G3 Blue & White project - what could go wrong?

[feelingsupersonic]

Hello all, starting a thread for my G3 project. I snagged a 400mhz B&W at a fair price, production date 23-Dec 1998 so it precedes the actual Apple announcement. Something something Rev 1 board but whatever. I'm doing a few projects to upgrade it, but I've been plagued with issues in almost every area. Any sage advice/recommendations much appreciated! I've decided to name this computer Murphy in honor of the cock-ups so far, but it will be a fun project.

The G3 came with no hard drive and some unknown visibly mismatched RAM occupying 3 of the slots. Outside of that, it's a bone stock system and was sold to me in working condition. This will be my field notes/recipe machine for my beer homebrewing room, so it has a great responsibility on its shoulders. Here is what I have lined up, this will be a budget build using second hand parts wherever practical:

​

• 1gb of PC133 RAM, which should be backward compatible with the G3. What could go wrong? Despite the physical stickers on the 4x Samsung modules indicating 256mb, they're each 128mb leaving me with 512mb per System Profiler. Seems like an honest mistake from the ebay seller but are you serious? Must have been some fake memory from over a decade ago? Well, that's not going to work. $20
• USB 2.0 PCI card, which is older and claims support for OS X 10.2+ and has a driver CD (Comp USA brand). What could go wrong? It causes a kernel panic during boot, so that's not going to work. $10
• DVD-ROM drive, mainly for getting Tiger onboard. I figured this should be a straightforward update, don't even need a driver. What could go wrong? Well as it turns out, the eject button (despite being in the exact same place as the original drive) doesn't work via the bezel push arm mechanism. Brilliant. It also doesn't want to boot my Tiger DVD, which is an actual Apple copy and worked fine on my G5. I set the jumper to the master position because this is how the factory CD drive was set. So, back to the factory CD drive. $10
• Belkin F5D7000 wifi PCI card with antenna. Drivers available for Panther and Tiger. What could go wrong? As it turns out, getting anything other than Jaguar installed isn't working so far. Cock on. $12.
• 15" Apple Studio Display and those Apple studio Harmon Kardon speakers. What could go wrong? Well this one isn't dead in the water, but let's just say that a VGA to DVI adapter, and then a DVI to ADC adapter involved. I guess I knew what I was signing up for at least with this one. $30 and $12 for the display and speakers, respectively.
• To address the missing hard drive, why not go SSD. I bought a 60gb Kingston SATA SSD. To interface it, I got the following:
  • SATA to IDE adapter, $4
  • 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive caddy so I can mount the drive properly. $6
  • SATA PCI card. Went for a budget option, a Syba card with the SIL3512 chipset. It has 1 internal port and 1 eSATA port, I'll just be using the internal port. $10
  • WiebeTech firmware & flashing tool to flash the card to be a bootable SATA card. $free

The plan was to install Tiger on the SSD, while it was hooked up via the IDE adapter. Within OS X, I would flash the SATA card and then move over to that. What could go wrong? This is where I have left off with the project just now, I can't even install Tiger. As noted previously I can't boot from my geniune DVD so I figured I would burn the 4x CD-ROM version. That's not working either. However 10.2 installed just fine and I have it running and updated to 10.2.8. Within OS X, both the DVD and CD #1 are showing their contents fine, and they show up as bootable as you would expect within the startup disk menu.

This is my real problem, if anyone has any tips here. Why would it boot my Jaguar install CD but not Tiger? The screen doesn't show up but the optical drive is clearly spinning up for a minute or two and then goes idle.

Also worth mentioning that when booting Jaguar, there is no display output until the Aqua login appears with the loading bar. No gray apple logo with the pinwheel, there is simply no display output for any of that. I'm not sure if it's due to the SSD being very quick or if there is some weird firmware issue that's secretly shagging me in the background. Thanks for reading and thanks for any tips!

 

[skinniezinho]

If you have another Mac why don’t you install tiger with the other Mac one the g3 ssd/hdd and then plug the drive on the g3?
Have done it in the past with no issues.
As for the ram, it has to be high density (I am not sure but I think it has to have chips on both sides ) . If not it may detect half of capacity. Had that problem on g4 and Pentium 1.

