SillyDog701

[DJGM]

I am about to acquire a beige PowerMacintosh G3 (266MHz) desktop unit. The place where I am
currently working (ReGen Logistics Ltd, Bolton) is a veritable hi-tech Aladdin's Cave, or computer
scrapyard, whichever way you look at it. The company takes in old computer equipment that's
surplus to the requirements of the companies and organizations from where they came from.

Depending on the individual specifications of each machine, and the overall condition, systems
are either refurbished and tidied up to be sold on as 2nd user equipment, or stripped down
to the bone and scrapped. The systems are mostly old workstation PC's and servers.

Today, I found the PowerMac G3 unit amongst a random bunch of old machines, and a 15"
beige Apple monitor with built-in speakers. The monitor was going to be sold off. But the
beige PowerMacintosh G3 unit was due to be stripped and scrapped.

I told the boss I was interested in having the old PowerMac and the screen to go with it.
He let me have the computer for free. I just need to arrange a suitable HDD, keyboard,
mouse, and however much RAM that I can get for it. I hope it uses standard SDRAM!

I'll be getting the Apple monitor for a tenner (UK£10)* which is a bargain, especially as
it also comes with an adapter that enables it to be connected to a standard PC unit!


The computer in question is one like this . . .



Essentially, a classic piece of computer equipment that was due to be dumped with a
bunch of obsolete PC's will be able to live on! I just hope that it still actually works!


*FOOTNOTE - I should point out that they also let me have the monitor for nowt as well!
I was originally expecting to pay UK£10 for it, but they just let me have the thing gratis!

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[Mandrake]

Those computers use standard PC100 SDRAM (Not PC133), and they should run Mac OS X 10.2 - unless you wanted to install Linux on it.

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[DJGM]

Today, I was finally able to take home the Power Macintosh G3 that I rescued from being scrapped last week.

Having looked inside the machine, I noticed that (apart from excess dust) the original 4GB hard drive was still
connected up inside, along with two SDRAM of (as yet) unknown capacity. A colleague suggested they could
be 64MB each, but I am currently unable to confirm this. The system successfully boots the copy of Mac OS
that's installed, but I am unable to identify exactly which version of the operating system it is.

I do not currently have an ADB mouse to use on this system, and that effectively prevents me from clicking
the "About this Mac" option on the Apple Menu, to identify the Mac OS version and find out how much RAM
is currently installed. I don't have an ADB keyboard either, so I can't use any keyboard shortcuts either!


Eitherway, here's a quick pic of the aformentioned PowerMac G3, videocaptured from my camcorder . . .



(If my digital camera was capable of taking decent indoor pics under artifical light, I'd have used that instead!)

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[Antony]

I remember I've been working on one of the early G3 (old world) looks like the one in picture above.

There were about 15 people fighting for 4 PCs and one Mac, and since no body else wanted to use a Mac or knew how to use a Mac, I did not need to queue for the computer.

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[DJGM]

Today, I took delivery of a beige one button Apple ADB mouse, so I've been able to find out a
bit more about what exactly is on the old Power Macintosh G3 system I've acquired recently.

It has 160MB RAM and Mac OS 8.1 installed. The browsers are Netscape 4.73 and MSIE 5.0.
The machine also has existing installs of Quark XPress 4.0, and Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 Mac.

The CD-ROM drive and network interface don't appear to work, but I'm sure these would be
relatively easy to replace. The system uses standard IDE connections for the drives, so (as
far as I can tell) it should accomodate a standard IDE CD-ROM drive. And as the machine
also has PCI slots, (as far as I can tell) it should also accomodate a PCI network card.
I'll swap out the network card inside my testbed PC, and see if it works.

Trial and error, as they say . . . !


UPDATE (20:23 GMT) . . .
Just out of idle (and perhaps crazy) curiosity, I attempted to give it an "unofficial" upgrade.

I remembered a spare 128MB stick of PC133 SDRAM, that apparently ceased to work after
it stopped showing up as part of the total amount of RAM on my main PC. As the SDRAM
stick was lying around doing nowt under my desk, I decided to pop it in the old G3 Mac.

So, I shut the machine down, shifted the existing SDRAM sticks to the second and third
slots, popped the apparently dead SDRAM in the first slot, and fired up the machine.

Once the desktop appeared, I clicked the "About This Computer" in the Apple menu.

Guess what . . . lo and behold . . . IT WORKS!



The Power Mac G3 I rescused now has 288MB RAM . . . 32MB more than my iMac!

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[Mandrake]

Nice. What OS do you plan on using on this computer?

