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Frankenstein Mac from the dead!

A

Andy G

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 21, 2004
70
0
I have a dead Beige G3, which I think has suffered a hard disc failure (I can get it to run from the start-up CD, but can't re-install the system - message something about not being able to install drivers or something)

I have a dead iMac 350, something to do with 'neck' and possibly 'card'. Certainly £180 quote to fix, which was uneconomical, hence the MacMIni purchase)

I have a working quadra, which doesn't have a CD drive.

(I also have a working Pismo Powerbook, Titanium 15" Powerbook and a 1.42 Mac Mini, but they are not in this story!)

Is there anyway to cobble the bits together from the Quadra, G3 and iMac to get at least the iMac or Beige G3 working again easily? I'm wondering about swapping the hard drive from the iMac or Quadra into the Beige G3, which would at least give me a CD drive, and a means to connect via Ethernet to my network, and also use some old scsi peripherals which are gathering dust.

I know it would be more sensible to dump the lot, but hey, I like a bit of a challenge, and would have get some satisfaction from salvaging something.

Anyone up to the challenge with some suggestions - positive ones please!

Andy G
 
Yep as you suggested...

Try putting the iMacs HD into the Beige G3. Should work fine.
 
Update on Dead iMac - the repair report from an authorized Apple dealer was:

Board, Power / Analog / Neck, Ver 2 HH, £83.71 ex. vat
1 hours labour £60 ex. vat

So too much for a machine this old, and unless there is another way to get this going I guess I'll try taking the hard disk out and putting it in the G3.

Regards,

Andy
 
Andy G said:
I have a dead Beige G3, which I think has suffered a hard disc failure (I can get it to run from the start-up CD, but can't re-install the system - message something about not being able to install drivers or something)

I have a dead iMac 350, something to do with 'neck' and possibly 'card'. Certainly £180 quote to fix, which was uneconomical, hence the MacMini purchase)

I have a working quadra, which doesn't have a CD drive.

(I also have a working Pismo Powerbook, Titanium 15" Powerbook and a 1.42 Mac Mini, but they are not in this story!)

Is there anyway to cobble the bits together from the Quadra, G3 and iMac to get at least the iMac or Beige G3 working again easily? I'm wondering about swapping the hard drive from the iMac or Quadra into the Beige G3, which would at least give me a CD drive, and a means to connect via Ethernet to my network, and also use some old scsi peripherals which are gathering dust.

I know it would be more sensible to dump the lot, but hey, I like a bit of a challenge, and would have get some satisfaction from salvaging something.

Anyone up to the challenge with some suggestions - positive ones please!

Andy G
Click to expand...

I think it is more sensible to rescue at least one. I currently have a Beige G3 that I got for free from the school my mom works at. It does everything from websurfing and email to playing music on it great. I mean, its not FCP workhorse, but I didn't get it for that. Besides, you have all these working parts laying around, it'd be silly not to use them.
 
Anyone know any good threads for replacing the drive on the Beige G3 Desktop? I have found a good one for opening up the iMac and getting to the drive - looks pretty complicated I must say, but I'm prepared to have a go!

Andy G
 
The beige G3 is really easy to work on, just pull off the cover and it opens up. There are two little tabs to slide so that you can get into it, then it unfolds.

If you need more help you can go here.
 
Here is a thought - getting the HD out of the iMac looks fairly difficult.

Getting the HD out of the Beige G3 looks easy.

Should I not just buy a new HD and drop it in, and leave the iMac 350 alone? How much would a really basic cheapo one be - the current HD is a measly 4Gig, and did the job fine for a games machine.

This idea may be mad, but I could also consider putting the disk from the Quadra in it, just get a better machine working, ie the Beige G3, and kill the Quadra off.

Is any of this worth the time and effort I ask myself, but as I mentioned at the start, I like a challenge and it would be a bit like breathing life back into an old friend.

I have to say that out of all my Macs (Quadra, 520 Powerbook, Beige G3, iMac 350, Titanium G4 Powerbook, Mac Mini 1.42) the Beige G3 running 8.01 has been the most solid and reliable of all, Mini excepted since it is so new.

Andy G
 
Andy G said:
Here is a thought - getting the HD out of the iMac looks fairly difficult.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the Beige G3 is the better machine.
Tell ya what you can do with that machine. First get the HD out of the iMac, its just like any other machine just keep unscrewing things until you get to what you need. Install the HD into the Beige. Then if you really want to get ambitious visit www.xlr8yourmac.com and look up overclocking, you can probably boost that Beige to at least 333mHz by changing the jumper configuration (again sounds difficult but its not, and I can help ya).

