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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Upgrades Apple

Beige G3 Resurrection Project 210

Posted by Cliff from the revival-of-a-beige-box dept.
jgardner asks: "I have been a Mac user since '84, and lust for the latest hardware with the best of them. However, my bank account is less than accommodating. My current machine is a Beige G3 266. I use it for Quark & Photoshop work, and would like to move to Jaguar if the performance hit isn't too great. Does anyone have advice and/or experience that will help me save a few bucks and avoid any potential pitfalls?"
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Beige G3 Resurrection Project

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  • Not much hope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AdamBLang ( 674002 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:38PM (#6729597)
    Fill 'er up with RAM. If you buy any other upgrade, you're half way to a new eMac.

    • Re:Not much hope (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I completely agree...

      You're looking at approx. $150 for RAM, $130 for OSX, $100 for a new HD (OSX needs 1.5GB on its own). That's near $400 right there! Does you're current mac even have a CDROM? Spend $500 on eBay and get a first rev eMac. Not worth the hassle.

      Another way to look at it...

      You have had this current Mac for how long? Assuming you are in the same financial boat you were in when bought it, I figure "bite the bullet" and finance a new one. Sure, you won't pay it off for 6+ years, but you obvi
      • I have a first revision eMac. All I have to say is "Don't get one if you can't get AppleCare (because it was purchased too long ago)". They have a part in the monitor that breaks and then you have to either a) get it fixed at a high cost due to lots of labor or b) plug in an external monitor.

        As far as I know, that'e the only bug on them, but it's an expensive one.
      • Shit, if somebody can't finance a new eMac in 6 years, their computing platform is the least of their worries. That's 3 Happy Meals per month. 10 bucks (which is the standard McDonalds hourly wage). I would suggest looking for a real job (McDonald's, anyone?) above trying to squeeze the last bit of whey from your ancient slice of cheese.

        To put this in perspective, all you need to purchase that new eMac is to work 1 hour per MONTH at McDonalds (in case your math sklls need honing).

    • Re:Not much hope (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Geez. She asked how she can make her Beige a functional computer with Jaguar and Quark/Photoshop. Far be it that we might actually answer her question. My wife has the same exact setup for the same exact purpose. The CPU was overclocked to 300Mhz to get some more headroom for processing OSX and those two apps. The RAM was maxed at 768MB. A PCI Radeon Mac Edition was installed for better video performance. A FireWire/USB card was installed for peripherals. An ATA/66 controller was installed to get better HDD

  • Buy Something (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:38PM (#6729601)
    You sound like my dad who doesn't want to give up his 486/100, or his 86' Imperial, or 75 Sear 19" console TV. Really, the time and effort, and certain headaches you will get, is not worth it. Go get an G4. Plus, you want to upgrade your OS but you think your high end software will run on it? You gonna run it under Classic and think it will run better? Why? You will have to pay a ton to upgrade the software so just upgrade the HW at the same time. The world turns and at some point you have to turn with it.
    • A few years ago, my Compaq 300mhz bit the dust (or rather the cheap assed motherboard did due to crappy capcitors).
      I went to get a new mobo, and other parts. I got a mobo that supported dual Ghz processors, RAID, SCSI onboard, and was made by Supermicro (P6DGU). Great board, but i've been pained to get rid of it. I eventually put one 850mhz PIII in it, but since it uses slot 1 chips, the prices never really dropped on the second chip.
      The main software I use is Protools, which only recently supported dual

  • Re: Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gooru ( 592512 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:42PM (#6729623)
    would like to move to Jaguar if the performance hit isn't too great

    Seriously, why do you need to use OS X at all? What does it provide you that you can't get in Mac OS 9 currently that you absolutely need? I would seriously sit down and think about that one. Then, I would add up how much it'll cost you to upgrade you Mac to use OS X. Don't forget to include: hardware you'll absolutely need to buy, Mac OS X itself, native versions of QuarkXPress and Photoshop and anything else you might want, and the time you're going to use up upgrading your system and trying to get it to work with Mac OS X.

    IMHO, the price is just too high unless you can simply buy a new computer, especially with the time you'll need to put into it.

    • Re: Why bother? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Laplace ( 143876 )
      If you want the Unix bits, Yellow Dog Linux with an OS 9 drive for Mac on Linux (similar to Classic in OS X) and Photoshop 5.5 or 6 will work just fine, too.
    • "What does it provide you that you can't get in Mac OS 9 currently that you absolutely need?"

      1. Stability.
      2. Stability.
      3. Stability.
      4. The ability to run *nix apps.

    • Re: Why bother? (Score:3, Informative)

      by tgibbs ( 83782 )
      I have a couple of beige G3/233's running Jaguar, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the performance. Although Jaguar has the reputation of being slower than OS9, I find that they feel "snappier", probably because the improved multitasking doesn't let one application bring everything else to a standstill. You can even work in one application while another one is loading. Performance is fine for web browsing, word processing, and other routine tasks, and iTunes runs well, copying from the CD drive at ab
      • One more caveat: if your HD is more than 8 GB, you will need to repartition so that the first partition is a bit less than 8 GB, and use that one for your OSX install.
      • > they feel "snappier", probably because the
        > improved multitasking doesn't let one application
        > bring everything else to a standstill

        You must be running a different Jaguar than I am.
        Can you say "spinning rainbow pizza wheel of death"?

