>>>warning<<< don't use any drug that makes you sleepy wile reading this post possable cause of KB or mouse strangulation
or KB face can happen
yea, trying to follow how the cpu's was planned to be released can be a bit confusing when you see how they really was released. the G3 was based from the 603/603e and the G4 is based from the 604/604e CPU.
when i first ever looked at this mobo in my Beige i was always wondering what the place by the cpu where something was suppose to go but never got put there cause they decided to use the G3 cpu instead. but anyway it was for the 604/604e cpu socket i then learned from some site (cant remember where now) but it told that the Beige was suppose to use the 603/604 cpu's but end up using the G3 cpu.
but if you look in openfirmware in the Beige G3 with a G4 cpu installed it tries to use info for the 60?. i know cause i put a G4 cpu in this from a yikes G4 it ran at at the set speed of 400mhz but since there is no info in the rom for the G4 it used the info for the 60? which has different addresses than the G4 has so it wont detect the L2 cache and it only sees 32kB of the 64kB of L1 cache (which is will use 16 kB instruction and 16 kB data). only if there was a way to add the info in the rom or open firmware for the G4 so it would properly work without using software to enable the L2 cache (which i tried but ended up having a extension conflict wile loading the extension atiaccelerator extension in OS 9) never tried OS X
but anyway back on topic, any new info about the path you are going to take upgrade the Beige G3. cause there are allot of options available. i bought memory from DMS for the B&W G3 system and works great in the Beige G3. a stick of 256mb is $26 USD a piece and are PC100 CL2 168 (16 chip design) is what the Beige G3 has to use in order to see the full amount of the 256mb chip. if you get the 256mb chip with only 8 chips you will only see 128mb of the 256mb. the memory for the B&W G3 is fast enuff that it will allow you to overclock the system bus. and will still allow you to reach the max of 768mb of ram.
now you can buy a used G3 cpu out of a B&W G3 from ebay (like i did) a 450mhz G3 with 1mb of l2 cache for $40-$50 USD a wile ago. but now the price of them have gone down allot.
the Beige G3 will handle a HDD of 128gb (but there are only 120gb out there which rides on the boarder line hitting the limit of 128gb) i bought my western digital SE 120gb hdd from amazon brand new in the clear plastic box for $57 USD.
now optical drive on this system can be hit or miss. i bought PC version of the Pioneer DVR-110D for $40 but works in a Mac (there is also apple branded version of the drive which is better to buy cause you will be able to boot OS X install dvd's or cd's) my version of the drive wont allow me to boot any version of the OS X cd or dvd since its not apple branded.
at first in O S9.2.2 with the Pioneer drive i could not put the system to sleep with HDD sleep enabled cause when i would wake the system up it would lock up. i found a apple cd/dvd driver replacement called intech cd/dvd speedtools 6.0 which fixes the problem. but i still had no burn support for the drive in OS 9.2.2 untill some one modded the PioneerCDR authoring extension and now i have burn support with iTunes and finder burning.
i had to install the stock apple 24x cd rom that came with the Beige G3 to load up jaguar ( also had to do that when i installed tiger with the help of xpostfacto) but jaguar used the drive without a hitch but still no burn support until i installed patchburn, all went great.
tiger 10.4.8 on the other hand don't want to use the Pioneer drive ( it will work some times and some times will start to work but fail out causing what ever app that was using the drive to lockup) and had to force quit the app. if i try to burn in tiger it will always fail, when i try to copy files from the cd to the hdd in tiger it will fail, i think all this has something to do with xpostfacto cause i put the Pioneer drive into my friends digital audio G4 that was running tiger 10.4.8 and it used it fine and burned with it. now in 10.4.7 the pioneer would hardly mount anything or work at all. but the 10.4.8 update made the drive more stable and able to work to a extent.
sorry all for the real long winded post. but i was just sharing info about my upgrading experiences with my Beige G3, which i hope helps him to better select the upgrades. its best to make sure if there is a apple version of the optical drive to get it (like my Pioneer DVR-110D wasn't). OWC sells the apple branded versions of the drives most of the time. and there is some pc only drives that will boot the OS X install cd's or dvd's.
now a good video card will still be needed to get any good performance gains in games or GPU intensive task's (AKA OS X) cause the onboard will be a pain in the butt in OS X, and any games will run real slow no matter the CPU. i bought a ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI for my Beige G3 not realizing that the original Radeon Mac Edition was a faster card all the way around even tho it was older. but they can be found for $20-$30 USD on ebay. the ATI Radeon 9200 will work in a Beige G3 but only in OS X is it stable cause the 9200 in the Beige G3 in OS 9.x wont run hardly anything that requires a GPU to render (it will lock the system up if you try).
but you can get this system up to a nice speed with that amount of money you have to put into it. sonnet makes a G4 1ghz upgrade for this and there is another company that makes a G3 1ghz or 1.1ghz cpu upgrade but that will take half of the money you said you have to spend on it.
another thing is USB/firewire pci cards. they can be real tricky as i stated above. and the best place to go to ask on what will and what wont work in the Beige G3 can be found here
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=110&start=0
happy upgrading
and again sorry for the long winded post. i tried to get my spelling correct and to break up the post a bit so it is easier to read ( i know it will make some people fall asleep)
Otherwise regular MTR is fine, too.... 
