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Well, I have a Sawtooth with a 200W PSU that's running 4 x 320GB drives, as well as a 15Gb system drive and a DVD-ROM. So I think that with just two drives on the 171W PSU you should be ok, unless the 750GB drives draw a lot more power than the hard drives I have in mine.

Edit: I should note that I usually have the machine folding as well, so it's really used pretty heavily.
 
Actually the G4 was based on the 604/604e. It was this design lineage that lets you use the G4 in multiprocessor systems (which the 603/603e and G3 line couldn't be used in) and was part of the problem with heat that delayed the G4 processor being introduced into PowerBooks (the G3 was introduced in both PowerBooks and PowerMacs at the same time, it took almost two years to get the G4 into a PowerBook).

It is also the difference between the G3 and G4 lines that make the G4 faster than the G3 at non-Altivec tasks when both processors are run at the same clock speeds and with equivalent cache. More over, the G3 inherits a weaker floating point ability from the 603/603e line (a 604eV is faster at floating point operations than a G3 at the same clock speed), while the G4 (even without Altivec) is much faster.

IBM had considered using an Altivec-less version of the G4, but opted to have the POWER3 series be the upgrade path from their 604e based systems.

:rolleyes:

Back when IBM licensed Altivec for the G5 processors, I advocated IBM making a G3 variant with Altivec and selling it as a G4-lite. By this point Apple had stopped using G4s in multiprocessor systems and the G3 design was still a much better processor (heat wise) than the G4.

It, obviously, never happened... but I thought it was a good idea. :D
 
It is also the difference between the G3 and G4 lines that make the G4 faster than the G3 at non-Altivec tasks when both processors are run at the same clock speeds and with equivalent cache.

Ah yes, remember when my 400mhz G4 7.6.1 machine out performed a similar 400mhz G3 7.6.1 machine? I forgot about that...
 
I remember back when you did those tests... and because the caching technique used by both the G3 and G4 are pretty much the same, you were able to enable the G4 in System 7 using the same software for a G3 upgrade.

I know this is getting a little off topic, but did you ever put up a page on the steps you used to get a G4 working with System 7? As both G3 and G4 upgrades from the past become less expensive, their relative prices start to get closer to each other. The added speed boost of a G4 in System 7 would start to be worth the price difference even without the Altivec stuff enabled.
 
They did make PCI Gigabit cards, I have one inside a computer. Its a Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit. Wicked fast. :D

yea gigabit ethernet are fast. but the speed is only noticeable if you are transfering data to another computer with a gigabit ethernet card in it and you only will use the gigabit speed over the internet if you have broadband faster than 100mb download speed.

i just use my onboard 10 base t ethernet cause it works just fine for me. me and my friend did a boot time race between my Beige G3 running at 466mhz and his Digital Audio G4 also running at 466mhz and it was almost a tie he beat me by under half a second. but in the gui and in games he could do better than me cause of the agp port in his. but my beige g3 is more than comfortable in tiger for me
 
To keep everyone updated who gave advice, we've decided to reduce our original plans to help with power requirements.

O/C the processor to 333MHz or 350MHz with 87MHz FSB.

768MB RAM
750GB HD (Single) Using InTech's HD Tools
8x SuperDrive
Get rid of the Zip Drive
10.3.9 or 10.4.8 XPostFacto'd on there.
PCI USB 2.0/FireWire
PCI Graphics (Simple Card, nothing too fancy... 32MB... not sure which yet)
 
why dont you buy a cpu out of a B&W G3. the G3 450mhz 1mb l2 cache only was $40 USD and wont over tax the psu. there is allot of people on the apple discussions board with the stock psu with the G4 1000 upgrade and a 120gb hdd with firewire/usb2.0 cards andwho knows what else and they don't run into problems. the only thing they run into problems with is if one buys a USB2.0/firewire combo card that has one of those chipsets for the usb side that is known to have problems with the Beige G3. but if you do your research you can max everything out with no ill effects (AKA find a usb 2.0 firewire combo card with a OHIC compliant chipset for the usb side) there is also a list to the chipsets that will not work well at all in the beige no mater if that was the only pci card useing the pci bus. my hdd at the awake and working state only uses 8 watts.

the ATI Radeon 7000 core and memory runs at 183/183 mhz but it lacks the TCL engine the original radeon has. the original radeon runs at a slower clock of 166/166 but has the TCL engine which will allow it better performance with accelerated functions. the 2d speed of the original radeon is almost double the speed of the ATI Radeon 7000's 2d speed and it shows in the speed the gui moves at.
 