  • Here's a tip that'll help you save... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone have advice and/or experience that will help me save a few bucks and avoid any potential pitfalls?"

    Don't upgrade Quark.

  • What's the maximum RAM for your machine? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:45PM (#6729638) Homepage
    The biggest problem I see (and I became a Mac user in 2001, so beige Apple boxes make me think of the Apple IIe) is how much OS X needs RAM. 512MB minimum. Really.

    Not saying it's impossible, but how would you benefit by running Jaguar? You'd be running slower, you'd have to upgrade your software--I mean you're not going to slow down your system by installing Jaguar just to run Photoshop under Classic are you? Kind of defeats the purpose. Upgrades for Photoshop and Quark alone will run you $400 (don't remember how much Quark is, but PS upgrades are typically $200), not to mention whatever other software you use day-to-day. And the $100 or so for Jaguar. That's $500 there. You can buy a used iMac for that much and be a lot happier even if you're running your current programs in Classic (but this time on a machine that's able to handle Jaguar in the first place).

    At any rate, you're better off asking this question on a Mac site. Mac OS X FAQ at http://www.macosxfaq.com is a good place to start. Best of luck if you try it, but I wouldn't bother. Especially if you want to get any work done.

  • Save your time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rpsoucy ( 93944 ) <rps@soucy.org> on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:49PM (#6729665) Homepage
    The best advice I can give you is to throw your G3 266 in the nearest dumpster.

    Mac OS X has trouble running on some of the older iMac's which came out after the PowerMac G3 your talking about. MacOS X simply doesn't have the hardware drivers for the older Mac's, and since Apple does both software AND hardware, it's unlikely that you'll find any third party drivers you can get your hands on.

    You can get a good iBook, or eMac for under $1,000 these days if you're looking for something with OS X, I'd go with a G4 though. The G3's are slowly being phased out completely. I'm pretty sure that what ever version of OS X that comes after Panther won't even support most G3's.

    Keep in mind that it has always been the pratice of Apple to 'encourage' you to get the latest hardware by making the latest OS require it.
    • The best option is to run a flavor of Linux

      There is nothing OSX can do on a beige G3 that Linux can't, and Linux will be ten times more responsive. When it comes to RAM use, Linux leads the way there too.

      You could pack the Beige up with RAM and a larger HD along with a top PCI graphics card, and OSX would run to a limited level. You still wouldn't be happy with its performance.

      I suggest YDL and a USB/Firewire card to allow use of newer peripherals. If you have enough RAM for Photoshop then you have enoug

    • Mac OS X has trouble running on some of the older iMac's which came out after the PowerMac G3 your talking about. MacOS X simply doesn't have the hardware drivers for the older Mac's, and since Apple does both software AND hardware, it's unlikely that you'll find any third party drivers you can get your hands on.

      Read: I don't know anything about Apple or OSX

      This is not true, there are drivers for the older machines, you can get them from the Darwin site. Plus both X.1 and X.2 run faster than the publi

      • Re:Save your time (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @02:57AM (#6730424) Homepage Journal

        Well, I disagree with the parent to your post on a few points, too, but you need to double-check your stuff first, too:

        Also Panther, X.3, has better support for the older Macs.

        Read: I've never actually done research on this, but if I use a gimmicky narrative, I'll sound accurate.

        As a matter of fact [216.239.53.104], current developer seeds of Panther aren't supported on Macs that didn't come with built-in USB, which includes all beige G3s. Ten bucks says Panther isn't going to run on this guy's beige box, regardless of how you feel about that.

    • You can get a good iBook, or eMac for under $1,000 these days if you're looking for something with OS X, I'd go with a G4 though. The G3's are slowly being phased out completely.

      The eMac has a G4. You can get one for about $800 (though I would at least add a bunch of RAM to that model). Also, the G3 won't be phased out for a while.

    • If you put that computer in the dumpster I'll kick your ass. I recycle these things for schools and local art centers! You can put a G4 and better HD in a beige G3 for under $150 and it makes a fine internet machine for someone who is too poor to afford a computer (let alone one that will run Mac OS X!) I wouldn't recommend that config for graphic design, but for a carefree web surfer, its a cheap way to get into Macs and Mac OS X.

      Old Mac hardware is ALWAYS useful! If you want to get rid of a beige G3,

  • As a Mac user... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PateraSilk ( 668445 )
    I say, find someone who wants to sell his charcoal 766 MHz G4 for cheap now that he's getting a cheese grat--I mean, a G5. I run the prepress department at a medium-sized printshop and I have my 300MHz beige G3 box running a print server for the Stylus RIP and the PictroProofer.

    Why? Well, it's fast enough to handle those jobs but not much else anymore (the latest Adobe products are total bloatware), it has an AppleTalk printer port, and a real live SCSI port.

