip Drive, with a 10gb hard drive (still tryin to get that 80gb in there...im going to check the version of the G3 I have), and with OS 9.2.2 freshly installed! And the guy threw in a matching Apple G3 blue keyboard and puck mouse.

As for performance, I just installed OS 10.3.4 off of DVD and it's updating all the software which Im sure is killing performance. But even with the lag, it's pretty smooth considering it's 300mhz with 320mb of RAM (gonna try the last 128mb stick I have left tonight)

Next post will have pics! Now...whats the best way to up the CPU?
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Forget about the G4 chips -- go with a 1.1GHz G3 ZIF!

http://powerlogix.com/products/g3_zif/index.html
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good point but those are 350$ US. plus if altivec is well used by an app then a G4 of half the speed or less can beat it. a guy on spymac with the 1.1 G3 said high res/high frame rate video was a tad choppy in vlc and mplayer(which are both altivec apps). my G4 500 zif never skips a frame.

don't forget that osx uses altivec quite well also. get a G4 500 cheap and max the ram. the same config never leaves me feeling left out.
 
drunkmac said:
Thanks for the input. Anyone else have any suggestions on what I could do to this box?
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Install Linux on it!


You can use Yellowdog Linux (I've never used it) or what I recommend it using Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org). Go get the livecd and do a stage 3 install on it (the stage 1 isn't worth it for slow computers). Then emerge fluxbox or enlightenment. You can install Gnome or KDE but it's going to take longer. In fact it took up to three days to install KDE on my G3 500mhz 640MB iBook. Gnome took about a day or so. Linux on the PPC is very fast and smooth. Everything for your notebook should be supported except the 56k modem. I'm not sure about that since I use cable internet. Not to mention there's tools to clockdown your processor speed (cpudyn) and other tools to spin down the hard drive(hdparm) that will make the batter last longer. That's what I did with my old iBook and it runs like new. IMO Gentoo has better support with PPC and installing packages is easy.

Edit: I forgot to mention the fact that I'm not saying Linux is better then OS X. Since I will be buying a new powerbook this fall just because I enjoy OS X that much. I'm just saying that for old PPC hardware it's better to use a operating system that's not going to blog down the system. If you wanted to you can dual boot OS X and Linux on that machine. In fact that's what I'm doing right now. Also I can run OS X in linux using MOL. www.maconlinux.org/ Linux on the PPC is improving. Java and Flash is still a bit shady. But everything else runs great.
 
Hydraulix said:
Install Linux on it!


You can use Yellowdog Linux (I've never used it) or what I recommend it using Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org). Go get the livecd and do a stage 3 install on it (the stage 1 isn't worth it for slow computers). Then emerge fluxbox or enlightenment. You can install Gnome or KDE but it's going to take longer. In fact it took up to three days to install KDE on my G3 500mhz 640MB iBook. Gnome took about a day or so. Linux on the PPC is very fast and smooth. Everything for your notebook should be supported except the 56k modem. I'm not sure about that since I use cable internet. Not to mention there's tools to clockdown your processor speed (cpudyn) and other tools to spin down the hard drive(hdparm) that will make the batter last longer. That's what I did with my old iBook and it runs like new. IMO Gentoo has better support with PPC and installing packages is easy.
Click to expand...

As much as I love Linux/ppc, there are some things you are going to have to live without if you DO decide to go the Linux/ppc route:

1. No Flash (I can deal with this, but some sites that I actually enjoy I can't view because Macromedia is being a PITA about supporting PPC Linux)
2. No Java (unless you use Kaffe, which I might have to use myself for Java support on Linux/ppc)
3. 3D Acceleration Support (You're limited when it comes to 3D support on X11 in Linux. I believe the best you can do now is a RADEON 9200 series card. Anything beyond that for ATI cards will not support hardware 3D. Same goes for all NVIDIA chipsets)

Other than that, it's all good. Just making sure you understand what will await you in Linux/ppc land.
 
Hydraulix said:
Install Linux on it!


You can use Yellowdog Linux (I've never used it) or what I recommend it using Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org). Go get the livecd and do a stage 3 install on it (the stage 1 isn't worth it for slow computers). Then emerge fluxbox or enlightenment. You can install Gnome or KDE but it's going to take longer. In fact it took up to three days to install KDE on my G3 500mhz 640MB iBook. Gnome took about a day or so. Linux on the PPC is very fast and smooth. Everything for your notebook should be supported except the 56k modem. I'm not sure about that since I use cable internet. Not to mention there's tools to clockdown your processor speed (cpudyn) and other tools to spin down the hard drive(hdparm) that will make the batter last longer. That's what I did with my old iBook and it runs like new. IMO Gentoo has better support with PPC and installing packages is easy.

Edit: I forgot to mention the fact that I'm not saying Linux is better then OS X. Since I will be buying a new powerbook this fall just because I enjoy OS X that much. I'm just saying that for old PPC hardware it's better to use a operating system that's not going to blog down the system. If you wanted to you can dual boot OS X and Linux on that machine. In fact that's what I'm doing right now. Also I can run OS X in linux using MOL. www.maconlinux.org/ Linux on the PPC is improving. Java and Flash is still a bit shady. But everything else runs great.
Click to expand...


Man...you beat me to it. :p
 
nixgeek said:
As much as I love Linux/ppc, there are some things you are going to have to live without if you DO decide to go the Linux/ppc route:

1. No Flash (I can deal with this, but some sites that I actually enjoy I can't view because Macromedia is being a PITA about supporting PPC Linux)
2. No Java (unless you use Kaffe, which I might have to use myself for Java support on Linux/ppc)
3. 3D Acceleration Support (You're limited when it comes to 3D support on X11 in Linux. I believe the best you can do now is a RADEON 9200 series card. Anything beyond that for ATI cards will not support hardware 3D. Same goes for all NVIDIA chipsets)

Other than that, it's all good. Just making sure you understand what will await you in Linux/ppc land.
Click to expand...



:D

The flash thing is going to be a problem until Macromedia decides to join the Linux PPC community. Until then you can do this. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-117774-highlight-flash+ppc.html

Java is also shady right now. A couple of my friends are trying to work this one out.

3D Acceleration Support is just luck of the draw. Hopefully it will get better with X.org


I forgot to mention that sleep does work on old G3 machines. Just make sure you have enough swap space. 512MB should be fine.
 
Also, G3s don't allow booting off of firewire devices and I'm sure that includes dvd/cd drives so you'll have to go down the internal route.
Click to expand...

I boot my Pismo off a firewire 80G HD every day.

BenG
 
It's not a "problem," so to speak -- it's just not supported. It's also not supported on Yikes! (PCI graphics) G4 machines as well.
 
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