upgrading a bw

You're probably better off to look for one of those USB expansion modules that fits on the top of the tower and has serial ports and an opening for either an IDE floppy or Zip disk. I've forgotten the name but if you'd like, I would be willing to look for it. While you could find a floppy to fit in place of the Zip drive, you'd still have to find a way to connect it and that's still USB.

I have a G3/400 that I upgraded with a PowerLogix G3/800 processor upgrade and I'm quite pleased. I considered that the raw speed upgrade was far more beneficial than the small amount of AltiVec code available, so I did not buy a G4 upgrade. Why run at 550 MHz 85 percent of the time instead of 800 for the other 15 when it goes somewhat faster? 😉

Maximum RAM and a faster hard drive/controller combo will make it seem much more acceptable.

can you put an airport card or superdrive in these?

obviosly would need a processor upgrade too

- Doc

B&W G3's don't have an AirPort slot. I have heard that Linksys PCI WiFi card work in Macs though.

You will find more than enough info on these machines at xlr8yourmac.com. I have upgraded five or these babys in the last year and I have a few pointers to keep you out of trouble. First, if you have a rev 1 b&w and you want to add a bigger harddrive, you will need to get a pci controller that is compatable. You can also put a pci wireless card in for airport, but some people had success with the Lynksys and I did not. The Lynksys cards I got didn't work with b&w's or beige g3s. The very same model that many got to work. I ended up getting the buffalo card and antenna setup. Check out OWC or Newegg.com for these. The odd thing is that the Lynksys worked perfectly in my MDD dual g4 out of the box for 802.11g use with airport extreme. Go figure. If you are planning on running osx on a b&w I would strongly suggest you ditch your existing ram and get new sticks from Crucial. This is the only brand of ram I have found that consistantly works in the b&ws. I had all kinds of problems with old original apple ram and 3rd party ram when upgrading to osx. Trial and error and wasted money led me to the Crucial solution. If you are going to run os9, then don't worry too much about this topic. Some of the rev 1 machines will have bad onboard firewire ports. Again, a pci card will solve this problem, and they are relatively cheap. Lastly, if you want to add a faster processor,
I have to agree with bousozoku on this one. Go for the 800 or 900 g3 and it will be plenty zippy for 95% of normal computing. If you require a g4, then got one of those.

Oh arse, what about Kingston memory, I just bought some Kingston sticks for my B&W Mac and am intending to get a processor upgrade for it. Does anyone know if Kingston memory causes problems, I was about to say I rather thought Kingston was designed to run with specific types of macs, but I suppose upgrading the processor changes the type of Mac.

Any pointers, or experience greatly appreciated.

I was going to go for the Sonnet Encore G4/500mhz ZIF upgrade, a bargain at £200, although they just bought out 800mhz for about £350. But of OS X is still gonna run like a sack of rubbish things, then maybe I would be best sticking to a fast G3 processor and sticking to having an OS 9 desktop (for old times sakes you understand…)

grobelaar,

On the Kingston memory, I have read in the apple b&w forums that their memory will work as well for osx. I just don't have any personal experience with it and found that the Crucial works great. The b&ws are very tempermental with memory in osx. Since you have already ordered Kingston you might as well give it a try and see how it goes. I found that if I didn't replace the old memory in osx,
if I did some heavy processing like video compressing plus folding while repairing permissions I got a kernel panic every single time in every machine I updated. Very strange, but that was the acid test I used to check the memory. After replacing the memory I had absolutly no kernel panics under the same exact circumstances.

If you are going to upgrade your processor it will pay to take a look over at xlr8yourmac.com and read the reviews of processor upgrades for your machine. The new Sonnet 800mhz and 1ghz require you to lower your buss speed to 66 instead of 100 mhz to work properly. I have used both a 550mhz g4 overclocked to 600 without problems and also an 800mhz g3 overclocked to 900 without problems. Osx runs great with either processors. Again, read the reviews as mentioned above.

In the rumor department, there were reports of people seeing a radeon 9000 pci video card in some machines at the ati booth at macworld. I hope they release the damned thing soon, the 7000 is ok but a 9000 would be better for gaming.

Originally posted by MoparShaha
B&W G3's don't have an AirPort slot. I have heard that Linksys PCI WiFi card work in Macs though.

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I saw usb airport antenna's the other day. I think they would probably work, and are pretty cheap.

Originally posted by mikeabnooy
what's a controller combo? I already have maxed out ram. could you tell me of the usb thing for the top that sounds interesting.

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The faster hard drive/controller combo is merely an ATA/100/133 controller card with an ATA/100 or ATA/133 hard drive. They're fairly inexpensive and as Mac OS X is tough on the hard drive, it's a reliable way to get more speed.

I'm looking for the name of the USB thingee. I've got the magazines from back then. I just haven't found it yet. I keep thinking that it's G3 Dock/G4 Dock, but I'll keep searching.

grobelaar:

After my bad experiences with Kingston RAM, I wouldn't buy anything from the company.

My PowerLogix G3/800 upgrade runs Mac OS X just fine. The original G3/400 processor wasn't terrible, even though it couldn't be considered fast. The fast hard drive kept things smooth, though.