    Bottom line--save it for those OS9 apps you re

  • A few things: (Score:3, Informative)

    by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:57PM (#6729712) Homepage Journal
    Okay, a few things besides the obvious "buy an eMac" if you MUST MUST MUST keep this machine:

    * Max the RAM (which, IIRC, is 768M), but is getting more expensive since it's special voltage RAM for this line.
    * Get a G3 CPU upgrade [sonnettech.com] either new or used (G3 Upgrades are hundreds less than G4 Upgrades)
    * A new video card, if you're still using onboard video. A Radeaon 9200 PCI [compusa.com] is $80 from Compusa and probably be several orders faster than the onboard Rage Pro chip.
    * Faster hard drive. If you're stuck on some old 5400RPM your perfrormance can suffer -- this goes in hand with the next thing:
    * New IDE controller. The onboard IDE doesn't do DMA/66/100/133 and is a real dog performance-wise. Something new can give you a surprising performance boost.
    * Ethernet controller. If you have to push the limits, can even think about a new ethernet controller that will have less CPU utilization. ... plus, if you do this and later want to move to a slightly faster machine like a Blue&White G3 , which can be had for as little as $100 in 400mHz/0M/0M configs, the RAM and video card will carry over.
    • I'd agree with most of this except for the G3 CPU Upgrade. Running new OS software has always been a bit iffy with these.

      RAM should be the first step, followed by a new video card.
    • That video card won't work without a lot of hassle (and even then I don't think it will). You'll have to have a PC to flash mac firmware to it. Assuming that you can get new mac firmware to flash to it. The fastest 3d PCI card you can get for the Mac is the Radeon 7000 PCI. I'm too lazy to find a link but I think its about $120.
    • Here [versiontracker.com] is a link to pci XTREME (which enables quartz xtreme on "incompatible" video cards including PCIs and 2x AGP's).

      This thing works with radeons and really makes OS X usable.. but there's word that it might max out PCIs when running too many graphic intensive things at once.. it's too bad a 266 couldn't run anything like that anyway :)

      Without quartz xtreme, you almost can't use the file manager.. so of course there's a 3rd party solution: Path Finder [cocoatech.com]. Formally named "SNAX", this extremely fast and eff

    • Re:A few things: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @03:54AM (#6730634)
      * Max the RAM (which, IIRC, is 768M), but is getting more expensive since it's special voltage RAM for this line.

      $180 [thechipmerchant.com] don't forget - its not just voltage - its gotta be THIS ram, else its too tall for the case.

      * Get a G3 CPU upgrade either new or used (G3 Upgrades are hundreds less than G4 Upgrades)

      $169 for a G3/500, 300 for a G4/500 and $500 for a G4/1GHz (on a 100 mhz buss, YEAH!) [sonnettech.com]

      * A new video card, if you're still using onboard video. A Radeaon 9200 PCI is $80 from Compusa and probably be several orders faster than the onboard Rage Pro chip.

      pffff.. okay.. i'll give you this. $80.

      * Faster hard drive. If you're stuck on some old 5400RPM your perfrormance can suffer -- this goes in hand with the next thing:

      $80 for your average everyday 80 gig 7200 RPM hard drive.

      * New IDE controller. The onboard IDE doesn't do DMA/66/100/133 and is a real dog performance-wise. Something new can give you a surprising performance boost.

      i'm sure we'll be using it not only for Photoshop, but for video editing too... so lets get ATA 133 and USB 2 and Firewire all at the same time... because i'm starting to wonder wtf all these PCI cards are going to go in a machine with only 3 slots....

      $180 [sonnettech.com]

      * Ethernet controller. If you have to push the limits, can even think about a new ethernet controller that will have less CPU utilization. ... plus, if you do this and later want to move to a slightly faster machine like a Blue&White G3 , which can be had for as little as $100 in 400mHz/0M/0M configs, the RAM and video card will carry over.

      personal experience tell me this is a $20 item.

      what's that all cost us bob???

      $710 for a screaming G3 Frankenmac with every slot filled much like a high priced porno actress.

      add $140 for a G4 500 to give you an amazing, unaccelerated, PCI based 500 megahurts piece of shit for $850 flat!

      I mean - its only got a worse video card, slower bus speed, and no free 17 inch monitor when compared to a perfectly overpriced eMac.

      i need to drink less dr pepper before bed.
      • $190 - OWC MercuryZA G4/450-466MHz Altivec Enhanced ZIF with 1MB@225MHz 2:1 Backside Cache. New with 2yr OWC Warranty here [macsales.com] $96 - 3 256MB SDRAM sticks here [macsolutions.com] $40 - Dual Head 32MB PCI Radeon 7000, Flashable to Mac ROMS here [ebay.com] $46 - Combo Firewire/USB card here [macsales.com] $72 - 80GB HD here [newegg.com] $450.
      • You don't need the fancy short ram. I stuck regular DIMMS in my Desktop Gossamer by removing the metal grating over the power supply fan. The fan is actually within the power supply, so you don't have to worry about it whacking the ram.
    • The RAM in the beige G3s is (AFAIK) standard PC100. At least I purchase standard PC100 memory, install it and it works fine. I have two machines maxed out at 768MB of PC100.

      Instead of a CPU upgrade card, consider reading the forums on xlr8yourmac. There's some simple jumper settings you can make to overclock the biege G3 system. I've got my stock 333 running at 375 and my stock 233 running at 275. That's 12% and 18% increase in processing speed respectively (for free). In both cases the bus speed is also f

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I'm in the process of upgrading a B&W G3 to Radeon 7000 graphics and a 466MHz G4. For prices you can't beat EBay, the Radeons only show up rarely but I got one for $89 versus about $120 retail. DayStarTech [daystar-store.com] sells CPU upgrades. You can get better prices on Daystar's equipment on EBay than at their website, I got a G4 466 for $145 versus $189 retail.