EDIT:
Oh, and the Quadra drive will not work in the Beige, the Beige takes an IDE drive, the Quadra has a SCSI drive in it. Buying a 40Gb IDE drive would be about $50-$60 or around 30 quid, that's a pretty good option.
 
Is the Quadra HD SCSI?

Andy G said:
Here is a thought - getting the HD out of the iMac looks fairly difficult.

Getting the HD out of the Beige G3 looks easy.

Should I not just buy a new HD and drop it in, and leave the iMac 350 alone? How much would a really basic cheapo one be - the current HD is a measly 4Gig, and did the job fine for a games machine.

This idea may be mad, but I could also consider putting the disk from the Quadra in it, just get a better machine working, ie the Beige G3, and kill the Quadra off.

Is any of this worth the time and effort I ask myself, but as I mentioned at the start, I like a challenge and it would be a bit like breathing life back into an old friend.

I have to say that out of all my Macs (Quadra, 520 Powerbook, Beige G3, iMac 350, Titanium G4 Powerbook, Mac Mini 1.42) the Beige G3 running 8.01 has been the most solid and reliable of all, Mini excepted since it is so new.

Andy G
Click to expand...

The Quadra Harddrive may be a SCSI not an IDE, So it might not work.

The iMac case will make a BIG POP when you pull it off. Don't worry. It's designed to do that.
 
Sorry to take so long to respond - I have been really overloaded with work, plus I had a logging in problem when I reinstalled my system.

I like the sound of the overclocking - I read a little about this in Mac User a while back. I really see the Beige G3 as an opportunity to experiment, so priority 1 is to get it up and running again. Can I buy any hard disc or do I need any particular type (is IDE a type, and if so is it universal? What I'm trying to say is, if I go into Maplin, for instance, what do I ask for?)

Priority 2, the overclocking, I will try once I have things working.

Cheers,

Andy G
 
Maplin? Never heard of it, but I assume its just a computer store. The Beige G3 you have has an ATA-IDE storage bus, which means that you need IDE hard drives to run in the machine. This is the most common hard drive that is out there, and the Beige G3 was the first mac to use IDE (used to be SCSI in all macs). They are not expensive drives. Again for full-specs of your machine check out www.apple-history.com it has great details for every machine ever.
Now for overclocking, its not that difficult but you do need to have the right jumper sizes, there are the general jumpers that are used on HD's but those are too big, you need the 2mm jumpers (I think thats what they are) I think www.xlr8yourmac.com has the exact ones you need.
 
Yup, Maplin is a UK electronics store with loads of wierd stuff - all the nitty gritty of all things electronic, including computer bits. So, I can look for a basic IDE hard drive, get the machine functioning then have a go at the overclocking when time allows.

Cheers!

Andy
 
huh the beige has a scsi connecter inside an will take a scsi hdd if nothing is already hooked to it. i currently own a power macintosh G3 all-in-one and it has the same logic board in it.his might be a rev a or rev b all that is diffrent is the rev a had a ati rage II, max ram of 300+mb, and couldent handle the master slave.i have the rev b logic board with the ati rage pro, max ram of 700+mb, and can handle the master slave configuation of hdd.ill give u a few links to site telling you what is what inside that beige G3 as i looked all over for info about these mac's.

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g3.shtml

this link is for the aio i own but it has the same logic board in yours as mine

http://eshop.macsales.com/Descripti...3aio.html&title=Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One

and here is a link to almost all the older mac repair manuels including your beige G3 and my beige G3 AIO and owners manuels

http://www.whoopis.com/computer_repair/
 
Performa 630 was first Mac to use IDE!

GimmeSlack12 said:
[...]and the Beige G3 was the first mac to use IDE (used to be SCSI in all macs).
Click to expand...

You are right that Apple used to use SCSI in all its Macs, but...

The Performa 630 was the first Mac to use IDE (now called ATA) drives.
Apple used IDE drives in its lower end machines and SCSI in the Pro machines.
They switched over to all IDE around the time the Beige G3 came out.... IIRC the PowerMac 9600 was SCSI.

Suggestion for the original power.... yes, just buy a standard IDE (ATA100)
harddisk and plonk it in the Beige G3.

I've recently dropped a Maxtor 20GB disk into an old Umax Apus2000 (C500) which is running MacOS 8.1!! Works like a charm is somewhat quieter than the
Seagate Medalist which Umax put in originally!

Cheers!

Tim.
 
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