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[DJGM]

Since it's relatively easy to swap the HDD in this machine with another, I could run Mac OS 9+X on
one HDD, and some version of Linux for PPC on the other. As yet, there's still a few things I need
to sort out on it before I install any operating systems, and start to use the system productively.

I need to get a suitable keyboard for typing, and a working network adapter for internet access.

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[DJGM]

Latest Update . . .

I've found that the built in network adapter on the system actually works, so I spent a bit of time updating
the Mac OS from 8.1 to 9.2.1. But, there's something rather odd preventing me from proceeeding further.

On booting the system into Mac OS 9.2.1, the system crashes part of the way through startup. A blank
white rectangular box appears over that smiley blue Mac OS face logo, and the "Starting Up" progress
bar stops at what looks to be about 20%. I can still move the mouse pointer around the screen, so
the system hasn't frozen. The usual next step to take would perhaps be to reboot the machine
while holding down the SHIFT key, to ensure it starts up with all extensions turned off.

But, since I do not yet have a keyboard, I am currently unable to do that. Essentially, I can do nothing
more with the machine until I take delivery of a suitable ADB keyboard. If only my spare USB 2.0 card
would work in that old Mac! If it did, I could borrow the USB keyboard and mouse from my iMac, and
in some way, attempt to find out why Mac OS 9.2.1 is refusing to complete the start up procedure.

Eitherway, in between applying OS updates, I installed Netscape 7.02, so at least that system has
now got a somewhat more upto date browser than what was originally installed (Ns4.73 + IE5.0).
As soon as I can, I'll be installing the unofficial build of Mozilla 1.3.1 for Mac OS 9.x . . .

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[DJGM]

Latest Update . . .

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner . . . why not try a temporary hard drive transplant?

I've taken the HDD out of the PowerMac G3, and placed it in to my iMac, in order to do all of the
necessary work on updating the Mac operating system. A bit risky perhaps, but heck, why not?

So far, I've done a clean installation of Mac OS 8.5, and I'm now in the process of getting it
up to Mac OS 9.2.2. At the moment, I'm running Mac OS 9.0, which is at least enough to
get this installation of Netscape 7.02 running, so I can post this latest report.

Work still in progress . . . another update later . . .

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[DJGM]

PROBLEM!

I can't update to Mac OS 9.1! I've got the International English version of the Mac OS 9.1 update,
but it won't install. It tells me I need to install it on the International English version of Mac OS 9.

Strange . . . I thought that what I already had installed . . . and that's precisely what I still have!

Having checked the Apple System Profiler, it seems I've got the US version of Mac OS 9.0 installed!

So, I go to Apple's website to get the North American English version of the OS update, but this
one won't install either. It tells that me I can only install it onto the US version of Mac OS 9.0!

"That's what I've ****ing well got installed, you ****ing stupid piece of ****!!!"

One helping of gratuitously strong language later . . . I come back here to post this update.

So, any suggestions . . . ?

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[Antony]

DJGM,

any updates about your story?

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[DJGM]

Latest (belated) info . . .

I've given up on running Mac OS 9.x on this Macintosh computer for now. Today, I've installed the 4GB HDD
that was originally installed in my other Macintosh computer (Bondi blue, Rev. B, iMac G3) into this system,
and I've installed Mac OS X 10.1.0 on it. I'm might not bother installing any version of "Classic" Mac OS.

Right now, I'm trying to find out if it's going to be possible to install Mac OS X 10.3.x on this system, but
certain other updates and applications are needed first. These include the updates for Stuffit Expander,
and for Mac OS X 10.1.5, plus the program known as XPostFacto will need to be installed, since Apple
no longer support this particular computer, for running newer versions of Mac OS X beyond v10.2.x.

I'll report on my attempts to install Mac OS X 10.3.x (whether it is successful or not) later . . .

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[DJGM]

It won't let me install any updates! All available disk volumes appear greyed out on the UI of the Installer,
so I can't even select the main "Macintosh" HDD volume to be install any of the updates I want to apply!
I can't even install any of the necessary Mac OS X security updates. That is not good.



So, unless anyone can suggest anything, I'm stuck with an unpatched Mac OS X 10.1 on this system!

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[Al]

That is why you should not have sold your 10.2 CD on eBay. Try Panther....

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[DJGM]

Try Panther....

Which requires the installation of XPostFacto, which is in a .sitc file, which in turn requires a newer version
of Stuffit Expander, to be installed, which in turn requires the Mac OS X Installer Update 1.0, which can't
be installed, because the HDD volume is greyed out in the UI of the Installer program!

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