Yes, I found that out when I swapped the RAM from my G3 iMac and one stick was reporting half capacity. This is the 350Mhz model so presumably that's rev B? If the PMU/CUDA fails tomorrow you're welcome to the the motherboard/GPU/RAM.
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Dead Powermac G3?
- Thread starter Dronecatcher
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Yes, I found that out when I swapped the RAM from my G3 iMac and one stick was reporting half capacity. This is the 350Mhz model so presumably that's rev B? If the PMU/CUDA fails tomorrow you're welcome to the the motherboard/GPU/RAM.
I think mine is also 350MHz. I would just leave the rig for a day or two with the PRAM battery out and then come back to it if you are frustrated before dismembering it. Which reminds me that I should revisit the pair of awful 6500s I have and see if they are reporting for duty again. Tempted to take a sledgehammer to them, though.
Sympathies...I tend to have the patience of a saint for software issues but hardware vexes me..I remember the day I threw I perfectly good 1.25Ghz iMac G4 17" in the wheelie bin because the mini speaker socket was acting up...
Oh. That is a bit like trashing a car because the ashtray was full. I built all my PCs from scratch before venturing into Macdom so I am used to expecting teething troubles along the way.
My HD5870 from my MacPro that I painstakingly flashed to get bootscreens died recently and I shall attempt a reflow tomorrow. You just have to accept that antiques need some maintenance. Except the 6500s. They had better be nice to me.
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
Here are some details about the two revisions;
http://lowendmac.com/1999/blue-and-white-power-mac-g3/
(This states that the 350 could have been either and only the 450 was exclusively rev B/2)
I wonder how much of these quirks are due to age and how much are simply due to a buggy design? I can’t recall ever having a problem with my B&W back in ‘02. Maybe I got lucky and scored the rev B without realizing it.
I'll check it out tomorrow. My only motive for buying the combo was the ridiculous price...not like I need another Mac 😉
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
Yes, you did well. The same combo is currently up for sale here on the AU eBay for $300 !!
You don’t need it working 100% for a nice photo op 😎
I’ve been keeping an eye open for a good B&W deal. But from a practical point of view, I have no use for it that my G4s can’t fulfill (and do better).
Yeah, the price was good enough just for hearing the seller's story - he's used it for recording tracks in Cubase 5 (still installed when I bought it) before life obligations took over...Think it had been in storage for years...luckily he still has a band with a few mates - still keeping that spirit alive 🙂
LightBulbFun
macrumors 68030
real shame about that iMac 1.25Ghz. :/ did you not think about offering it up here first? a dodgy head phone jack is an easy walk in the park repair people with even basic soldering skills. quite a stupid reason to chuck the poor thing... (im actually looking for a 1.25Ghz iMac G4 too, to try and perform some CPU upgrades on one... so i would of gladly taken your machine even if there was more things wrong with it)
By the sounds of things you have a Rev A G3 BW, if you can post a picture of the spec label on the back (if thats fallen off, post a picture of the CMD ATA chip on the LogicBoard)
they are very very finicky machines (I own 3 of the damn things 🙂 )
first of all, they can be very picky about RAM, so I recommend you pull your memory out and put in back what it came with. and seeing how it works.
if your RAM sticks are even remotely dodgy they can bring a Rev A to its knees, I find running gauge Pros memory test thingy will usually tell me if I have a dodgy RAM stick.
PRAM batteries are not needed usually for G3 BWs to work (mine work fine without em)
going by how your tiger updates are being corrupted im hedging my bets on bad RAM/RAM the G3 BW does not like.
second its not hard to bust a DMM out or even a scope and check the voltage rails on the G3 BWs PSU and see how they are behaving.
its also worth mentioning its very easy to adapt an ATX PSU to work with the G3 BW.
