Uber Beige Upgrades

The one I'm using as my main system now started out as...And the bottom of the case has enough room for two more internal hard drives (though the card will except up to 4 drives), so it still has room to grow a little.

I was actually given two Beige G3s and took the best parts of both and put them together in one system and then sold off the remaining parts to pay for the remaining upgrades.

I'm thinking about replacing the USB card with a USB 2.0 or USB 2.0/Firewire combo card, but the thing is that the card I have now works with iTunes nicely. Given that, I may just stick with what I have.

RacerX said:

I'm thinking about replacing the USB card with a USB 2.0 or USB 2.0/Firewire combo card, but the thing is that the card I have now works with iTunes nicely. Given that, I may just stick with what I have.

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I just woke up, so maybe my brain isn't at speed, but I can't figure out how your USB card works with iTunes?

nice upgrades guys! I always wanted to do that with my old beige G3 (266) but every time I was going to I started looking at prices and always came to the conclusion it wasn't worth it. Still, great to see those old G3s alive and kicking with some nice specs.

Pancake said:

I just woke up, so maybe my brain isn't at speed, but I can't figure out how your USB card works with iTunes?

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I'm guessing iPod.

PCI Extreme is a godsend even if it causes the occasional video crash.

Yeah, the beige g3s are great little machines.

Mine:

g3 300 mhz ( I don't know how to over clock it )
512mb PC 66 ram
10gb main hard drive
40gb secondary hard drive
DVD drive
Firewire/USB combo card
10/100 network card
Radius 8mb graphics card with VGA and Svideo out
Running OS X.2 as my itunes server

Just dont forget that the OS must be on the first 8gb partition (unless you have an IDE controller card)

My beige G3 upgrade is not "uber" but it's not bad.

Original specs:

233MHz (Rev A with the crappy ROM that doesn't like slave drives), 32MB RAM, 4GB hard drive, standard 2MB graphics, OS 8.1

Current specs:

G3 333, 576MB RAM (2x256, 1x64), 120GB hard drive. Added 3 PCI cards:

Voodoo4 PCI Mac Edition (didn't buy a Voodoo5 because I didn't think it'd fit)
Sonnet ATA/66 card
Daystar USB 2-port card

The ATA card has a 40GB hard drive attached. I've also got an ATi Xclaim TV tuner for watching TV. It's running 9.1, as that's the latest OS that seems to work with OpenGL and the Voodoo, since it's not compatible with OpenGL 1.2.1 or later. I could go through the trouble of manually disabling/installing OpenGL versions that are older, but I'm happy with this setup. It watches TV and plays some older games, and GLIDE games like Diablo II run very nicely on it.

Come to think of it, aside from the CPU (which is going to cost a hefty penny to go beyond a 333MHz G3) it's actually pretty nicely upgraded.

A nice upgrade from the PowerMac 5500/225 I had with the Apple TV card.

beige crazy...

ok. hate to haul out the stuff from 'back in the day', but this thread made me go to the basement with the camera. before x, in the myst of 'os 9' time, i thought it would be cool to have more space, more drives, and a stand up case. didn't know that you could modify peecee power supplies, so i drilled like 50 holes in the 'side' cover of the g3 power supply, mounted it sideways in the atx case, and added the rest of the beige goodies, to include the floppy with cutout coverplate to match. wow, what a lot of work! ran great, amazed my friends, now collecting dust. all the 'cool' parts moved on to b&w upgrades. thanks for the trip down memory lane...
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im_to_hyper said:

For some reason, I got obsessed with upgrading the old Macs I have laying around my house...

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You're not the only one

I love the Beige G3's...infact its my main desktop. It too has been upgraded

Beige G3 MiniTower:

1Ghz G4 Sonnet
768Mb RAM
80Gb HD
ATI Radeon 9200 128mb PCI
Mac OS X 10.4.6 & Mac OS 9.2

Looking for a USB2.0/Firewire card for it and perhaps a SuperDrive now that OWC has lowered the prices even more.

Pierre Films

Pancake said:

I just woke up, so maybe my brain isn't at speed, but I can't figure out how your USB card works with iTunes?

