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Finally I have a good G3

M

MacG3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2013
3
0
Hi Friends.

I've always been a "windows-er" and was given a G3 by my boss about 8 years ago when he upgraded to a macbook {...or something like that}. The G3 was a 700mhz A1005 with 128mb ram, no airport card, initially running Jaguar or Panther. At the time i just didn't understand the 'Mac-thing'; The fact that the unit was slowwwww with 128mb and pc133 ram was expensive back then, i just put the unit away.
Anyway, i recently found her in the back of my cupboard and decided to have another look. Still the same-old, however I bought a stick of 512mb ram to see if she will go any quicker, surprisingly she actually does OK with 640mb.

I feel like i'm on a roll now and love the retro look and build quality! Will try get hold of an airport card fitted as i currently run a Ralink usb wifi stick. Also need the replacement cover for the cd writer which is missing.


I'm thinking about switching the OS to Linux MintPPC but don't have the original install disk. I have 2 options:
1) Fit another IDE drive and load MintPPC
2) Clone the data from the current drive before loading MintPPC.

Could you suggest a good cloning application and point me to the instructions? *If there's a chance of losing the current mac-os i will opt to install another drive.

I'd like to give linux a try for things like youtube and a newer browser. Not looking to do much with the PPC except browse, watch some ytube and email.

btw; i'm thinking about going for a SSD. Will try run a live-cd to see how well she does with linux.
 
Lil Chillbil

Lil Chillbil

macrumors 65816
Jan 30, 2012
1,322
99
California
welcome to the powerpc forum my name is Kull and I will be your server today :p

you will want to put mactubes on that thing as it won't run youtube worth a darn in browser. for a browser tenfourfox and tiger for the os . you will have to fake flash for most websites and it will not load very fast with the graphics built into that thing. and if you are really serious about this upgrade you would put a ssd into that sob

just my 2 cents
 
MisterKeeks

MisterKeeks

macrumors 68000
Nov 15, 2012
1,833
28
MacG3 said:
Hi Friends.

I've always been a "windows-er" and was given a G3 by my boss about 8 years ago when he upgraded to a macbook {...or something like that}. The G3 was a 700mhz A1005 with 128mb ram, no airport card, initially running Jaguar or Panther. At the time i just didn't understand the 'Mac-thing'; The fact that the unit was slowwwww with 128mb and pc133 ram was expensive back then, i just put the unit away.
Anyway, i recently found her in the back of my cupboard and decided to have another look. Still the same-old, however I bought a stick of 512mb ram to see if she will go any quicker, surprisingly she actually does OK with 640mb.

I feel like i'm on a roll now and love the retro look and build quality! Will try get hold of an airport card fitted as i currently run a Ralink usb wifi stick. Also need the replacement cover for the cd writer which is missing.


I'm thinking about switching the OS to Linux MintPPC but don't have the original install disk. I have 2 options:
1) Fit another IDE drive and load MintPPC
2) Clone the data from the current drive before loading MintPPC.

Could you suggest a good cloning application and point me to the instructions? *If there's a chance of losing the current mac-os i will opt to install another drive.

I'd like to give linux a try for things like youtube and a newer browser. Not looking to do much with the PPC except browse, watch some ytube and email.

btw; i'm thinking about going for a SSD. Will try run a live-cd to see how well she does with linux.
Click to expand...

I have almost the same model as you (same amount of RAM, G3 at 900MHz). It runs Tiger with TenFourFox fine.

For a cloning application, I would recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. Others use SuperDuper, I haven't used it so I cannot vouch for or against it.

As for an SSD, I know that it probably uses an ATA-66 HDD controller. You can confirm this by going to the Apple Icon in the top right> About This Mac>System Profiler>ATA. If it does run an ATA-33/66/100, you wouldn't see as much as an improvement over a mechanical drive. However, if the drive is the original drive, it would be a good idea to replace it for both speed and reliability.

For Linux I would recommend the blog PowerPC Liberation, which is operated by a former macrumors member.
 
M

MacG3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2013
3
0
Thanks for your replies and advice. I think my plan will be, airport card, 7200rpm HDD and a cd-rw bezel. I'll try pick up Tiger OS on fleabay.

btw: i'm running the Camino browser at the moment. I read it's suppose to be the quickest. As you guys mention TenFourFox i'll give that a shot, with MacTubes and Fake Flash. *will need to do more ready on how all it works and fits together.


Had her running Ubuntu 10.04 on live cd earlier. Didn't have any chance loading up with 128mb but with 640mb its just perfect.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
Make sure you get the black Tiger retail discs and not the grey restore discs. You can do what I've done to my G3 iMac, put in a CompactFlash card as the hard drive with an IDE/CF adapter. Works really well, just get a CF card that is rated for speeds around 30MB per second and you'll max out the iMac's bus.
 
