Do i need a new G3 B/W video card???

[ijimk]

Ok here is my dilema, I bought a used G3 B/W off of ebay to give to my sister as her 1st mac. When i started to upgrade it and put panther on it i relized the video card was not compatible with my monitor, so then i was going to get an adapter but i noticed the video card doesn't look like it fills the entire slot it sits in. is this normal? I did not want to buy the adapter if i need a new video card, i would just buy a video card compatible with the monitor. Please see pics i attached for visuals. Please help on this matter.

Another isssue i am curious is i am upgrading the HD from a 6 gig to an 80 gig for her and i want it to be the only hard drive in use. How do i install panther on it? Any help is appreciated guys.... thanks for all your time.

 

[Dr. No]

What does the video card say on it? It is an ATi?

 

[chv400]

What you have there is a B&W with an XCalim VR it is an old video card it has 8MB of VRAM very slow card but it does have video input capability meaning with apple video player you can watch tv on your mac except that only works in OS 9. I'd recomend getting a radeon so Quartz will be hardware accelerated makeing alot of OS X look better and run better since the gui work will be put on the GPU not the CPU. The monitor connector on the XClaim is the old version that apple used to use i think it was called multi sync. finding an adapter to make that monitor work on that Card will be hard to find. A Radeon card will have an output that will work with your monitor though menaing no adapter will be needed. having a Quartz accereated card will make expose look like it suposed to, smooth, on the Xcalim it will be very very choppy and pssible slow down the computer. Any radeon can accelerate quartz except you may have to use PCI Extreme which can be downloaded off version tracker which will enable qaurtz on the radeon. Not all PCI cards have to fill the slot so that is normal the card will work fine. To put in an 80 gig drive you just need to put it in beside the 6 gig one but you may need a longer ATA cable if you add a drive onto the same ata cable the 80 gig will need to be put into slave mode whcih is done by adjusting the placement of the jumpers on the HD. If you want you can also swap out the 6 gig for the 80 and you shouldnt need to make an adjustments. One issuse you may have will be that the ATA controller in Revision 1 B&Ws has data corruption issues with fast hard drives so you may need to buy a PCI ATA controller card which will prevent dat corruption it will also improve drive perfromace since most PCI controllers are around 3-5 times faster than the B&Ws onbaord controler. Also newer cars will go into the 66mhz slot which will help out graphics performance.

BTW judging from the look of the heatsink i think you have a REV 2 B&W which shouldnt have the HD problem with fast drives.
(Fast as in fast in its day which is pretty much anything you can buy today)

XCalim VRs were made by ATI
Sry about any bad wording or typos i typed this at 1 in the morning.

 

[ijimk]

So guys u think this video card will be able too hook up properly to my monitor and increase the speed of the machine overall?
G3 Video Card

Another question is would i be ok in just physically putting the machine in the card in the tower and theb installing Panther? I don't think the card comes with drivers. But wouldn't OS X find them in their updates. I really have appreciated all the feed back so far guys. I just want to do the eaiest thing here to give my sister a working machine.

 

[chv400]

OS X has the drivers for the video card already built in. I was able to put one into my B&W with no installation. Also it will have a spot to plug in that monitor without an adapter. After you put in the card you may want to enable Quartz Extreme on it using this

PCI Extreme
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16006

I used quartz extreme on my Radeon 7000 and it worked fine.
It'll make OS X look alot better since it'll keep more graphic loads off the CPU. Also that card will fit into the thinner slot on the B&W, which runs twice as fast as the longer ones. One plus of having Quartz Extreme enabled is that when you have the desktop picture change at a set interval it will actually use a fade to transition the pictures, if you dont have Quartz enabled it just snaps to the next pic.