G3 beige to G4 beige?

[WalnutSpice]

So as some of you may have read earlier, I came across a 455MHz (somewhere in that ballpark) Beige G3. I know it boots as I hear the boot sound and everything looks to be in working order, but, I do not have a monitor or PCI video card for it. I will get a video card very soon (this week hopefully). Now mainly what I'm going to use this for is converting home movies from VHS to digital as it has RCA in jacks on it. But other than that I cannot think of another use at all. I heard some people upgrade these to G4s, which would make it worlds more usable to me. Is it possible with my model? Is it worth it / easy / cheap?
Here's a photo of the G3 in question

 

[MacCubed]

So as some of you may have read earlier, I came across a 455MHz (somewhere in that ballpark) Beige G3. I know it boots as I hear the boot sound and everything looks to be in working order, but, I do not have a monitor or PCI video card for it. I will get a video card very soon (this week hopefully). Now mainly what I'm going to use this for is converting home movies from VHS to digital as it has RCA in jacks on it. But other than that I cannot think of another use at all. I heard some people upgrade these to G4s, which would make it worlds more usable to me. Is it possible with my model? Is it worth it / easy / cheap?
Here's a photo of the G3 in question

@LightBulbFun has a G4 ZIF in his Beige G3 and a few others here do. It is possible, but the processors might be hard to find and expensive

 

[DZ/015]

If it is more than 300MHz, it either has an upgraded processor or has been overclocked quite a bit. The desktops came with 300MHz max. Minitowers were available with a 333MHz cpu. Also should have onboard graphics. A pci card should not be necessary.

Is it easy to work on and install upgrades, yes. Is it worth it to pump money into the thing, probably not.

 

[comda]

If it is more than 300MHz, it either has an upgraded processor or has been overclocked quite a bit. The desktops came with 300MHz max. Minitowers were available with a 333MHz cpu. Also should have onboard graphics. A pci card should not be necessary.

Is it easy to work on and install upgrades, yes. Is it worth it to pump money into the thing, probably not.

Was just going to say.. that clock speed is quite high for a G3. Either its already a G4 or someone did some overclocking. Cause from what i remember they shipped from 233MHz (the one i have ) all the way to 300Mhz i believe.
And if thats overclocked, its either unstable, or very good and i want to meet this guy haha

 

[bunnspecial]

I have a beige desktop running at 433mhz. It's using a CPU removed from a 400mhz B&W that I upgraded to a G4. Thanks to the bus speed of the beige machines, you have to either overclock or underclock a 400mhz slightly-you can't get them to exactly 400mhz. I chose to go over(why not?) and it's rock stable.

BTW, as far as a G4 upgrade, this is the one you want

This one is in a minitower along with a 15K UW SCSI drive, and it makes for quite a speedy combo. I was given this particular computer for the cost of shipping, and it's surprisingly useable even today.

One of these Sonnet upgrades sold on Ebay a week or two back. I don't recall the exact selling price, but think it was a little south of $200.

 

[WalnutSpice]

If it is more than 300MHz, it either has an upgraded processor or has been overclocked quite a bit. The desktops came with 300MHz max. Minitowers were available with a 333MHz cpu. Also should have onboard graphics. A pci card should not be necessary.

Is it easy to work on and install upgrades, yes. Is it worth it to pump money into the thing, probably not.

I need PCI video because I don't have an Apple display with the required connection. And I hear VGA converters look bad with it

 

[WalnutSpice]

Was just going to say.. that clock speed is quite high for a G3. Either its already a G4 or someone did some overclocking. Cause from what i remember they shipped from 233MHz (the one i have ) all the way to 300Mhz i believe.
And if thats overclocked, its either unstable, or very good and i want to meet this guy haha

I think it is a 233MHz. My bad

 

[bunnspecial]

I have video cards in all my PCI PowerMacs. Even a Rage 128(which is cheap and readily available) is better than the onboard video on them, and has the convenience of a VGA connector.

I've used the dongles and some work well, but you're still limited by what the onboard video can do. The GPU in the beige G3s is decent for OS 9 and earlier versions of OS X, although it definitely benefits from maxing the VRAM if you can find the correct SO-DIMMs. I think the max is 6mb.

@LightBulbFun has turned up a few Radeon 9200s on Ebay for me recently, and I have those in my better systems. One is in my 9600, and another is very soon going in the above minitower with the 1ghz that currently has a Radeon 7000.

The Radeon 7000s with 1 VGA port are also very good cards and fairly inexpensive.