For the pci usb card have you tried different slot ?
WiFi may be solved with my first tip

 

[Dronecatcher]

I think the consensus is that early Powermac G3s are supernaturally temperamental - mine was a nightmare.
RAM, HDD and optical drive were all problematic on mine...never again.

 

[Amethyst1]

As for the ram, it has to be high density (I am not sure but I think it has to have chips on both sides )

You need low-density RAM.
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15" Apple Studio Display and those Apple studio Harmon Kardon speakers. What could go wrong? Well this one isn't dead in the water, but let's just say that a VGA to DVI adapter, and then a DVI to ADC adapter involved. I guess I knew what I was signing up for at least with this one. $30 and $12 for the display and speakers, respectively.

I'd rather look for a cheap flashable PCI Radeon 7000 or something like that with native DVI. VGA sucks for running LCDs.

Also worth mentioning that when booting Jaguar, there is no display output until the Aqua login appears with the loading bar. No gray apple logo with the pinwheel, there is simply no display output for any of that. I'm not sure if it's due to the SSD being very quick or if there is some weird firmware issue that's secretly shagging me in the background. Thanks for reading and thanks for any tips!

These ADC displays have no built-in scaler so if they're not fed their native resolution they remain blank. Given that you're running this via some VGA-to-DVI adapter, it's quite possible that the machine boots up at, say, 640×480 which the display won't accept and only switches to the correct 1024×768 once Aqua fires up. Another reason to go for a video card that has DVI.

 

[AphoticD]

@feelingsupersonic In regards to booting Tiger, perhaps your G3 requires a firmware update?

Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White) Firmware Update 1.1: Document and Software

web.archive.org

 

[z970]

@Dronecatcher I can confirm your experiences...

OP, get a G4. - Any G4 at all (sans a Yikes!; same LoBo). They won't give you headaches.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Thanks guys for the replies, some good info here. I confirmed that the RAM is indeed high density, so that one is on me. The RAM that came with it is 3x 128mb modules, correct spec.

I had the same idea about installing Tiger onto the SSD using my G5. However I forgot that the G5 only works with early SATA drives, and as such this SSD didn't show up whatsoever. But it works fine when accessed through an adapter, I had it running with Jaguar on the G3 and it also shows up fine on the G5 when I use a SATA to USB adapter.

I tried a few things: first, clone my G5 10.4.11 install to the SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner with the SSD attached as a USB device. This left me with nothing when I tried booting it on the G3, just a blank screen.

I also tried a SATA mechanical HDD with Tiger on it from before I put a SSD in the PM G5. Tested 100% functional this morning in the G5 but same thing on the G3 via the IDE to SATA adapter.... no display output. What the hell?

In Jaguar I checked system profiler to see about the firmware, maybe this was the issue. Under "Boot ROM" it shows up as version 1.1f4 which I am assuming is the latest/correct revision.

Played around with RAM modules, down to 1 at a time and etc. However nothing changed.
The G4 idea is definitely better, but I wanted this B&W because it was actually my first computer as a teenager and it has nostalgic significance to me.

 

[Amethyst1]

A blank screen on the ADC monitor may be due to a wrong resolution. Can you try another, preferably straight-VGA monitor?

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Forgot to mention - been using a basic VGA monitor for these tests. Still nothing. I would expect the display to kick on at least when the GUI is loaded during the Tiger disc boot process.

 

[Amethyst1]

Which video card does the BW have?

 

[feelingsupersonic]

It's the stock Rage 128 card. Seems to be fully functional in Jaguar.

 

[z970]

The G4 idea is definitely better, but I wanted this B&W because it was actually my first computer as a teenager and it has nostalgic significance to me.

For what it's worth, I have found this machine to be significantly less problematic when running OS 9, Linux, or OpenBSD in lieu of OS X.