Click to expand...

Frankly, I wasn't curious enough about the how to look into it any further... my iPod shuffle works with the card, which is good enough for me.

im_to_hyper said:

I believe he meant, what relationship is there between the card and iTunes... what bearing would a piece of hardware have on the overall operation of iTunes.

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Oh... I thought he was wondering how it got around the only compatible with built in USB part of iPods. Which I'm not sure about.

You should move the rear handle to the front of the machine until you get a replacement

im_to_hyper said:

Ah, good idea, I suppose.

It has been running for a day now -- its a pretty nice computer. Really like the widescreen, too! A 32MB card can drive that without any problems.

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PM me if you need a handle and some more RAM. I have lots of 256MB modules and plenty of handles for the Blue G3s.

my Beige G3 AIO spec's are in my sig.

now to get ahold of a Yikes G4 case, PSU, and front board, cause i want to build my Yikes system up now

I installed 900GB of drive space into my G3 B+W yesterday.

That's about 7 times more than the next largest poster in this thread.

I rule.

In an Uber Upgrade thread.

Oh the humanity!

(Ok so it's not a beige G3 but let me enjoy my moment of glory

..RedTomato..

Dirty details:

B+W G3, brought for £50 last Xmas inc 1GB ram 12GB drive
RocketRaid 2220 card (8 port SATA) cheap off ebay
3x300GB Maxtor Sata in RAID5

I plan on adding more 300GB drives after building or taking a drive cage from a spare PC.

Not sure if the power supply can take it tho, each 300GB drive is 1.5 amps on the 12v line, + 0.5 amps each for fan, mobo, graphics card, original 12GB drive and maybe another 1.5 amps for the G3 processor. That's 8amps in total, and the power unit states a maximum of 8 amps on the 12v line.

Well, I can't compare to the mad upgrades in this thread, but since I OC'd my Beige today, I figured I'd post specs.

Beige G3
366Mhz (from 300Mhz - gonna try for 400Mhz soon)
544MB RAM
40GB HD

Edit: Okay, 400Mhz won't boot, but it's stable at 385Mhz now.

My main beige (tower):
G4/400, 384MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive + original 4 GB, ATI Radeon 7000 PCI, 2x SuperDrive , combo FW/USB2/ATA133 card, and an 802.11g card.

Also have a mostly stock 233MHz desktop. It's only additions is a Radeon 7000 and a USB card.

My B&W has:
G4/500, 448MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon PCI (not 7000, the original is faster,) 8x SuperDrive (pulled from an eMac that had a 16x +DL +RAM drive put in,) Gigabit Ethernet card. And a serial port adapter (takes the modem out and puts in an old-style mini-DIN-8 RS-422 serial port.) Out of irony, I have an old ADB keyboard (original Extended,) and mouse; plus an old beige 17" 1710 monitor, beige AppleDesign speakers, and had my Newton connected through the serial port before it (the Newton) died.

To you who have G4's in your beiges, are you using upgrade cards, or do certain types of G4's pulled from other Powermacs work in them?

livingfortoday said:

To you who have G4's in your beiges, are you using upgrade cards, or do certain types of G4's pulled from other Powermacs work in them?

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One is a Sonnet upgrade, the other is a pull from a PMac G4. The pull is in the beige, the Sonnet is in the B&W. (The B&W can have firmware problems with G4s, so I made sure to run the Sonnet firmware update before trying it. The beige generally doesn't have any firmware issues.)

ehurtley said:

One is a Sonnet upgrade, the other is a pull from a PMac G4. The pull is in the beige, the Sonnet is in the B&W. (The B&W can have firmware problems with G4s, so I made sure to run the Sonnet firmware update before trying it. The beige generally doesn't have any firmware issues.)

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Ok, cool. I'd read that the Beige couldn't handle pulls from G4 towers, since the bus on those processors was 100Mhz versus the 66Mhz in the Beige. Could you point me to a site, or do you know off the top of your head which G4's could be pulled and put in place of the G3 in the beige? I can't seem to find definitive answers anywhere, and the one G4 processor I have definitely won't fit.

Thanks.