  • holy crap (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18, 2003 @11:58PM (#6729719)
    This is probably one of the worst questions I've ever seen posted. Shouldn't this be an Ask Slashdot? Even so, it's a fucking 266, it's going to be slow no matter what you do.

    I'm going to submit a story and put it under the Apple section, apparently they'll publish anything if you classify it as Apple:

    Dear Slashdot, I've been an avid Apple IIe user since first grade. My old Apple IIe is aging, but I'd like to run Photoshop on it because my employer requires me to have it at home. Could anyone offer me any advice to help me in my quest to make Photoshop run in 32k of ram on a 2mhz processor? I'm guessing I will need to upgrade to the color card and buy an RF converter so I can use it on my JC Penny 13" color TV/VCR combo. Unless of course someone has some tips on running photoshop under monochrome. In addition, I would like to get into doing seismic analysis on my Apple IIe. I know this has typically been the job of large Cray supercomputers in the past, but my budget won't allow for that, so does anyone out there work for an oil company that does this on IIe's?
    • my quest to make Photoshop run in 32k of ram on a 2mhz processor?

      apple IIe's had 1Mhz processor unless of course you bought a zipchip then you would have up to 4 Mhz WooHooo boy did they scream!!!

    • Re:holy crap (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't worry. Photoshop 1 does run in monochrome ! (It did on my mac Plus :-)
  • Look I love OS X Its great esecially on a dual 1ghz with 2gb of ram. Your beige wont have quartz extreme, and won't have any altvec enhancements. Basically you are looking to make yourself miserable. Now for email, word processing, surfing etc OS X works great on my Lombard 400 on teh other hand I might as well go to sleep if I want to do a decent filter in in photoshop. You will never get enough memmory to make it worth your while.

  • It can work (Score:5, Informative)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @12:19AM (#6729822) Homepage Journal
    A lot of the advice about how sluggish OSX will run on this machine is probably being spouted off by people that tried this when OSX first came out, got horrified, and vowed never to mix the two again. Apple listened to such complaints [slashdot.org], and the fact is, 10.1 and 10.2 don't run nearly as badly as 10.0 or the public beta did.

    At my last job, I spent most of a year using a beige G3/300mhz as my main desktop. It wasn't as snappy as my G4 at home, but it was much nicer to use as an everyday desktop than the more modern Linux & Windows machines I had access to, and for the sort of work I do (almost all in a command shell or web browser), this old Mac ran just fine.

    The biggest problem wasn't actually the old CPU, but the fact that, with only 320mb of ram, I'd end up swapping a lot; and with a 4gb hard drive that was nearly full just with the OS and a few applications & some files (but not much, most data I'd store & access remotely via Samba or NFS), the virtual memory system would start trying to take up more disc space than was available. I ended up having to reboot the thing every couple of weeks, but *not* because the overall system was unstable, but because I was using 25% or more of my disc for swap, the drive was full, and applications started acting funny when they couldn't allocate more space. Usually it would help a lot just to log out & back in again, but to be sure I'd just reboot, since logging out & in took say three minutes, while rebooting took four. It was just as easy to flush everything out that way rather than logout only -- I'd already lost state in all my applications anyway, so why not reboot...

    So yes, you can more or less happily run OSX on old beige G3s. As others have said, it makes sense to put in as much ram as you can, but not so much because you want to improve performance (that will actually be fine, for the most part), but because having more ram will stave off swap-death as long as possible. Likewise, if you can find an old SCSI drive to put in there, that will help for similar reasons -- once you start swapping, you have more leeway with a bigger disc. The actual speed at which an old G3 does things should for the most part be pretty reasonable for many tasks (shell, web, Office, etc).

    Have fun :-)

    • Re:It can work (Score:2, Informative)

      by mr_tap ( 693311 )

      I also run OSX.2 on a beige G3, although I just use "office apps" and not Photoshop or Quark. Works happy enough, although you will lose the use of your internal floppy drive and local printers on the printer port.

      Have a look at the info at LowEndMac [lowendmac.com]. The most important thing to remember is that if you put in a bigger drive, the boot partition must be 8Gb or smaller.

      The only other gotchas I remember were:

      • you can't use your internal floppy disk (unless you want to download drivers from mkLinux?)
      • for
      • you can't use your internal floppy disk (unless you want to download drivers from mkLinux?)
        I used a Beige G3 with OS X for some time. The floppy drive code is here [darwin-development.org]. It worked (slowly) with OX 10.1, but stopped working (for me), with OS 10.2. I finnaly changed machines, so I did not try to fix the issue.

    • Re:It can work (Score:3, Informative)

      by Benley ( 102665 )

      I agree, it's feasible to run OS X on a beige g3, with a few upgrades to make it a resonable machine. I did this myself for quite a while. The most important one for that particular box, imho, is the video card. A Rage Pro just doesn't cut it, period. Find yourself at least a Rage 128 or Rage 128 pro; they are cheap on the resale market. You can spend a whole lot on a Radeon or GeForce (remember it has to be a PCI one), but I am not sure that the benefits are worth it on this machine. Then again I di

  • They're running around $500 on eBay.

    Max it up with RAM and it runs Jaguar really well. Plus it has a DVD player, 2 USB ports, and a Firewire port.