It does not like OS X.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

I respect the OS9 guys, I just never used it. I bought my original G3 B&W when I was 16 for $20 or something back in 2009 and ran Tiger on it. No attachment to pre-OSX Mac operating systems. That seems to be a bit high maintenance right now... at least Jaguar runs on it. Was really hoping for Tiger but we shall see.

 

[Project Alice]

Mine was never this bad lol. A little picky with ram but.. As it sits it's a G4 550Mhz booting Leopard and a PCI geforce 5200.. Works great
🤷‍♂️

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Update: something had gone wrong with the PRAM since I first started playing with it a few days ago, and resetting it has me up and running 10.4.11. Thank you to everyone who has chimed in with help, this is an excellent community.

My next steps are:

- Get a wifi card that works properly. The Belkin WLAN utility freezes and never loads despite everything else seemingly working fine. I would much prefer a PCI card as opposed to a USB dongle but we'll see what fits the bill. Everything is fine via internet sharing from my G5 on Leopard and TenFourFox right now on the G3.

- Clean the case. It's clean on the inside and outside, but there's that cavity between the stamped steel frame and the plastic shell... dust has settled in there in many areas and shows through. Will need to take this apart and deep clean.

- Get 1gb of RAM that is actually compatible. I'm a dumbass. Don't be like me

- Flashing a Radeon 7000 or some other card with a DVI port is sounding like a good idea. Unfortunately I don't have a normal PC to flash the ROM on. I'll need to see if I can use the G3 itself but all of the write ups seem to reference using DOS. The only Intel/AMD computers I own are laptops, and my server, none of which will work here. Worst case scenario I'll add another computer to my hooptie fleet.
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I'll just throw this out there - I will buy anyone a 12 pack of their favorite beer who is willing to recieve and flash a graphics card and ship it back at my expense!

 

[skinniezinho]

Update: something had gone wrong with the PRAM since I first started playing with it a few days ago, and resetting it has me up and running 10.4.11. Thank you to everyone who has chimed in with help, this is an excellent community.

My next steps are:

- Get a wifi card that works properly. The Belkin WLAN utility freezes and never loads despite everything else seemingly working fine. I would much prefer a PCI card as opposed to a USB dongle but we'll see what fits the bill. Everything is fine via internet sharing from my G5 on Leopard and TenFourFox right now on the G3.

- Clean the case. It's clean on the inside and outside, but there's that cavity between the stamped steel frame and the plastic shell... dust has settled in there in many areas and shows through. Will need to take this apart and deep clean.

- Get 1gb of RAM that is actually compatible. I'm a dumbass. Don't be like me

- Flashing a Radeon 7000 or some other card with a DVI port is sounding like a good idea. Unfortunately I don't have a normal PC to flash the ROM on. I'll need to see if I can use the G3 itself but all of the write ups seem to reference using DOS. The only Intel/AMD computers I own are laptops, and my server, none of which will work here. Worst case scenario I'll add another computer to my hooptie fleet.
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I'll just throw this out there - I will buy anyone a 12 pack of their favorite beer who is willing to recieve and flash a graphics card and ship it back at my expense!

About the WiFi I agree with you pci is better.
One workaround: there are some routers that can receive WiFi and pass it through lan ( I just had an old router flashed with dd-wrt firmware to do this): so no drivers , incompabilities, etc

 

[z970]

- Clean the case. It's clean on the inside and outside, but there's that cavity between the stamped steel frame and the plastic shell... dust has settled in there in many areas and shows through. Will need to take this apart and deep clean.

Be exceedingly careful when you do that. When I gave my G3 that treatment, I accidentally broke part of the latch off, and then broke a chunk of the case off too due to the old, extremely brittle plastic. That's yet another improvement they made with the infinitely superior G4s - much stronger acrylic.

- Flashing a Radeon 7000 or some other card with a DVI port is sounding like a good idea. Unfortunately I don't have a normal PC to flash the ROM on. I'll need to see if I can use the G3 itself but all of the write ups seem to reference using DOS. The only Intel/AMD computers I own are laptops, and my server, none of which will work here. Worst case scenario I'll add another computer to my hooptie fleet.

