B&w g3

[bunnspecial]

I was promised this computer several months back, and was able to remove it from its "original installation" today. Part of the deal was that I had to get all of the old data off of it and transferred onto a flash drive(a bigger job than one might think!), but once that was done I was free to take it.

It's still running 8.5.1, which complicated the "transferring data" part quite a bit. The CD drive also seems to be dead, meaning that I was unable to upgrade to OS 8.6 and install the flash drive drivers. I actually ended up pulling the drive and using an external IDE to USB with my MBP to copy over the entire HDD contents-which truthfully was probably a lot faster than transferring 2.5gb over a USB 1 connection.

This one is 350mhz and has a 12gb HDD. I've already upgraded the RAM to 1gb, and once I can get the ODD swapped out to a DVD drive I'm going to install Tiger.

I don't need the CRT, but I hated to leave it behind to be trashed especially given the condition of it, and that it is the natural pair for the computer.

Among other things in the box is the original shipping invoice 🙂

 

[Ih8reno]

Nice find! I got one and added usb2 support as well as a 32mb video card I had lying around. Enjoy it my friend

I was promised this computer several months back, and was able to remove it from its "original installation" today. Part of the deal was that I had to get all of the old data off of it and transferred onto a flash drive(a bigger job than one might think!), but once that was done I was free to take it.

It's still running 8.5.1, which complicated the "transferring data" part quite a bit. The CD drive also seems to be dead, meaning that I was unable to upgrade to OS 8.6 and install the flash drive drivers. I actually ended up pulling the drive and using an external IDE to USB with my MBP to copy over the entire HDD contents-which truthfully was probably a lot faster than transferring 2.5gb over a USB 1 connection.

This one is 350mhz and has a 12gb HDD. I've already upgraded the RAM to 1gb, and once I can get the ODD swapped out to a DVD drive I'm going to install Tiger.

I don't need the CRT, but I hated to leave it behind to be trashed especially given the condition of it, and that it is the natural pair for the computer.

Among other things in the box is the original shipping invoice 🙂

 

[catzilla]

I was shopping for a PCI G4 when they did the inverse speed bump, I bought an (open box IIRC) B&W G3 450 server with the LVLD SCSI card and and a 9GB server drive. Those are great machines. the 450 was rev B board without the initial ATA issues.

 

[Altemose]

What a beautiful machine!

 

[weckart]

That Finder desktop...

 

[bunnspecial]

That Finder desktop...

Yes, it is a bit of a mess 🙂

This is actually not the first computer computer that has come from sort of the same source, a husband and wife who were both professors in the department(the husband is retired, the wife is still here)...I have both an 8500 and this computer from them, plus a whole bunch of very early Macintosh stuff, including boxes of of software, and even several peripherals with the "telephone plug" used with the the earliest Macintoshes. The 8500 desktop was impeccably organized, with colored folders and even special icons to designate certain files.

The G3 desktop...not so much.

Unless of course you're referring to the pile of paper on the actual physical desktop behind the monitor-I take full credit for that 🙂

 

[bunnspecial]

I spent quite a bit of time with this one yesterday, and learned some interesting things.

As I mentioned in my original post, the optical drive was dead. I went home and dug through my "stash", and actually had no plain CD-ROM drives or CD burners. I thought I had some "combo" drives(DVD-ROM and CD-RW) but either have used them up or put them somewhere separate from my the rest of the optical drives in my stash.

In any case, since I wanted to install Tiger(in addition to some other things) I picked just a plain DVD-ROM drive and put it in.. I stuck the Tiger install disk in, booted into it, and installed Tiger just fine.

I started having issues when I then tried to boot into OS 8.5 again. The computer would lock up during booting while loading extensions. I tried to note the extensions that were causing problems, then booted without extensions(which it would do successfully) and attempt to individually disable the problematic extensions...this quickly turned into a game of "whack a mole." Plus, even once booted, the computer would often lock-up when attempting to run a program.

So, in desperation I pulled all the RAM I had installed and took it back down to the single factory 128mb stick, but this didn't fix anything.

I booted off the hardware restore disk, but this too would lock up as soon as I tried to do anything. I stuck a new hard drive in and attempted a fresh start, but still no luck.

Finally, in a fit of desperation I pulled the secondary ATA bus cable loose at the logic board, and all of a sudden it booted right up. So, I guess that my DVD-ROM drive was causing the problem.

Interestingly enough, I replaced it with a DVD burner, and the computer is working fine with that now. I was able to successfully update to OS 8.6(so now I can mount and read flash drives!).

Now, I just need to tackle installing OS 9!

I just wish that this were the "revision b" logic board that could support a second hard drive-I may end up putting an IDE card in it so that I can install a second one.

 

[Altemose]

Finally, in a fit of desperation I pulled the secondary ATA bus cable loose at the logic board, and all of a sudden it booted right up. So, I guess that my DVD-ROM drive was causing the problem.