    I've been using it as my main machine since 2000 and the only time I get frustrated with it is when I'm compiling something from source. My wife has a G4 Powerbook and sure, it's zippier, but I don't perceive any major slowdown when I go back to my iMac. My jealousies are limited to the sleek aluminum case...

    Now some would say it's a testament to Apple that the
  • ...if you're planning to keep your current Beige G3, I'd recommend staying with what you have got. Many have already mentioned OSX's steep hardware requirements -- you're better off keeping your machine as is.

    Better yet, wait til Panther comes out -- then order a shiny new G5! :)

  • I have one (Score:3, Insightful)

    by overunderunderdone ( 521462 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @12:42AM (#6729906)
    I have a beige G3 and have experimented with OS X on it, aside from simply being and old and slow computer the big drawback for me is the lack of support for peripherals. It uses ADB and Serial bus instead of USB, SCSI instead of FireWire (though that probably is less of a problem) . Since it is the ONLY model to both support OS X and use these older standards nobody is ever going to bother writing drivers for anything that uses them. My serial printer isn't supported, my ADB Wacom tablet, etc.
  • I have a beige G3 266 and it works fine with Jag. Sure, there are annoying slowdowns at times, but for the large part I find it tolerable to do most things.

    Illustrator and Photoshop open at the same time? Works just fine. Playing MP3s and working with the same? Fine.

    So, my suggestions for what to add?

    (1) More RAM, like everyone said.
    (2) A better video card. There's no hardware OpenGL support for the rage pro (or worse, rage II) that's in your machine. I had a ATI Radeon PCI card that I got on ebay and it
    • Uhm, yea, it works, but ... I have a Beige G3, 333 Mhz with the following upgrades: - OS X 10.2.6 - G4 processor running at 500 MhZ - ATA133 card w/ 80 GB drive - 512 Meg memory - TEAC CDRW (IDE) drive - firewire/USB card - and other assorted goodies. The machine runs OSX, but it's painful to use for everything from web browsing to email. I used to work for Apple in their A/UX group, I've used Macs for years and years, but I finally just built a PC using components that will be in the much

  • I bought this Ultra 5 from eBay happy that it had a 270MHz CPU and will beat a Pentium2. It was a dog, was competing with my Pentium200MMX. The MMX was winning.

    So after some analysis it turns out up to 400MHz cpu can be attached on the thing, and higher cpus have 8x the cache and better FSBuses. I bought a 333MHz cpu on ebay for 24$ and increased the ram from 128 to 512. Still a dog. Turns out the IDE controller does 33MHz at best so I had to go back to slashdot and invest in a SCSI controller and disk. Th
  • Okay, first, here was my setup:
    • Beige G3 Desktop with rev a motherboard
    • stock 233Mhz G3 processor
    • 512MB of RAM
    • 20GB, 5400RPM ATA hard drive
    • stock 2MB Rage IIc video
    • stock 24x ATAPI CD-ROM drive
    • Generic two port USB card
    • Generic three port FireWire card
    • Apple Multiple Scan 17" Display (1024x768 max)
    • AppleDesign Keyboard, Apple Bus Mouse II
    • Yamaha 8x/4x/24x SCSI CD-RW drive in an old external SCSI enclosure

    I bought this system SPECIFICALLY to use OS X on. It was the cheapest OS X compatible system I cou

  • I know this sounds lame but, buy a G5. If you're actually going to use Photoshop and Quark for 3) Profit! then you should make it back in the first few jobs.

    Beside if you've actually go legal copies of photoshop and quark that's about a $2499 software investment. You'd at least want some decent hardware.

    Ok now be honest, you're just a warez kid with an old G3 and some dream to make it comparable to a new computer without investing anything. No offense but you need a new computer.
  • I Ran Jaguar on a G3 Beige DT 333 with 512MB RAM for a few months, and it ran OK. Just OK. It was stable, and everything worked, but I was not happy at all with the system performance.

    When my Beige up and quit on me a month or so ago, I found a G3 Blue & White 400 on eBay for $300.

    Considering that I have less RAM now, and there was only a 66MHz speed bump, I should be running slower, or about the same, right? Wrong. The bus architecture in the New World machines is so much better that I would gues
  • Upgrading a Beige G3 is quite acceptable and will run Jaguar very well. I recently upgraded one, mostly because my main computer had finally given up the ghost and I needed one running ASAP (ie, within 2 days), only had $500 or so available on my credit card, and happened to have a 233 G3 lying around.

    You can get an overclockable 450-466MHz rated G4 ZIF from OWC (macsales.com) for $190. 768MB RAM (ie, maxing out the G3's slots) will run about $90.

    Assuming you're not running out of hard drive space, that's
  • With plenty of RAM (>=256MB and more if you can), and a fast hard disk with space for swap you will be fine.

    Or at the least it will be a cheap reliable workstation.

    I gave my girlfriend a iBook 300 (clamshell with 284MB ram, and I put in an 18GB hd), setup 2 grandmothers with iMac's @ 333 and 233MHz, and I have an iBook 600 (with an 80GB I put in -- that was a pain).

    The graphics aren't the fastest (never look at a new machine running Quartz Extreme -- you can never go back ;).

    But they run great (10.2.