Presuming you want to flash a PC Radeon 7000, grab the Radeon 7000 Mac ROM available here (http://themacelite.wikidot.com/wikidownloads2), then try your luck with Graphiccelerator to flash the card right from OS X (http://thomas.perrier.name/graphiccelerator.html). Make sure to go over the documentation at least twice.

Good luck.

this is an excellent community

In general, I must agree.

 

[weckart]

For the cost of shipping cards to and fro, you can probably pick up an old desktop PC with PCI slots. Quite possibly for free as only the really old ones are sought after. It won't take up much room but will come in handy for flashing/maintenance of your old Macs since most tools are made for DOS.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Thank you guys! I had a look through the ROM flashing steps and decided to move forward and buy a used Radeon 7000 PCI version, 64mb. I couldn't find a 9200 that I could verify as compatible - the closest was a 9200SE 128mb being sold as a 9200 (the sticker on the back gave it away). Not sure what the differences are but the 7000 should be fine, I mainly just want the UI to be snappier.

More good news! Something finally went properly, the G3 is now booting via the SATA SSD. This required simply flashing the BIOS and the WiebeTech SIL3512 firmware via the script. A few hiccups but overall pretty painless. This was a $10 upgrade as opposed to a rare/pricey Sonnet SATA card that is compatible out of the box, and is functionally the same.

I carefully cleaned the case. The plastic seems to not be too brittle on mine, it's in excellent shape. There is some discoloration from the steel itself which shows through the blue plastic and looks like dust but isn't. Solved this with some light scuffing, being careful not to send debris into the innards or strip the zinc galvanization. Looks great now.

 

[alex_free]

Update: something had gone wrong with the PRAM since I first started playing with it a few days ago, and resetting it has me up and running 10.4.11. Thank you to everyone who has chimed in with help, this is an excellent community.

My next steps are:

- Get a wifi card that works properly. The Belkin WLAN utility freezes and never loads despite everything else seemingly working fine. I would much prefer a PCI card as opposed to a USB dongle but we'll see what fits the bill. Everything is fine via internet sharing from my G5 on Leopard and TenFourFox right now on the G3.

- Clean the case. It's clean on the inside and outside, but there's that cavity between the stamped steel frame and the plastic shell... dust has settled in there in many areas and shows through. Will need to take this apart and deep clean.

- Get 1gb of RAM that is actually compatible. I'm a dumbass. Don't be like me

- Flashing a Radeon 7000 or some other card with a DVI port is sounding like a good idea. Unfortunately I don't have a normal PC to flash the ROM on. I'll need to see if I can use the G3 itself but all of the write ups seem to reference using DOS. The only Intel/AMD computers I own are laptops, and my server, none of which will work here. Worst case scenario I'll add another computer to my hooptie fleet.
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I'll just throw this out there - I will buy anyone a 12 pack of their favorite beer who is willing to recieve and flash a graphics card and ship it back at my expense!

A possible alternative to WiFi is using an Ethernet to WiFi adapter. They universally work on every OS that supports Ethernet, and it was my only option for my Mac Mini G4 without WiFi or Bluetooth as I could not find the necessary daughterboard for sale to use the airport card.

 

[1042686]

[[Get a wifi card that works properly. The Belkin WLAN utility freezes and never loads despite everything else seemingly working fine. I would much prefer a PCI card as opposed to a USB dongle but we'll see what fits the bill. Everything is fine via internet sharing from my G5 on Leopard and TenFourFox right now on the G3]]

The Belkin Tiger utility failed for me as well - causing KPs. What I did to make the card work under 10.4.11 in my B&W revB, was to configure it manually. OSX saw that I had inserted the card and prompted me for the configuration under networking in syspref. I named it "Belkin", identified it as airport and set it up to automatic. It saw all of my internal network options immediately afterward. So in the end, it seems like 10.4.11 did not need the Belkin utility. IIRC This utility works back to panther so it might be needed for earlier iterations of OSX (an assumption on my part).

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Thanks guys for the input. From starting out as a dumpster fire, this project is in excellent health now, mostly thanks to the great input on this forum.