Interestingly enough, I replaced it with a DVD burner, and the computer is working fine with that now. I was able to successfully update to OS 8.6(so now I can mount and read flash drives!).

Does the original drive by chance have a jumper setting on it? If so it may be clashing with the hard drive's jumper and when spooled up by the OS it locks up. Otherwise, it could just be an incompatible drive but I do find that a bit of a rare occurrence.

 

[bunnspecial]

Does the original drive by chance have a jumper setting on it? If so it may be clashing with the hard drive's jumper and when spooled up by the OS it locks up. Otherwise, it could just be an incompatible drive but I do find that a bit of a rare occurrence.

I set the DVD drive as master, the same as the CD-ROM drive I removed. There is a ZIP drive on the ATA bus that I double checked and is in fact set as slave, although I had the same problem even with the ZIP drive disconnected.

The drive in the computer now(and continuing to work fine) is also set as master.

 

[Altemose]

I set the DVD drive as master, the same as the CD-ROM drive I removed. There is a ZIP drive on the ATA bus that I double checked and is in fact set as slave, although I had the same problem even with the ZIP drive disconnected.

The drive in the computer now(and continuing to work fine) is also set as master.

I always set my optical drives to cable select with no issues.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Wow, what a nice find! I was reading your post and didn't expect to see it in this condition before scrolling down to see the photos. My B&W is thrashed mainly because two handles are cracked. It was another common case of over-priced Mac at a thrift store. It was sitting there for $100... no joke. I talked it down to $10 over the phone! Sadly, the employee there was careless and yanked it off the shelf, cracking the rear bottom foot. I guess the top front handle got cracked as well, as he used it to pull the Mac off the shelf. After that, I refused to buy it for $10 and finally talked it down to $5. It's nothing special, being the worst model (300Mhz), but I find it to be the best-looking PowerMac ever made, at least in the G* series!

 

[bunnspecial]

Wow, what a nice find! I was reading your post and didn't expect to see it in this condition before scrolling down to see the photos.

I was honestly thrilled at how nice it was when I did actually get to look it over. I know the professor really well, and she tends to be very careful with here stuff, so it was not so much a surprise but still very nice to find.

Interestingly enough, the whole thing was a bit of a time capsule. As I mentioned, this professor's husband retired a couple of years ago, and since he retired she has used his office all the time(it's right next her lab, while her official office is on the other side of the building). Based on some of the file dates, I think that she more-or-less retired the G3 around 2004 and replaced it with an eMac(she's keeping that) and then even more recently has been using a unibody 17" MBP.

When she first took me to her office to show me the G3 this past summer, she mentioned that it was probably the first time she'd even been in there in probably 6 months. She is giving up that office to make way for some new faculty members, hence the getting rid of the G3.

All of that said, the computer has probably been plugged in constantly(save for the occasional power failure) for the past 15 years, and the PMU battery is actually still good!

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

I was honestly thrilled at how nice it was when I did actually get to look it over. I know the professor really well, and she tends to be very careful with here stuff, so it was not so much a surprise but still very nice to find.

Interestingly enough, the whole thing was a bit of a time capsule. As I mentioned, this professor's husband retired a couple of years ago, and since he retired she has used his office all the time(it's right next her lab, while her official office is on the other side of the building). Based on some of the file dates, I think that she more-or-less retired the G3 around 2004 and replaced it with an eMac(she's keeping that) and then even more recently has been using a unibody 17" MBP.

When she first took me to her office to show me the G3 this past summer, she mentioned that it was probably the first time she'd even been in there in probably 6 months. She is giving up that office to make way for some new faculty members, hence the getting rid of the G3.

All of that said, the computer has probably been plugged in constantly(save for the occasional power failure) for the past 15 years, and the PMU battery is actually still good!

Very nice! It's interesting to see old files on a computer. I remember when I bought my Macintosh SE. I think it had files on it dating from 1987 to 2000. I saw several business documents from 1997, for example. It would be cool to check the web browser's history on that computer. That may sound weird, but I myself always find it interesting to see things on an old computer that has not been used on a long time. It would be interesting to see what sites were loaded on that thing back when it could load them well, and to go to the sites today and see what they are like. As far back as I can remember, that's when websites began getting bloated and slow like they are today. It's almost like an internet time capsule to see such things.

 

[bunnspecial]

Interestingly enough, I found a document created in 2010, so it's actually been used more recently than I thought. There are also a lot from the 2008 time frame.

Looking through some of the paper, I found the packing slip for the G3 and the invoice for the eMac. I had noticed that the G3 didn't have a modem, and was glad to see that the packing slip specifically noted "no modem."

In another box of stuff, I found a full Apple price list(both retail and educational pricing) for 1993-1994. This sort of ephemera is really interesting to see in its own right.

 

[poiihy]

I don't like to look through old files. I prefer to just wipe it.