This

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).

is not quite true. I had a person over at the strangedogs forum flash a PC 9200 card to work in a mac and it does work in OS 9 and OS X just fine.

I have done my fair share of upgrading Biege G3's and from what i have concluded the OS 9 problem stems from an extensions conflict in OS 9. If after you install OS 9 from the CD and then go directly to the extensions folder on the HD you will find some ATI extensions (can't remember the names of them off the top of my head). I think i pulled EVERY one of the ATI extensions out and let the drivers on the card do there thing. After the extension removal set the startup disk to be the HD and all should be good. At least that was how it was for me. The flashed PC Radeon 9200 works great in OS 9 and OS X on a Blue and White G3 right now.

And also for ram if you are careful and pay close attention to RAM specs you can get 256 strips for cheap on eBay. I bought :eek: Dell :eek: branded 256 stick of ram and put them in the Blue and white along with some Beige G3 AIO's and they work GREAT!! And the auction i got them from i only ended up paying $5.50 a piece for them. Now that price is a little :p under what they normally go for even on eBay. At that price i could not pass it up and i went an got 20 sticks of the stuff. Maxed out 4 Beige G3's i gave to my church and 3 i gave to the community outreach place were my dad helps out. They make great machines for word processing and internet.

As for PCI USB/Firewire cards look for something with an NEC chip on them. NOT VIA!!!. I got some VIA card cheap off of eBay and while they work they are kinda a pain. I though i had done my research but it turns out the chipset version i had (via 6202 chipset) does not work completely kosher in a G3 and there is only a G4 patch/update for it. The patch does however seem to work on the G3's. I ended up having to use it and it seemed to work just fine.

I do suggest getting a G3/G4 Zif upgrade for it. It will make it much more usable in day to day tasks. If i had to shoot for a G4 number i would probably go no less then 500mhz and then from there try to overclock the thing. I bought a 450mhz for the Blue and white and managed to get it to overclock to 550mhz stable on stock heatsink and stuff. I did mamange to get it to go to 600mhz but it would freeze after a few minutes of use adn transferring files.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
 
This



is not quite true. I had a person over at the strangedogs forum flash a PC 9200 card to work in a mac and it does work in OS 9 and OS X just fine.

I have done my fair share of upgrading Biege G3's and from what i have concluded the OS 9 problem stems from an extensions conflict in OS 9. If after you install OS 9 from the CD and then go directly to the extensions folder on the HD you will find some ATI extensions (can't remember the names of them off the top of my head). I think i pulled EVERY one of the ATI extensions out and let the drivers on the card do there thing. After the extension removal set the startup disk to be the HD and all should be good. At least that was how it was for me. The flashed PC Radeon 9200 works great in OS 9 and OS X on a Blue and White G3 right now.

And also for ram if you are careful and pay close attention to RAM specs you can get 256 strips for cheap on eBay. I bought :eek: Dell :eek: branded 256 stick of ram and put them in the Blue and white along with some Beige G3 AIO's and they work GREAT!! And the auction i got them from i only ended up paying $5.50 a piece for them. Now that price is a little :p under what they normally go for even on eBay. At that price i could not pass it up and i went an got 20 sticks of the stuff. Maxed out 4 Beige G3's i gave to my church and 3 i gave to the community outreach place were my dad helps out. They make great machines for word processing and internet.

As for PCI USB/Firewire cards look for something with an NEC chip on them. NOT VIA!!!. I got some VIA card cheap off of eBay and while they work they are kinda a pain. I though i had done my research but it turns out the chipset version i had (via 6202 chipset) does not work completely kosher in a G3 and there is only a G4 patch/update for it. The patch does however seem to work on the G3's. I ended up having to use it and it seemed to work just fine.