  • Wait and install Pan-thor (Score:5, Funny)

    by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @03:37AM (#6730548)
    you'll see dramatic improvements that may make it useable.
    oh - and load up on some ram.
    you'll also do well to pick up a decent 7200 rpm IDE drive.

    oh for the love of gawd DON'T BE SUCH A PAIN IN THE ASS, LUCILLE!

    by the time you drop $120 on the new OS, $350 on those fscked up "short" (you can't use normal PC 100/133 DIMMS because they don't FIT physically unless you leave the top off and if you're going to do that, Susan, just go and buy a PC for $150 and stop being such a girl) can't-be-found-anywhere memory except at some obscure "We have memory for the Mac IIvx" company for that hunk of ancient computing you have there to max it out to, what, 512 megs? - and the $100 for a decent sized hard drive, you prat, you've got yourself only a few pesos away from a refurbished eMac with 5 times the speed and a video card fruu uu UUUM THIS century.

    you know.. i had this fight with someone who decided it was time to ditch all the Macs because the B&W G3/300's were to slow to run PowerPoint or Keynote compared to a new Dell 2.4 machine... and just throw out all that hardware and software investment (those B&w's are righteous OpenBSD file and email servers) because he thought "hey, why don't i just shove a pencil up my ass and say it hurts, so i sould go buy some PC instead".

    I swear, Sally, if i hear about one more person ask "how can i get a 5 year old mac to run the lastest software from Apple that has system requirements for G4 and a video card with some memory and i wear this gigantic "i'm a cheap asshole" hat al the time, why?" - i'm gonna go off on a rant.

    Look - there are no 6 year old PC's (Pentium II 200 with ISA slots and 8 meg AGP 1x ATI Rage Pros) running windows XP playing DiVX files, ripping DVDs, and running gawddamned Photoshop 7, okay? So while it may be novel and interesting to see you try this - why not pony up the money for that Commodore 64 web server while you're at it?

    Look - i'm not saying you have to go sell your mother's body parts for cash - but you did say.. and let me get this right.

    i want to run Photoshop & and Quark 6 on Mac OS X 10.2...

    two of the most CPU and video card intensive apps out there on a computer from 1997?

    well hell, Gertrude, i want to shit in my hand and sell it for $5 a handfull but i guess we're both in for big steaming bowl of toofsckingbad, aren't we?

    And i hate to break this to you - but while you may actually succeed in this little game of Chinese "red-hot-fire-poker-in-the-crotch" torture you've concoted for yourself and actually.... physically.... get Photoshop to launch on that newfangled steam-powered machine running Mac OS X - you first must realize that when you are trying to run software worth 5 TIMES the value of your computer... ON that computer, that's as useless as picking up Beth Ostrosky on a Pee Wee's Playhouse moped.

    Its quite a bitch, sometimes, that software ISN'T like hardware.. because if you're really so cash strapped that you can't scrounge up enough wampum by playing "pound the clown" at the corner sperm bank to buy a Mac from THIS millennium - but miraculously have on hand, and want to run the latest and greatest $700 photo editing software that would have made spy satellite guys from 1970 cream their pants at the site of the opening spalsh screen of Photoshop on a computer that really is as washed up as Gary Coleman (wait, he may be my next governor... hmm...) - then i can only assume that either there is some knucle dragging asshat boss out there that thinks "here, Christine, slap this shiny metal disk into your abacus at home" and figured you'd just work out the tiny new cunundrum by asking slashdot a question as improbable as "how can i make a device that will get Carmen Electra to fsck my brains out even tho i have automatic Karma bonus on slashdot?"

    ORRRR

    you ripped of your copy of Photoshop.

    Because if you're plunking down the bling-bling for Photoshop and quark for Mac OS X 10.2 - yet you want to run those 20" s
    • iir, it uses 3cm tall ram. this is easy to find, you just gotta make sure it's the right size. IIRC, the PNY ram at compusa is 3.5 cm ram, but other stores stock ra that happens to be 3 cm. It's hit or miss, and never a feature. Take a ruler memory shopping. I think the apple store that i go to has 3 cm ra, but even at an apple store, be careful.

  • You own Photoshop and Quark but no new computer? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Your priorities seem to be a little off. Let's assume you work at some regional print shop. If you're running Photoshop and Quark, that means you're getting paid to do the work you're doing.

    So let's see. You're willing to pay for (let's hope) Photoshop and Quark, but you can't find it in your budget to upgrade your Mac for a measly $1500, which will get you a brand new G5?!?

    If that's true, you need to get into a new line of work, and if there's no jobs available there in Idaho, move somewhere where they g

  • Yeah, here's some tips. (Score:3, Informative)

    by melatonin ( 443194 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @04:04AM (#6730670)
    Actually I posted a comment about resurrecting a Beige G3 in the "OS X returns" article over here [slashdot.org].

    They key points are,

    • Get a bigger hard drive (the 4GB-6GB standard on these are too small). If your G3 has Rage II on board video, your built-in IDE controller supports only one IDE drive, so you can't just attach a slave. I've done it, but it's not reliable.
    • Get a USB card. These are cheap.
    • Get a ZIF upgrade from a place like OWC [macsales.com]. 500MHz for $160 with a 1MB backside cache gives you a fantastic performance boost; I've installed a 400 MHz myself.
    • Get at least one 256 MB DIMM. These are cheap. 400 MB is good to shoot for, but it depends on what you do (We've got an iMac DV with 128 MB, and with its light workload I totally forget that).
    • I recommend getting at least an ATI Rage 128, as the Rage II/Rage Pro that came with the G3 doesn't like to display millions of colours at high resolutions, and OS X does like to display millions of colours at high resolutions.
    • Install no less than OS X 10.2.3 (a fresh retail box of Jaguar would be at least this).

