SillyDog701

by **DJGM** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 6:27 am

The current specs of my G3 Macintosh machines, in the order I got them . . .

iMac G3 - Bondi Blue - 233Mhz CPU - 256MB RAM - 20GB HDD - 24x CD-ROM drive - Mac OS X 10.3.9

Power Macintosh G3 - Beige desktop - 266Mhz CPU - 24x CD-ROM drive - No HDD, RAM or OS at present.

Power Macintosh G3 - Beige minitower - 266Mhz CPU - 10GB HDD - 48x CD-ROM drive - 512MB RAM - Mac OS X 10.3.9

. . . . and coming soon . . . PowerMac G3 - Blue & White - 300Mhz CPU - 128MB RAM - No HDD or OS - 24x CD-ROM drive

The spec of the B+W machine is subject to change. Obviously Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther will be installed on it on the day I get
the computer, and Mac OS X Tiger will be installed as soon as I've bought a copy. I'll also need to upgrade the optical
drive to a DVD drive. I could temporarily install the DVD from my main PC, in order to install Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger,
although by that time, it's very possible I'll have bought a new combo CD-RW and DVD drive for it.

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by **Mandrake** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 6:40 am

Why not buy a DVD burner? They're pretty cheap now, not much more than a DVD/CD-RW combo drive.

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by **DJGM** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 7:20 am

If I do get a DVD burner, it'll most likely be installed on my main PC. For now at least,
a combo CDRW/DVD drive should be enough for my forthcoming B+W PowerMac G3

At least interchanging optical drives between computers is easy enough for me.

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by **Mandrake** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 8:41 am

If your PCs and Macs have USB2, or Firewire, you can always get an external DVD/RW drive, then it can be used all all your computers.

(The USB 1.1 that would be in some of those older Macs would be excruciatingly slow though!)

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by **Antony** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 9:27 am

DJGM wrote:The current specs of my G3 Macintosh machines, in the order I got them . . .

iMac G3 - Bondi Blue - 233Mhz CPU - 256MB RAM - 20GB HDD - 24x CD-ROM drive - Mac OS X 10.3.9

Power Macintosh G3 - Beige desktop - 266Mhz CPU - 24x CD-ROM drive - No HDD, RAM or OS at present.

Power Macintosh G3 - Beige minitower - 266Mhz CPU - 10GB HDD - 48x CD-ROM drive - 512MB RAM - Mac OS X 10.3.9

. . . . and coming soon . . . PowerMac G3 - Blue & White - 300Mhz CPU - 128MB RAM - No HDD or OS - 24x CD-ROM drive

So the new PowerMac G3 Blue & White will be your fastest Mac, and have room to expand?

My suggestion, add USB2 PCI cards.

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by **DJGM** » Mon 18 Jul, 2005 10:29 am

Antony wrote:So the new PowerMac G3 Blue & White will be your fastest Mac, and have room to expand?

My suggestion, add USB2 PCI cards.

The beige G3 minitower has a USB2 PCI cards, which I'll transfer across to the B+W machine.

Yes, this will be my fastest Mac . . . until I get a Mac mini!

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by **Antony** » Tue 19 Jul, 2005 7:43 am

Four G3s are a lot, but can you get a G4 (low or mid-range) at a good price?

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by **DJGM** » Tue 19 Jul, 2005 10:45 am

Not at a price I can easily afford at the moment.

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by **DJGM** » Wed 20 Jul, 2005 8:42 am

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how much the 300MHz B+W PowerMac G3 cost when it was a new product?
I'd imagine the price of that machine back then, was roughly equivalent to that of the current PowerMac G5's.

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by **Antony** » Wed 20 Jul, 2005 8:48 am

DJGM wrote:Out of curiosity, does anyone know how much the 300MHz B+W PowerMac G3 cost when it was a new product?
I'd imagine the price of that machine back then, was roughly equivalent to that of the current PowerMac G5's.

The lowest configuration of Power Mac G4 (Blue and White), released in 1999, was priced at US$1599 back then.

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by **DJGM** » Thu 21 Jul, 2005 3:18 pm

The B+W G3 arrived earlier today, and despite a few scuff marks on the large Apple logos
on the side panels, and a few years of general wear and tear, this machine's a beaut!

I'll post a couple of pics later.

Here's my progress with this new acquisition so far . . . I've transplanted the 10GB HDD
that I've been using in the beige Power Macintosh G3 minitower, and all of the RAM.