Since last posting, I received my $20 VisionTek Radeon 7000 PCI edition graphics card, and successfully flashed it using Graphiccelerator from within Tiger. I also enabled Quartz Extreme using PCI Extreme 3.1, which I can confirm works great under 10.4.11. This was a great cost effective update compared to the original setup and now I have a DVI port.

Ordered 4x256mb of the correct RAM from OWC, this was pretty cheap. I should have checked this last month before assuming ebay/used would be the best route.

The PCI expansion cards are working awesomely: one is the DIY-flashed Syba SATA card and the other is a USB 2.0 card. Both are working natively with no external drivers needed in 10.4.11. The SSD really makes a difference.

I am still trying to sort out wifi. Having a hard time confirming a PCI Wifi card that can be handled with the built-in AirPort utiity for seamless integration. I found a good reference on LowEndMac listing some cards but I have already been burned on this Belkin one.... Tiger doesn't want anything to do with it.

 

[1042686]

Thanks guys for the input. From starting out as a dumpster fire, this project is in excellent health now, mostly thanks to the great input on this forum.

Since last posting, I received my $20 VisionTek Radeon 7000 PCI edition graphics card, and successfully flashed it using Graphiccelerator from within Tiger. I also enabled Quartz Extreme using PCI Extreme 3.1, which I can confirm works great under 10.4.11. This was a great cost effective update compared to the original setup and now I have a DVI port.

Ordered 4x256mb of the correct RAM from OWC, this was pretty cheap. I should have checked this last month before assuming ebay/used would be the best route.

The PCI expansion cards are working awesomely: one is the DIY-flashed Syba SATA card and the other is a USB 2.0 card. Both are working natively with no external drivers needed in 10.4.11. The SSD really makes a difference.

I am still trying to sort out wifi. Having a hard time confirming a PCI Wifi card that can be handled with the built-in AirPort utiity for seamless integration. I found a good reference on LowEndMac listing some cards but I have already been burned on this Belkin one.... Tiger doesn't want anything to do with it.

What version belkin F5d7000 do you have? I have a v1 which is supposed to be setup & go. Early revisions are Broadcom chipset & later are RT2500. If it’s a later revision - 4 & up I think, using a generic driver for the latter chipset gets them going.

Anyhoo, an update on mine - while tiger sees this card & it sees networks withstrong signal strength, the data stream is next to nothing after only a few minutes, so even with manual setup, I’m still having some trouble sorting this card out in my B&W.

If I am unable to fix its performance, Ill, Stick this in one of my win boxes & utilize a USB dongle in the internal port of a usb2 pci card. I don’t need blazing speeds, rather just comfortable connectivity to my NAS for file sharing.

Glad to hearyour 7000 flash worked out. That is next on my B&W build list.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

Thank for that. I just checked and mine is "ver. 5000" and has an Atheros labelled chip on it. Guess it definitely needs to be Broadcom.

This thread has some further detail:

Belkin F5D7000 Observations & Results

First off, I only want to provide my experience here so that others will have less trouble than I. Hardware: Two Blue & White G3's running 10.4.6 and 10.4.6 Server. Summary: I purchased a Belkin PCI NIC model F5D7000 (version 4.00), popped it in the Mac and immediately it was recognized as an...

forums.macrumors.com

Now, to try and find an early one... unless there are better options available? I would love a PCI card that is natively recognized and no external drivers are needed.

 

[1042686]

Hi, the other Broadcom pci card I use with great success in my other pmg4 QS & MDDs is a wirelessG Dynex DX-EBDTC V.1. It also uses a Broadcom chipset. Great card that has never failed me.

Below with the Belkin F5d7000, you can see how the bandwidth tapers off into nothingness & will then bounce back.

This makes file transfers & downloads impossible on this B&W & I haven’t figured the issue out yet - a firmware update perhaps? Just a guess but will try & dig deeper when I get a chance. Anyhow, the Dynex delivers consistent 4-5 mb/s which I can live with on this old box & what I plan to do with it.

Both are seen as native airport too.