By the sounds of things you have a Rev A G3 BW, if you can post a picture of the spec label on the back (if thats fallen off, post a picture of the CMD ATA chip on the LogicBoard)
they are very very finicky machines (I own 3 of the damn things 🙂 )
first of all, they can be very picky about RAM, so I recommend you pull your memory out and put in back what it came with. and seeing how it works.
if your RAM sticks are even remotely dodgy they can bring a Rev A to its knees, I find running gauge Pros memory test thingy will usually tell me if I have a dodgy RAM stick.
PRAM batteries are not needed usually for G3 BWs to work (mine work fine without em)
going by how your tiger updates are being corrupted im hedging my bets on bad RAM/RAM the G3 BW does not like.
second its not hard to bust a DMM out or even a scope and check the voltage rails on the G3 BWs PSU and see how they are behaving.
its also worth mentioning its very easy to adapt an ATX PSU to work with the G3 BW.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Mine is pretty cool and has been rock solid.
Originally, it was a librarian's Mac and so was stock everything with a SCSI card. I added ram and a SATA card and it's been running headless (no video card) as my server for a few months now.
This was back in 2008, pre-forum days and when I didn't really tinker with Macs...and my temper was a little volatile back then....
Back to the G3....I reset the PMU and then it would boot but lock up placing a black square in the middle of the screen. I reset nvram in OF and it successfully booted Tiger but attempting a software update brought on another crash and failure to boot from restart. At this point there was an ear splitting crack and the CRT died!
So, replaced the original RAM sticks, another PMU reset, wiped the drive and installed OS9. So far so good - then installed Panther instead of Tiger as 192Mb is not much use. Initially went well but started getting cranky as I installed updates and after updating to 10.3.9 it locked up during booting.
Maybe it's a failing HDD? So, I've switched it out and put another one in there, installed OS9 and now currently installing Panther...
[doublepost=1520257544][/doublepost]
Yes, it's definitely Rev A.
CooperBox
macrumors 68000
Just gone into deep depression reading about that 1.25Ghz iMac G4 17, as it's in the top 3 of my most preferred Macs. 🙁
Did a rash thing over the weekend. Saw an ad for the same model, same specs, which had first been posted over 2 months ago, and obviously hadn't found a buyer despite the price imho being 'correct'. Called the guy, and offered a little less for cash. He agreed and I walked away with the complete kit, keyboard, mouse, and H.K. speakers, all in as new condition. Couldn't bear the possibility of it being unsold and going to the tip. Wonderful piece of kit! 🙂
I had a Yikes! G4 (Funnily enough it came with a CRT too, both boxed) that had very similar issues, it had me puzzled for ages and I thought it might have been the PSU as sometimes it refused to start. In the end it was a bad stick of ram, the same stick worked in other machines but not this one. Looks like you've already tried that though.
Yes, seems to have been RAM and/or failing HDD - all good now and I've put in some extra memory to escape the shackles of Panther and go Tiger. Just waiting on arrival of some Zip disks now to complete the setup.
swamprock
macrumors 65816
I want another one as well, more for "just to have one" than anything. The B&W's case is a bit endearing to me for some reason. I think it's because it was the second PowerPC I owned back in the early 2000s (running Jaguar) as my main machine. It's on my searching bucket list once I get my 17" Powerbook. I'll max it out and set it up with OS 8.6 and OS 9 on two partitions, and play some classic games/Virtual Gamestation with it.
But then what will I do with my Sawtooth? Hmm...
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Continuing with the G3....
I've upgraded to the full 1Gb RAM and swapped out the HDD for a Compact Flash card (one thats higher rated than the ATA bus) which, as I'm running OS9 only without virtual memory, should have been fine.
First hitch, couldn't restore the OS9 image to the CF - kept throwing up checksum errors (tried 4 times). So tried one of the other install options (copying file by file) and that appeared to work.
Started installing apps and the errors start appearing, invalid resource forks and checksum errors. I guess this could be the new RAM or the CF - so I've gone back to the original HDD, done some tests and all appears fine again... so far.
All in all, this G3 has been the most problematic Mac I've had...forgot to add, replaced the CDRW with a CD/DVD - which it now won't boot from without OF commands!!