Already, I'm experiencing a couple of problems. One is probably just a fairly moderate
problem, or it could well be quite serious. The other problem, is just plain annoying.

Firstly, Mac OS X won't start up. Or at least it's trying to start, but pretty much getting
nowhere fast. I've managed to get it to reboot in "verbose" mode, which displays all
the kernel startup messages that are usually kept hidden by the Apple boot screen.

After a short while, a numerous lines of UNIX type stuff that makes very little sense
to me, it repeatedly displays the message "jnl: flushing fs disk buffer returned 0x5".
I'll try "Verify/Reapir Disk Permissions" using Disk Utility, and see if that helps.

The annoying problem loes within Mac OS 9.x. Since Mac OS X has rendered itself
out of bounds for the time being, I'm using Mac OS 9.x as a temporary fallback.
Basically, every time I try to browse the web, the browser crashes. This isn't
just with one browser, it's all of them! Netscape 7.02, iCab 3.0, MSIE5.1 . . .

Every browser just "unexpectedly quits" with errors of either type 7 or type 2.

Whatever happens with this HDD, whether these ailments are cured or not, I'll soon
be installing a 20GB HDD, and reinstalling Mac OS X 10.3.x afresh. Eventually, a DVD
drive will replace the CD-ROM drive so that Mac OS X 10.4.x can be installed.

What's good about this particular machine, is that (AFAIK) it should be very easy for
it to accomodate two HDD's, so a 20GB HDD can become the main HDD, while the
aforementioned 10GB HDD can become the secondary HDD.

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by **Antony** » Thu 21 Jul, 2005 8:04 pm

DJGM wrote:What's good about this particular machine, is that (AFAIK) it should be very easy for
it to accomodate two HDD's, so a 20GB HDD can become the main HDD, while the
aforementioned 10GB HDD can become the secondary HDD.

What type of HDD can your new Blue & White G3 handle? I'd say 20GB + 10GB is not big enough.
My Power Mac G4 (400) can handle ATA-33 if I remember correctly.
Are you able to get a PCI card for faster ATA?

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by **DJGM** » Thu 21 Jul, 2005 8:15 pm

Is this an Apple, or a lemon?

What seems to be a major problem has arisen. I've plugged in all the relevant cables at the back of
the unit, the ADB keyboard/mouse, the Apple monitor, the power lead, ethernet cable and sound.

I switched on the machine, and . . .

No Apple startup chime. That happens every now and then, so that's probably nowt to wory about.
The HDD spins up. Sounds fine. But the display remains in standby for ages. Nothing else happens.
Surely the old faithful Mac OS 9.2.2 is loading, even though I can't see anything happening.

After waiting several minutes, I press the power button on the front of the unit, and it powers off
in a split second. Which doesn't bode well. I'd imagine that if the OS was running, it would have
popped up a Restart/Shutdown warning dialog, or shutdown the system normally, and then
powering off the machine automatically, thus completing a proper shutdown procedure.

But no. The whole thing just powers off as though the plug's been pulled.

Any ideas?

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by **Antony** » Thu 21 Jul, 2005 8:28 pm

DJGM wrote:The HDD spins up. Sounds fine. But the display remains in standby for ages. Nothing else happens. Surely the old faithful Mac OS 9.2.2 is loading, even though I can't see anything happening.

How do you know OS 9.2.2 is loading if you can't see anything?

DJGM wrote:After waiting several minutes, I press the power button on the front of the unit, and it powers off in a split second. Which doesn't bode well. I'd imagine that if the OS was running, it would have
popped up a Restart/Shutdown warning dialog, or shutdown the system normally, and then powering off the machine automatically, thus completing a proper shutdown procedure.

Not necessary. When system is halt, you won't see such message.

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by **Purple Lizard** » Fri 22 Jul, 2005 7:57 am

Although I have a very limited knowledge of the inns and outs of the Mac it sounds to me that when you put this HDD in your new computer it found a hardware conflict causing the system to render itself inoperable and force it to shut down. This has happened before on my PC's. I have a Windows 98 Machine (unfortunately) that wouldnt load past the windows splash screen and would just switch itself off. It turned out that its was a hardware conflict between the motherboard and the graphics card. So I recommend checking your motherboard as well.

Hope this is of some use.

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SillyDog701

DJGM saves a PowerMac G3 from being scrapped . . .

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