MisterKeeks

MisterKeeks

macrumors 68000
Nov 15, 2012
1,833
28
MacG3 said:
Thanks for your replies and advice. I think my plan will be, airport card, 7200rpm HDD and a cd-rw bezel. I'll try pick up Tiger OS on fleabay.

btw: i'm running the Camino browser at the moment. I read it's suppose to be the quickest. As you guys mention TenFourFox i'll give that a shot, with MacTubes and Fake Flash. *will need to do more ready on how all it works and fits together.


Had her running Ubuntu 10.04 on live cd earlier. Didn't have any chance loading up with 128mb but with 640mb its just perfect.
Click to expand...

If you like Camino, there are G3 optimized builds here. I don't know how large of a HDD disk you would like, but I read in another thread that there were no 7200 drives of over 100GB in size, but that shouldn't be an issue as you just will be doing browsing/Youtube.

Mactubes works by playing Youtube players with Quicktime. In the web browser, Youtube is just playing a video file, but with a flash player. Flash runs excruciatingly slow on most PowerPC Macs unless they are fairly high specced (Dual G5, maybe Dual G4). Mactubes takes out the Flash and just plays the video. Make sure that your video preferences mirror those in the attached image, or there will be no performance gain.

B-G has a thread about sending Youtube to VLC and Coreplayer. Unfortunately, Coreplayer has been discontinued, so only the VLC part is relevant for you. You might be able to play in browser with some of the fixes presented, which is typically preferable to Mactubes for a number of reasons.
 

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Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
MisterKeeks said:
...but I read in another thread that there were no 7200 drives of over 100GB in size...
Click to expand...

They never made 2.5" laptop sized PATA hard drives that where 7,200rpm and over 100GB. There are plenty of 100GB+ 7,200rpm PATA 3.5" drives, all the way up to 750GB.
 
M

MacG3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2013
3
0
Intell said:
Make sure you get the black Tiger retail discs and not the grey restore discs. You can do what I've done to my G3 iMac, put in a CompactFlash card as the hard drive with an IDE/CF adapter. Works really well, just get a CF card that is rated for speeds around 30MB per second and you'll max out the iMac's bus.
Click to expand...

thx. Was looking at the CF adapters v SSD. I think i can get the kingspec 16gb for about £25 and a CF adapter + 400x CF card probably works out about the same.

MisterKeeks said:
If you like Camino, there are G3 optimized builds here. I don't know how large of a HDD disk you would like, but I read in another thread that there were no 7200 drives of over 100GB in size, but that shouldn't be an issue as you just will be doing browsing/Youtube.

Mactubes works by playing Youtube players with Quicktime. In the web browser, Youtube is just playing a video file, but with a flash player. Flash runs excruciatingly slow on most PowerPC Macs unless they are fairly high specced (Dual G5, maybe Dual G4). Mactubes takes out the Flash and just plays the video. Make sure that your video preferences mirror those in the attached image, or there will be no performance gain.

B-G has a thread about sending Youtube to VLC and Coreplayer. Unfortunately, Coreplayer has been discontinued, so only the VLC part is relevant for you. You might be able to play in browser with some of the fixes presented, which is typically preferable to Mactubes for a number of reasons.
Click to expand...

I think i'll discount Mactubes for the time being. Downloading the optimised Camino for G3 right now and will try configure VLC to play ytube with the link you sent me.


May be sticking with OSX afterall :) Thanks for your help everyone, i will be dropping my anti-apple stance from now.
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,793
26,883
MisterKeeks said:
For a cloning application, I would recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. Others use SuperDuper, I haven't used it so I cannot vouch for or against it.
Click to expand...
I also use CCC. But that's simply because it was the very first one I ever used and at the time I heard more about it then SuperDuper. Just habit now more than anything.

That said, I do use SuperDuper and it's a good cloning app. Works pretty much the same as CCC (if you've used CCC you won't have any issues with SuperDuper) just does things slightly different and the GUI presents it as steps (or tasks) that the app is currently undergoing in the clone process.

SuperDuper is a good app. Either one is good to use.
 
tom vilsack

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
MisterKeeks said:
I've used OS 9 and Classilla on G3s and I wouldn't recommend it. The browser just isn't there on less basic sites, whereas on 10.4 you get TFF.
Click to expand...

I disagree...with a ibook G3 have you tryed opening a simple page like yahoo home page with osx tiger vs classilla with mac os 9.2.2...one takes forever,the other is pretty snappy.

Personally i wouldn't spend any money on the ibook G3...rather i would buy a g4 powerbook,max the ram,and if money not a issue,then maybe go with a pata ssd (sata with adapter may work,but tight fit)
 
MisterKeeks

MisterKeeks

macrumors 68000
Nov 15, 2012
1,833
28
tom vilsack said:
I disagree...with a ibook G3 have you tryed opening a simple page like yahoo home page with osx tiger vs classilla with mac os 9.2.2...one takes forever,the other is pretty snappy.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but there are still some cases where incompatibilities exist. The MediaFire site is unusable on Classilla last time I checked.
 
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