I've upgraded to the full 1Gb RAM and swapped out the HDD for a Compact Flash card (one thats higher rated than the ATA bus) which, as I'm running OS9 only without virtual memory, should have been fine.
First hitch, couldn't restore the OS9 image to the CF - kept throwing up checksum errors (tried 4 times). So tried one of the other install options (copying file by file) and that appeared to work.
Started installing apps and the errors start appearing, invalid resource forks and checksum errors. I guess this could be the new RAM or the CF - so I've gone back to the original HDD, done some tests and all appears fine again... so far.
All in all, this G3 has been the most problematic Mac I've had...forgot to add, replaced the CDRW with a CD/DVD - which it now won't boot from without OF commands!!
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
Time to send that blue & white beauty back into the wild. The question is, does the B&W G3 bring anything to you which your existing G4s or G3s don’t? Even an original clamshell iBook is practically on par in terms of performance and compatibility with the non-upgraded B&W 350.
I’ve been eyeing off an old beige beauty on eBay (Aus). A Power Mac 7220/200 with maxed out RAM (160MB) and a G3/400/1M sonnet cresendo L2 upgrade card. Plus an internal Pentium 166 DOS compatibility Card (80MB RAM) with all the internal (and external) patch cables to route audio and video between the two systems. The seller wrote a series of articles about this Mac on their blog here: https://modelrail.otenko.com/apple/power-mac-7220-beos-4-5-ppc
(Check under the Apple submenu for some very informative technical posts on the 7220 and a few other systems).
As much as I would love to buy the system and tinker with it, I just know that series was plagued with bugs (having owned a few of them in the past) and it is without a doubt going to be a massive time drain which will likely cause more frustration than joy.
But then again, I could use it to install BeOS...
Very good question...like most of my Macs, not bought because I needed them but because they were available for chicken feed 🙂
I also got this one because I hadn't had/used a Powermac G3 before.
That beige number sounds interesting...especially with the Pentium card and BeOS possibilities.
But then again, I could use it to install BeOS...
I intended the same when I got my 9600 and got excited when my 604e card worked in it only to find out later that mine also came with a Mach V logic board, which is incompatible with BeOS...
I would get that 7220 in a heartbeat if it doesn’t go stratospheric. Those PC cards are worth plenty on their own.
LightBulbFun
macrumors 68030
im pretty sure BeOS 5 will boot on a Mach V Logic-board (with a Mach V CPU) it just might not report some stuff correctly like CPU speed and that back in the day BeOS just did not officially support this config (ie if you had an issue and it was with a Mach V board they would tell ya to get stuffed)
so I would still try and install BeOS to see what happens 🙂
@Dronecatcher as for your BW Issues.
Fire up Gauge Pro and run the memory test portion I find that it works pretty well for weeding out Memory sticks that dont play nice with my G3 BWs. (also which CF card exactly are you using with your G3 BW? remember the Rev A Main ATA66 controller is pretty buggy)
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BeOS has it as incompatible (rather than unsupported, such as the 6500) so it is a no-go as others have found. Jean-Louis Gassée fell out with Steve Jobs over negotiations to buy Be and Apple stopped supplying Be with logic board and CPU details, hence no G3, PowerBook or post 9600 support, even with a 604 processor. Be didn't fancy reverse engineering Apple hardware and switched to x86 only.
You can actually run it on earlier supported Power Macs with G3 upgrades, so it seems as if the logic board was the main sticking point. The ones designed for G3 processors will just not work as won't a handful of earlier models. The actual list of Macs that BeOS will run on is pretty limited.
I did try the install process. The boot screen showed up and the next step where you select the install medium just stayed blank. BeOS could not parse the logic board devices. Dead end.
Isn't the G3 B&W ATA33? Good call on Gauge Pro - I'll try that. The CF is a Transcend UDMA7 X400 speed.
EDIT: Gauge Pro says RAM is fine - must've been the CF/adapter.
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