    You can put in a G4 ZIF upgrade, but I can't vouch for stability or compatibility of those.

  • Max out the RAM !!! * Get a graphics card that has at least 16MB of ram to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. * Get a processor upgrade if possible. * Wait for 10.3 - Reports say that older g3 performance will be vastly improved over previous OS X versions. * Get free programs from http://www.macupdate.com and http://www.versiontracker.com. * Unsanity has a free tool that disables shadows which may help. Another fine program is Diabolitin. It is like the extensions manager in OS 9. You can disable unused
  • 1. Max the RAM; 768 MB can be found for under US$200.

    2. Get a larger, faster hard drive; if swap you must, do it at least on something fast... Don't forget about the OS X install problem (i.e. install Jaguar on a partition smaller than 8 GB on a master disk on the main IDE bus).

    3. Get a decent video card. ATI Rage 128 is a minimum (can be found at US$50; Radeons start at $100).

    4. Get a G4 processor upgrade (prices start at $200); that should actually be #2: the G4 opens the door to Altivec enhancement, w
  • Not having the necessary means to get the G5, I acquired a beige G3 recently as a way to have a desktop which complements my TiBook. At first, I planned to run Linux + MOL but thought I would give Jaguar a try first.

    Surprisingly, once I had added enough RAM (512MB - those 66MHz SIMMs cost nothing nowadays) and a faster HDD, Jaguar was sufficiently snappy, certainly more so than WindowsXP would be on an x86 box from 1999! The built-in graphics is an issue, but once I added a PCI Radeon 7000, I really felt t
  • What a bunch of wet blankets. If you're pretty much happy with what you've got, want to learn OS X in preparation for the future, why do so many suggest you dump Old Reliable in favor of an iMac, iBooks, etc.?

    I'm assuming you have a reason for wanting to upgrade what you have. Maybe you can't afford $600-1,000 for a nice used blue and white G3. Maybe you have some SCSI peripherals, serial devices, or an ADB sketch tablet you don't want to replace. Whatever, you have your reason for wanting to go this route

  • Trade-in on an upgrade (Score:2, Informative)

    by jo42 ( 227475 )
    I used my G3 266 as a trade-in on a G4 Cube. Dropped the price by a couple of hundred of dollars.

  • upgrading a beige G3 vs. buying an eMac (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedbp ( 443047 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @09:34AM (#6732122)
    Buying an eMac makes much more sense. there are a few things you can buy for a beige G3 that will make it better. I've hot-rodded 4 or 5 beige g3s. Here's a quick list:

    Radeon 7000 PCI card, $100-125. Dual display 32MB card. Pretty much the only game in town as far as video card upgrades go.

    G4 Processor upgrade - I've seen a G4 366 ZIF chip as cheap as $89. Sure, its not the $500 1GHz G4 upgrade, but it gives u Altivec and twice the cache.

    Max 'er out w/ RAM - about $75-100 for 3 256MB PC100 DIMMs.

    For storage, HDs are pretty cheap. Spend about $50 for 40 or 60 GB of storage.

    I've seen a Combo drive that can be made to work with OS Xfor $50.

    So we're now sitting at around $399 worth of upgrades, not including USB/FireWire (another $50), and if you want a faster processor (and you are going to want a G4 for the Altivec) you're looking at an additional $200.

    So right there, for a decent speed (500 MHz) G4, plus USB and FireWire in the above mentioned price, its $649 worth of upgrades, and you STILL have slow ass 10T ethernet.

    For $250 more than that you can get a Combo drive eMac w/ more HD space, faster networking, AirPort extreme capabilities, more USB ports, new (optical) mouse and keyboard, a later generation G4 processor running almost twice as fast, a better graphics card with AGP as opposed to PCI (think Quartz Extreme support for Quark 6!), and a really nice built in 17" monitor, etc etc etc.

    Buy the eMac. Seriously. Not to mention the software trickery involved in getting all those upgrades together and working in OS X (editing the CD-RW driver support files, G4 cache enabler, tricking it into installing the DVD player, etc.)

    Plus the beige can't boot from FireWire, and if you want decent HD performance you'll need an ATA card as well (another $50.) See how it all adds up in favor of just buying a new eMac? Its faster, easier, will give you WAY less headaches, and will perform better for what you want.

    Now, if you were just a hobbyist looking for a cool project to trick out a beige, I'm the guy you wanna talk to :) But for your purposes, a new eMac will be almost as cheap for far better performance.

  • I've done this (Score:2, Informative)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )
    I've done this more than once.

    OS X on a 266 G3 makes a great server. OS X on a 466 G3 makes a decent workstation.

    You need to get at least 512MB of RAM, I suggest 768 while you are in there blowing away the dust.

    Stock video card sucks even if you got the extra 4MB module and went to 6 total, go find a first generation Radeon PCI card.

    I'd go grab an Orange Micro combo USB/Firewire card while you are at it too.

