I finally bought a Mac. Now for my billion questions. :P

[Ecodisk]

Okay this is the one I got.I know its not the greatest, but I figured it was the best for playing around with.

Question #1. Can this Mac take PC133 ram. I'm pretty sure I can round up at least 512mb of ram for it if it does.

Question #2. I want to upgrade the hard drive right away. Is there any way that I can copy the OS over to the new hard drive since I don't have any instalation CDs?

Question #3. Will all my PC pci accesiories work in this Mac?(other then the video card already found out those don't work)

Question #4.I have a wireless network and use USB adapters to link my computers to it. Will any of these work with Mac or only special ones?

Oh yah and last, but not least. Woo hoo! I got a Mac finally

 

[caveman_uk]

1. It's a 'Blue and White' and Crucial says it takes PC133

2. There's tools for OS X that will do this (e.g. superduper) but I don't know about OS9. I guess there must be. Some macs (I think including yours) don;t support hard drives any bigger than 127GB. So don't bother buying a drive bigger than that.

3. Some do some don't. What specifically are you worried about?

4. Not all. Again I've never used OS9 but in OSX Broadcom wireless-G PCI adapters are supported. You need to check the chipsets on the PCI card.

You could upgrade that machine to a 1GHz G4 with an upgrade card if you wanted. Would be about $350.

 

[Ecodisk]

3. Some do some don't. What specifically are you worried about?

Sound cards, usb, firewire....Just wondering if I'm going to have to worry when I want to add stuff to my Mac

 

[Chundles]

Sound cards, usb, firewire....Just wondering if I'm going to have to worry when I want to add stuff to my Mac

With an old G3 there should be plenty of literature. I'd be looking on the manufacturers' sites to see whether they support the OS you're running.

Also, the ebay ad says it has a PS/2 port, I think this is more likely an ADB port - I don't think any Mac has ever shipped with a PS/2 port.

 

[Ecodisk]

With an old G3 there should be plenty of literature. I'd be looking on the manufacturers' sites to see whether they support the OS you're running.

Also, the ebay ad says it has a PS/2 port, I think this is more likely an ADB port - I don't think any Mac has ever shipped with a PS/2 port.

I figured the PS\2 post was a typo. I always thought that older macs used different keyboard plugs.

 

[RedTomato]

Some macs (I think including yours) don;t support hard drives any bigger than 127GB.

I think if you put the drive in a firewire or usb external enclosure, the enclosure chipset will take care of that, so you can hook up a 300GB drive if you want.

.. RedTomato ..

 

[Ecodisk]

I think if you put the drive in a firewire or usb external enclosure, the enclosure chipset will take care of that, so you can hook up a 300GB drive if you want.

.. RedTomato ..

Guess I should mention that I will only be putting an 80gig in it at the most

 

[caveman_uk]

Sound cards, usb, firewire....Just wondering if I'm going to have to worry when I want to add stuff to my Mac

It's patchy and depends on the card and the chipset on it. For example OS X supports USB 2 cards with NEC chipsets on them. With Firewire it's another chipset. The best bet is to plug it in and see if it works. If it doesn't see if the vendor has drivers for it or google for it.

 

[Mord]

upgrade to 10.4 add some ram and put in a decent size HD

 

[hvfsl]

www.xlr8yourmac.com is a great place to go to find out what accesiories work with your Mac.

 

[Ecodisk]

upgrade to 10.4 add some ram and put in a decent size HD

Already planned on getting the ram, thats why I asked if PC133 would work.

Already planned on upgradeing the HD. Thats why I said it was something I wanted to do right away.

Thanks for telling me to upgrade to 10.4 though, Why exactly do I need 10.4 is there a cheaper OS that I can just play around with for now?

 

[Daedalus256]

Did I read that auction incorrectly or did you score a G3 B&W for $15+shipping? WOW. I think I need to start looking on ebay for this stuff!

 

[DZ/015]

Congrats on the B&W purchase.

I'll second the suggestion to go to xlr8yourmac.com. They have tons of info on this computer model. I own several of these myself.

