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From: D Finnigan on 2 Jun 2010 19:15
I just got ahold of a blue & white G3 yesterday, and am soliciting some
advice as to what system would be most optimal for it.

Here are the specs:
- Rev 1 motherboard
- 400 Mhz
- 40 GB HD
- 384 MB RAM
- Zip 100
- DVD-ROM drive

Right now, I've got OS 10.2.8. I'm also considering over-clocking it to 450
MHz.

I'd like the OS which will run most efficiently on the G3. It won't be used
to do anything "intense" where a newer machine would be better, it's just
going to be mostly for older games and other light work.

10.2 and 10.4 are the only two options, as those are the only two OS X
install disc sets that I have.

--
Mac GUI Vault - A source for retro Apple II and Macintosh
computing.
http://macgui.com/vault/
From: nospam on 2 Jun 2010 19:28
In article <dog_cow-1275520529(a)macgui.com>, D Finnigan
<dog_cow(a)macgui.com> wrote:

> I just got ahold of a blue & white G3 yesterday, and am soliciting some
> advice as to what system would be most optimal for it.
>
> Here are the specs:
> - Rev 1 motherboard
> - 400 Mhz
> - 40 GB HD
> - 384 MB RAM
> - Zip 100
> - DVD-ROM drive
>
> Right now, I've got OS 10.2.8. I'm also considering over-clocking it to 450
> MHz.
>
> I'd like the OS which will run most efficiently on the G3. It won't be used
> to do anything "intense" where a newer machine would be better, it's just
> going to be mostly for older games and other light work.
>
> 10.2 and 10.4 are the only two options, as those are the only two OS X
> install disc sets that I have.

10.4 is not going to work well on that, if it does at all. 10.3 would
be ideal, but if you don't have that option, 10.2. unfortunately,
there's not much software that will still run on 10.2.

you might even consider os 9, which will be worlds faster than os x
anything.
From: D Finnigan on 2 Jun 2010 19:46
nospam wrote:
>
> you might even consider os 9, which will be worlds faster than os x
> anything.
>

Yep, I've already got OS 9.2.2 on it for those OS 9-only apps where I want
the extra speed.

Thanks for the suggestions.
From: Geoffrey S. Mendelson on 3 Jun 2010 01:59
D Finnigan wrote:
> I just got ahold of a blue & white G3 yesterday, and am soliciting some
> advice as to what system would be most optimal for it.
>
> Here are the specs:
> - Rev 1 motherboard
> - 400 Mhz
> - 40 GB HD
> - 384 MB RAM
> - Zip 100
> - DVD-ROM drive
>
> Right now, I've got OS 10.2.8. I'm also considering over-clocking it to 450
> MHz.

Leave it where it is. There is a hardware fault in the motherboard which
prevents it from working with the 40gb drive reliably in MacOS 10.4, or
OS9, if it is an IDE drive.

If it is a SCSI drive, you are ok, and should up the RAM to 512m and install
10.4.

Unless you have an APPLE drive, which had patched firmware to work on that
computer properly (fixed DMA speed of 33mHz), you will have data corruption
when reading with any drive capable of 66mHz or 100mHz DMA.

The problem is the revision one IDE chip is capable of 66mHz DMA, but it
does not work properly. Data read at that speed gets lost and therefore
corrupted.

Apple got around this by limiting the speed of the drives in their firmware
when they were shipped with the hardware (hence the 24x CD ROM drives)
and in OSX up to 10.3 checked the chip and if it was the defective one,
not going above 33mHz.

Apple dropped the check in 10.4 claiming that it was not neccessary as no
revision 1 motherboard computer was shipped by Apple with a faster drive.

If your APPLE drive has been replaced with a "random" PC drive, the best you
can do and be sure is a 10g IDE hard disk and a 16x or slower CD drive,
or 4x or slower DVD.

There are some later PC drives (around 120g) that would work because the
drive itself won't use the higher speeds (66mHz and 100mHz) without an
80 conductor cable. If you use the 40 conductor cable that comes with the
computer it wil stay in 33mHz, which is ok.

I don't know which drives they are or if they are still available. Someone I
know bought a Seagate and found that out by checking their web page.

I have heard that the second IDE port is fixed at a max of 33mHz DMA, so
that if you were to replace the zip drive with an IDE hard disk it could
be any size up to 120g and still work. The problem with that is the bay is
designed for a low heat output drive such as a zip drive, and will overheat
with a hard disk.

I was thinking of putting in a laptop drive but I only have one regular
IDE to laptop adaptor plug and am loath to use it that way.

I may try swapping the IDE cables from the low speed controller to
the hard disk and see if it works.


Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm(a)mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.
From: Erik Richard Sørensen on 3 Jun 2010 02:49

D Finnigan wrote:
> I just got ahold of a blue & white G3 yesterday, and am soliciting some
> advice as to what system would be most optimal for it.
>
> Here are the specs:
> - Rev 1 motherboard
> - 400 Mhz
> - 40 GB HD
> - 384 MB RAM
> - Zip 100
> - DVD-ROM drive
>
> Right now, I've got OS 10.2.8. I'm also considering over-clocking it to 450
> MHz.

With the 384mb RAM I'd stay with 10.2.8 og go up to 10.3.9, but if you
max. it out to the 1gb possible, it will run 10.4.11 very nice and
rather fast too.

The HD is probably the original 5400rpm disk, so here I'd also exchange
that disk with a 120gb 7200rpm/8mb cache ATA-100/ATA-133 disk.

> I'd like the OS which will run most efficiently on the G3. It won't be used
> to do anything "intense" where a newer machine would be better, it's just
> going to be mostly for older games and other light work.

- And you also could have a OS 9.2.2 classic system as well... - But
donot try to overclock the B&W G3. There is a risk that you will load
the motherborad too hard doing this, - the motherboard is a bit touchy
here...

/IF/ you want to do anything upgrading - I'd instead keep an eye out on
a dedicated used upgrade CPU from Sonnet or PowerLogix of size
600-900mhz. Sometimes these can be found on the net as low as down to
$20-25USd.

> 10.2 and 10.4 are the only two options, as those are the only two OS X
> install disc sets that I have.

The B&W G3/400mhz can handle up to 1gb std. PC-133 SDRAM RAM - either
4x256mb or 2x512mhb - best to use 4x256mb modules. - Since you only have
10.2.x or 10.4.x I'll recommend to use 10.2.x if you don't get more
memory - else 10.4.x is the best.

Cheers, Erik Richard

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erik Richard Sørensen, Member of ADC, <mac-manNOSP(a)Mstofanet.dk>
NisusWriter - The Future In Multilingual Text Processing - www.nisus.com
OpenOffice.org - The Modern Productivity Solution - www.openoffice.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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