    Then either upgrade the stock 4 or 6GB hard disk, or get an external Firewire drive and use the
  • In terms of saving money, you're better off with an eMac and a few new peripherals. The performance is SO much better, you'll be blown away. That, and you'll be opening up a world of cheap USB and FireWire goodies that may not work so well on an older machine with a USB/FireWire card. The stability of OS X on an older machine is fine for a server, as you're not doing much with the GUI and it pretty much sits there with no heavy load in terms of the apps you're running. As soon as you start using the box
  • i just got a beige g3 266 off ebay! for $100 it had 1 4gig hdd and 256 megs of RAM runs jaguar like a charm! i gave up my athalon with linux on it and use this as my desktop. I use linux toplay movies (becasue this is too shlow for divx) and as a file server ;-p I lOVE MY G3! go for it! -anu
  • I have one of these machines, and went through the same thing myself recently. Assuming you really want to go through with this,

    1) Get more RAM. As much as you can afford. At least 512MB before you start looking at anything else.

    2) Get a cheap Radeon card. No point in buying a good one, but a cheap one will let the machine use Quartz Extreme graphics, which offloads a hell of a lot of work from the CPU. It's not faster for those complicated photoshop transforms, but it makes the machine feel much mor
  • Step 1: Buy a Adaptec ATA133 card, install ($65) (Note: step 1 is not necessary, it just helps speed things up significatly) Step 2: Buy a nice cheap 80GB ATA133 (if no card, a ATA66 drive) drive (you can get one for less than $30 from Comp-USA with rebates) Step 3: Max out RAM. Can get cheap, very good RAM from www.satach.com I maxed out my Supermax S900 with 1GB RAMfor less than $99.) For the G3, Ide think less than $60. Step 4. IMPORTANT: partition your Hard drive into two partitions, the FIRST
  • After upgrading all that you'll be practically 1/20th of the way to a new system. Forget the upgrade! Just get a new dual G5, Max out the RAM and disk space, grab a 23inch monitor, iSight, 30GB iPod, and an Airport Extreme. Might as well, it's the economy we're talking about here! Without sales tax or rebates, were only looking at $11,790 unless of course you want dual monitors. I saved you a cool $29 by leaving out the modem. You can use that towards the new mouse!

    Find out how to get your order for $ [apple.com]

  • ADB mouse is flaky (Score:3, Informative)

    by Slur ( 61510 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @05:39PM (#6737999) Homepage Journal
    I have Jaguar running on a beige G3 / 333 and it runs very well. However, when using the ADB mouse there is an unfortunate delay between a mouse click and the system taking notice of the click, often resulting in missed drags.

    To remedy this I installed a cheap USB card (no extra drivers required!) and now use a USB mouse instead. The system works perfectly, albeit noticeably slower. More RAM and a 32MB ATI card would go a long way towards improving performance. A RAID card would likely boost performance even more. And upgrading the processor to a G4 wouldn't hurt either.

    The one insurmountable bottleneck on these old boxes is the slow (66MHz) system BUS. Anything to reduce the amount of data processing in-general will help its performance. I was able to get a marked performance increase in the Window Manager by turning off window-shadows using a nice haxie by Unsanity.

  • 2 options (Score:3, Informative)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:59PM (#6739410)
    1) get an eMac. You'll be much happer.
    2) However, i'v done this. So here's what i didn:
    Get a lot of ram. At least 256 more(maybe you can get by with less as i also run openoffice, but ram is dirt cheap).
    Don't expect to run anything in Classic mode. It runs really shitty (worse than usual) on these old boxen. So you may end up having to shell out for all new apps.
    However, all will be in vain, as the screens on those are too lo res to run anything properly. You'll fin that the control panel and many dialogs don't fit on the screen. If you're gonna buy a new monitor/grafx card, it'll make mroe sense to buy a new eMac.

    Personally i'd get a eMac. It's got much better hardware, a damn nice screen and it can pump out classic mode apps reasonably ok. You can get the base model for only $799, which is pretty damn cheap.
  • The required ram, video card, processor and hard drive ugrades to make your experience not suck royally, will cost you more than a good used mac on cragslist.org

    Requirements
    Get a G4 of at least 500 Mhz.
    512 meg of ram - 1Gig recommended
    DUAL PROCESSORS ARE BETTER - they lessen the performance drain when the machine gets working hard
    Fast video card with at least 16 meg of ram (32 + preferred)
    FAST hard drive. Partition one for your swap space with 1 G allocated for swap.

    Or you can think of things this way.
    I
  • I was looking for a thread to contribute to but there are so many saying the same thing: dump your box and get a new one. Whatever!

    You need to run new versions of your dtp apps, that's why you're upgrading to OS X, right? (--no other compelling reason if it's a moneymaking production machine... otherwise just heed the advice to stick with what you have.)

    So get a used video card that will do Quartz-- an ATI Rage 128 pro w/ 16mb of VRAM is your minimum -- and get a minimum of 320MB of RAM, plus a larger har
  • I ran OS X (starting with 10.0.3, then 10.1.x) on a Beige G3 266 at work for a couple years. I also ran 10.1 on my home beige G3/300 for quite a while. It was as slow as death. I also thought it was painfully slow on my non-QuartzExtreme Dual-533 MHz G4. IMNSHO, OS X is horrible on any non-QE Mac. It runs better on an 800 MHz G3 iBook with QE than on a dual-533 without.

    Whenever I would post these sentiments on macslash, idiots would come out of the woodwork telling me to quit spreading FUD and that OS X ra

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