Two apps you will want to search for right away are DIMM First Aid and the IDE corruption tester that are mentioned on the xlr8 site. The old rev.1 B&Ws were very picky about the installed RAM and were known to have data corruption issues because of faulty IDE controllers.

Don't get Tiger and try to run it with a 300MHz G3. You will be pulling your hair out in frustration. The best OS that I ran with this unit is Jaguar (10.2.8). Discs are readily available on eBay. If you pump up the RAM you could get Panther to run, but it will be sluggish.

CPU upgrades are available. There are G3s that run up to 1.1GHz and G4s that go to 1GHz. Be aware that G4 chips >600MHz will require the system bus speed to be lowered from 100MHz to 66MHz.

Again, check xlri8yourmac.com and good luck!

 

[ahunter3]

Question #2. I want to upgrade the hard drive right away. Is there any way that I can copy the OS over to the new hard drive since I don't have any instalation CDs?

2. There's tools for OS X that will do this (e.g. superduper) but I don't know about OS9.

OS 9 doesn't need any steenking tools, mon! Hook your new drive up on the internal bus (or pop it into an external FireWire cradle i fyou have one); boot from OS 9 from your existing HD, and use OS 9's utility Drive Setup to format and initialize your new drive, and partition it if you wish to partition. Then drag-copy the System Folder to the new drive. Go to the Startup Disk Control Panel and pick the copy of the OS on the new drive and reboot to make sure it worked / is "blessed" / etc.

Repeat the drag-copy process for all your MacOS 9 applications (which may or may not be confined to an "Applications (OS 9)" folder, btw).

Done.

For OS X, you need software to copy the OS over, due to permissions and an invisible file or two. I acquired Retrospect Express as a toss-in freebie when I bought an external FW drive to use for backup, and I'll vouch for it. Others already mentioned on this thread are probably also solid and many of them are free (Retro Ex costs at least a nominal buck or two).

 

[alangyssler]

Ram for sale

If you're looking for ram, I have several sticks of PC133 ram just sitting around after an upgrade. I have 128 and 256 sticks. email me at acgyssl@ilstu.edu if you're interested, and we'll work something out. I'm looking to get rid of them, as I have no use for them. Congrats on the new Mac!

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

Since your machine is a 300mhz, it is a Rev 1 unit. These will NOT support more than 1 HD on the internal ATA bus. You best bet is to get an ATA pci controller card, and connect your HD's to it.

For the best performance and value, go with a Serial (SATA) card & drives......way faster, no size limits, and can be moved to new macs later.

And yes the pc133/256mb ram will work, it will just downclock itself to 100mhz. You can max it out to 1GB (256mb X 4)

As the others have said, dont try to run tiger @300mhz.....doggass slow it will be

You may also wanna consider a better video card, like the Radeon 7000 or 9200......really helps on older machines

 

[Ecodisk]

Did I read that auction incorrectly or did you score a G3 B&W for $15+shipping? WOW. I think I need to start looking on ebay for this stuff!

Yah I sat there down to the last second not believing that I just won it for $15. So I started to think something was wrong with it, but so far no one on here has noticed anything other then the guy saying it had a PS/2 port

 

[yellow]

Yah I sat there down to the last second not believing that I just won it for $15. So I started to think something was wrong with it, but so far no one on here has noticed anything other then the guy saying it had a PS/2 port

Ah.. what he thinks is a PS/2 port is an ADB port. This B&W was a transition box for Apple from ADB to USB.

PS/2 Port:

ADB Port:

 

[Ecodisk]

Since your machine is a 300mhz, it is a Rev 1 unit. These will NOT support more than 1 HD on the internal ATA bus. You best bet is to get an ATA pci controller card, and connect your HD's to it.

For the best performance and value, go with a Serial (SATA) card & drives......way faster, no size limits, and can be moved to new macs later.

Ok my only problem with getting SATA is that I will then have to go out and buy an entirely new HD instead of useing one I have laying around. I didn't want to put a ton of money into my $15 mac

And my rev 1 can't have two HDs? It doesn't even support a slave/master option? What if I took the CD drive out temporarly and hooked it up on that IDE connecter? Just so that I could move OS9 to the new HD?