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Is this a good deal for a G3??

Grimace

Grimace

macrumors 68040
Original poster
I currently am negotiating for this computer:

300Mhz G3 Desktop
128MB RAM (maybe 256, not sure yet)
4 gig drive,
24x CDRom,
Zip Drive,
ADC Out

For $115, it will come with a keyboard and mouse.

If I put in more RAM and load Panther, will it be slow as molasses?? I'm also worried that Panther takes up a LOT of HD space and may cut my available space down even more.

Any thoughts on this computer for the price?? (I will be hooking it up to a DVI LCD monitor)
 
I have a nice G4 which will run my heavy apps. This would be for web browsing, maybe some report writing etc.

I've had a big 19" LCD monitor sitting around for 6 months and I don't have the money for a G5 right now.
 
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Any reseller would probably mark it above $200. I hope to pick up a G3 like that soon. Remember that just about any IDE hard drive can be popped in there to give you more drive space.
 
I just bought a used iBook G3 466mhz for doing basic work and emails while traveling. I thought that running panther would be an issue but it runs it suprisingly well. Its only slow when going into system preferences and using expose and thats it. Pretty awesome.
 
carletonmusic said:
I currently am negotiating for this computer:

300Mhz G3 Desktop
128MB RAM (maybe 256, not sure yet)
4 gig drive,
24x CDRom,
Zip Drive,
ADC Out

For $115, it will come with a keyboard and mouse.

If I put in more RAM and load Panther, will it be slow as molasses?? I'm also worried that Panther takes up a LOT of HD space and may cut my available space down even more.

Any thoughts on this computer for the price?? (I will be hooking it up to a DVI LCD monitor)
Click to expand...
I don't remember PowerMac G3s coming with ADC output, ADC requires USB and power to pass through the video card -- and ADC didn't show up until the Gig-Ethernet PowerMac G4.

Everything before that was VGA and DVI.
 
Stop me if I'm wrong but, I beleive Apple doesn't support ANY beige machines at all for Panther. So Panther wouldn't run on that machine... I don't know if the new XPostFacto release will do it or not, but I don't think it's out yet anyway.

edit-
btw, no that's not a bad deal though.
 
This is what I inferred ADC from:

It has a MacVideo out (we have a VGA adapter you can have if you need it)

Unless this person thinks DVI is a Mac only thing, I'm assuming it's ADC. Either way, I'm fine - I want to hook into a DVI monitor anyway.
 
ltgator333 said:
Stop me if I'm wrong but, I beleive Apple doesn't support ANY beige machines at all for Panther. So Panther wouldn't run on that machine... I don't know if the new XPostFacto release will do it or not, but I don't think it's out yet anyway.

edit-
btw, no that's not a bad deal though.
Click to expand...

I doesn't have to be a beige mac. B&W has a 300Mhz - apple technically supports all G3s - or at least the B&W ones pictured:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html

I think you can run OSX on it by using Xpostfacto:

http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.html
 
carletonmusic said:
I doesn't have to be a beige mac. B&W has a 300Mhz - apple technically supports all G3s - or at least the B&W ones pictured:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html

I think you can run OSX on it by using Xpostfacto:

http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.html
Click to expand...



Yeah the Blue and White ones are pictured, but, the G3 Desktop is a beige machine.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112428

Pretty sure if I dug a lil further I could find a blatant 'beige G3 isn't supported' but..
 
carletonmusic said:
This is what I inferred ADC from:

It has a MacVideo out (we have a VGA adapter you can have if you need it)

Unless this person thinks DVI is a Mac only thing, I'm assuming it's ADC.
Click to expand...
Doubtful, probably VGA -- and a DVI port only if you're lucky.

But Mac video output is sync on green VGA -- might as well take the adapter anyway (though it'll probably be of use for and old Mac Monitor).
 
who knows - I'll have exact specs in the morning. I emailed this example picture of a non-beige G3 to make sure we were on the same page. If it's this kind of Mac, I'll go for it, if it's a beige - I think I'll say thanks but no thanks.

g3-g4-0.jpg
 
Go to Ebay and do a search for "G3 300Mhz" - you will see both beige and B&W versions.

The specs page that I see from Apple's site has an asterisk that says "300 MHz also available."

********************

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43124
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112428

Weird how we get different links for the same specs. All of mine begin with end in 4 something and yours ends in 1 something. I'm assuming you are getting the specs from this page:

http://www.info.apple.com/support/applespec.html
 
Aside from the RAM, it sounds remarkably like the specs on the iBook I used to run Jaguar on. The big impediment to running Panther will likely be the graphics card, since you need something like (I think) 16MB of VRAM minimum. Lucky me, the Rev A Tangerine I'd inherited couldn't load Panther and the screen would freak out.

It did fine with 10.2.8, though.... Right up until my brother ran over it. 🙁

At least I have a newer iBook now, with a much nicer setup.
 
.02

if they said a mac video out on a g3, you are looking at a beige, and if you wanna run panther, i say no - here's why:

being able to run something is far different from using it productively... for the amount of money requried to make the beige happy with panther, you could buy a blue and white (which is what is pictured above). it has a faster bus speed and will handle panther natively.

mac video out reffers to a vga like output that has two rows to make up it's 15 pins instead of 3. there's some techincal differences, but you can use adaptors to switch between the two. you won't be able to use adc on any mac w/o an agp slot - the first of which was the sawtooth. but that won't even support adc, cause of the design - you'd have to step up to the next mobo revision.

that said, to run a digital display, you'd need a new vid card (prolly a radeon 7000 mac edition) which are horribly overpriced for pci graphics cards.

and when it's all said and done, you have yourself a slow machine. trust me, i'm using one right now, and it's staying content with os 9 (only by the good graces of ram). even 256 in that thing would hamper you. but the biggest problem with the beige is it's bus speed - there's no getting around it. 66mhz and that's all she wrote. any attempts at overclocking the bus have left the system pretty unstable...

so my .02? if you don't have much to work with, look for a blue and white g3, and call it a day. if you can scrounge a little more, look for a low end g4 or buy an emac...

matt
 
I thought the rule for Panther was it had to have "built-in USB". That was basically a sneaky way of ruling out beiges.

Beiges can run Jaguar pretty well, of course.

I have a 233MHz CRT iMac that runs Panther acceptably.
 
I wasn't wedded to running Panther - just OSX of some flavor. This won't be my primary mac so no worries about me being productive - it's more of a distraction machine to tinker with!!

you guys rock - thanks for all of the help. 🙂
 
My 2c worth...

The machine you described is the *exact* one I use, except mine has 256mb ram. I run Jaguar 10.2.3 on it. It's a great machine. Is it slow? I wouldn't say so. It's not lightning fast, but it's entirely adequate for e-mail, iTunes, surfing, and composing in Word. I also use it to run Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iPhoto, and Bryce. Using those programs it gets sluggish sometimes, but never crashes--it always gets the job done.
So I'd say it's entirely adequate for the tasks you mentioned, and I'm a case in point that it *can* be used for other things as well (one might argue that it shouldn't be used for those tasks, but hey...I'll upgrade soon)
And the price is very right. I bought mine secondhand about a year and a half ago from a college for $150.00.
Hope this helps
Tani
 
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