I do suggest getting a G3/G4 Zif upgrade for it. It will make it much more usable in day to day tasks. If i had to shoot for a G4 number i would probably go no less then 500mhz and then from there try to overclock the thing. I bought a 450mhz for the Blue and white and managed to get it to overclock to 550mhz stable on stock heatsink and stuff. I did mamange to get it to go to 600mhz but it would freeze after a few minutes of use adn transferring files.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

yea OS 9.x don't do well with to many added extensions. i had my fair share of them wile upgrading mine.

the Pioneer DVR-110D (not supported to burn with in OS 9 with iTunes and finder burning) with the stock PioneerCDR authoring support extension. some one modded it for me to work with my 110D and now i have iTunes burn support for the 110D and finder burning which works great. some one asked me if this authoring extension would work for the 111 and 111D drives so i sent them mine and it didnt work. so i desided to look into it to see what was changed so i replaced the 110D with the 111D and it worked for him

the other problem i had with the 110D in OS 9.x was if i put the system to sleep with hdd sleep enabled when i would try to wake it up he system would freeze. i found that useing intech speedtools 6.0 for OS 9.x fixed that problem. it replaces the apple CD/dvd driver extension.now the 110D fully works in OS 9.x.

I bought a Yikes G4 400mhz CPU and mobo and installed it. it ran at 400mhz just fine but since Open Firmware cant see the G4 (cause it don't have the proper info and addresses to identify the G4) it used info for the 60? and the L2 cache wasn't being seen and the L1 cache was cut in half to 32 from 64. so it ran real slow. and when i tried a L2 cache enabler and when the extensions would start to load the ATIaccelorator extension would conflict with the L2 cache enabler's extension and cause a freeze every time. so i bought the 450mhz cpu from a B&W which works great and shows a great improvement over the stock G3 266mhz CPU.

i have learned a great deal of info from upgrading this Beige G3 AIO and i can prolly help also with supplying info to help. i know there is allot of people here that will also know allot about upgrading the Beige G3 like i do and will also help out with any questions.

there is one guy on the Beige G3 part of apple discussion that has made a list of USB chipsets that causes problems with the Beige G3. he could be of use to people also that want to add USB2.0/firewire PCI cards to the Beige G3.

i know there is some cards that will not work with the rev c rom for the Beige G3. i think the sweet spot is a rev b rom. my Beige G3 has a Rev b rom and rev b mobo which has the ATI Rage PRO video chip. the Rev A mobo has the ATI Rage II video chip. the Rev C mobo has the ATI Rage Pro Turbo video chip.. if you plan to use OS classic on that if it has a Rev A rom it will not support slave/master drive configs on a single IDE cable. OS X overrides the onboard rom and you wont have that limitation in OS X. another way to overcome that problem is to buy a rev b or c rom.
 
To keep everyone updated who gave advice, we've decided to reduce our original plans to help with power requirements.

O/C the processor to 333MHz or 350MHz with 87MHz FSB.

768MB RAM
750GB HD (Single) Using InTech's HD Tools
8x SuperDrive
Get rid of the Zip Drive
10.3.9 or 10.4.8 XPostFacto'd on there.
PCI USB 2.0/FireWire
PCI Graphics (Simple Card, nothing too fancy... 32MB... not sure which yet)

I always do have this nice GeForce FX5200 Mac PCI card sitting on my desk. :)
 
O/C the processor to 333MHz or 350MHz with 87MHz FSB.

768MB RAM
750GB HD (Single) Using InTech's HD Tools
8x SuperDrive
Get rid of the Zip Drive
10.3.9 or 10.4.8 XPostFacto'd on there.
PCI USB 2.0/FireWire
PCI Graphics (Simple Card, nothing too fancy... 32MB... not sure which yet)

Souping up an old machine like that reminds me of when I worked at Mitsubishi and a guy there gave me a ride in one of these with a turbo charger in it. I didn't think I'd make it home in one piece that night.

Post some pics of the machine once it's all done. It'd be interesting to see the guts of it.
 
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