Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
rhpenguin said:
Im refering to like a HDD upgrade (40gb even would be a decent upgrade if you can still find that size of drive) or RAM (PC133 is uber cheap)...

A new HDD is a must if your going to run Panther though.. 6GB or so is VERY limiting..


The one thing though, is that I've had a hell of a time finding smaller capacity drives... most are 80+ at the least nowadays...
 
Yikes,
this thread is getting kinda vicious,
the guy with the ibook 500 who says panther is slow seems odd to me as my dad has the same computer and it runs panther quite fine. So I don't understand how your ibook can't even print. Odd, wasn't panther supposed to support older g3's and make them a tad bit faster?

It seems for what you want that that machine is suitable
 
vraxtus said:
Unfortunately for me, your English is so horrible I can't understand half the things you say!

But as far as it goes,
1) Why do you want him to spend MORE money on a machine that is already obsolete, and not even really worth saving?
2) You've just said there's huge CPU bottlenecks! And even with a slower processor, where the bottleneck will be less, it's STILL A SLOWER CPU.


Basically, you're encouraging him to not just spend $100, but add another $200 onto that... that's a good deal??? Half the things, such as replacing the HD, flashing the video card, or hacking the OS for PCI QX he MAY NOT EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO, and IT MAY TAKE HIM LONGER TO FIGURE THAT OUT THAN IF HE JUST GOT A NEWER COMPUTER!!!!

Nice job, being wrong again, that is.

don't even go there on my english, it's not my fault you cant read straight. it's a forum not a english test.

it was a typo the cpu thing i was going to say that the 66MHz fsb bottlenecked it and i could not edit it as the server was busy so i just noticed it as i clicked post.

the guy said he wanted a desktop, presumably so he can surf ect he has not said what he wanted this for yet so he may be better off just getting an emac but thats like $800, by the looks of things he dosen't have $800.

i don't know the skill level of this guy and neither do you, the hack is simply downloading it and installing it, it dose not take a genius. as for flashing all that required is downloading the rom poping the card in a spare pci slot and using a program called ati flash or something like that.


why spend money on an old mac (it's not obsolete many people make there livings from these macs and even older ones) well first off it's cheap, second off he could use it as a server third he could fill it with HD's and use it to back stuff up, fourth it's perfectly fine for going online playing itunes, most of the iapps mail, photoshop, even an older version of final cut pro will run on it, he has enough ram i even play quake 3 on my g3 over my lan when friends come over, it's a damn fine mac and is perfectly good if you do not need to do 3d rendering, gaming, or any heavy pro work.

a g3 may not be a good mac for him it may be a brilliant mac for him i don't know his needs and neither do you stop being stupid about it dose not help in the slightest.
 
Hector said:
don't even go there on my english, it's not my fault you cant read straight. it's a forum not a english test.

it was a typo the cpu thing i was going to say that the 66MHz fsb bottlenecked it and i could not edit it as the server was busy so i just noticed it as i clicked post.

the guy said he wanted a desktop, presumably so he can surf ect he has not said what he wanted this for yet so he may be better off just getting an emac but thats like $800, by the looks of things he dosen't have $800.

i don't know the skill level of this guy and neither do you, the hack is simply downloading it and installing it, it dose not take a genius. as for flashing all that required is downloading the rom poping the card in a spare pci slot and using a program called ati flash or something like that.


why spend money on an old mac (it's not obsolete many people make there livings from these macs and even older ones) well first off it's cheap, second off he could use it as a server third he could fill it with HD's and use it to back stuff up, fourth it's perfectly fine for going online playing itunes, most of the iapps mail, photoshop, even an older version of final cut pro will run on it, he has enough ram i even play quake 3 on my g3 over my lan when friends come over, it's a damn fine mac and is perfectly good if you do not need to do 3d rendering, gaming, or any heavy pro work.

a g3 may not be a good mac for him it may be a brilliant mac for him i don't know his needs and neither do you stop being stupid about it dose not help in the slightest.

Again, I'm only criticizing your English because some of your posts are quite illegible... no punctuation and very poor grammar.

But as for his needs, yes, I realize none of us know. But I maintain that it doesn't seem worth it to upgrade the B&W. It is however worth it just to purchase the base machine for $100. As it's been said above, he could even just sell the machine for a profit right off the bat.

As for flashing cards... I don't think you've flashed one. Some require jumper adjustments, and others don't even have the right voltage. If you flash an improper card and insert it, you could short circuit your PCI or AGP slot, and even fry your mobo if it's done incorrectly. I'm very wary of flashing, and I prefer not to do it, even if it saves a few $$$.

Also, for all we know, $100 may be all he has to spare at the moment, so upgrading may not even be an option.

As for the bus bottleneck, it's not going to be nearly as significant as the CPU bottleneck. You're talking about a 150 mhz difference on the CPU, and only a 33 mhz difference on the bus. Now, if it was a difference from 167 to 900, for instance from a G4 to a G5, then that's obviously different. But the bottlenecking you "think" will happen between a 66 and 100 mhz bus isn't nearly as significant as you think.

Furthermore, I find it curious how a 16 year old, in England, no less, was able to get a Tiger preview...
 
vraxtus said:
It's already been announced that further OS revisions will not have the necessary support for many features on a G3 machine, so in that regard any form of future planning should be disregarded.

Furthermore I should ask you if you've even used a machine comparable to this recently... I still HAVE my iBook and I can tell you that it lags considerably, even opening up the HD. And this is after I've repaired as much as I can on it.

Nobody asked about the future. That computer will run the current OS beautifully. I don't know for certain if it will meet the requirements and neither do you. I do know that a lot of developers are running Tiger on G3s though.

Have I used a computer comperable to that one lately? No, they've all been slower. Rev A and Rev D iMacs and a few beige G3s (Jag on the beige, Panther on everything else). No problems. I've also used Panther on a 500mhz iBook just like yours--128MB stock RAM. I'm well qualified to say there isn't a problem with Panther on these computers.
 
Horrortaxi said:
I've also used Panther on a 500mhz iBook just like yours--128MB stock RAM. I'm well qualified to say there isn't a problem with Panther on these computers.


And I'm qualified to tell you that there is a problem with Panther on those computers... and mine has 384 MB RAM!

I can even prove to you just how laggy it runs... it's so bad my grandfather commented on how slowly it printed!

To print a one page document it took the iBook about 1:30 to spool fully. The printer had already begun printing but stopped many times midway through to wait for the computer to catch up.

That, in my mind, is very much SUB par performance. Say what you will but I can prove it... your basis is only observation that it runs "decently."

Having the PRINTER wait for the COMPUTER to send it enough data?

Yeah, thats REAL decent to me :rolleyes:
 
vraxtus said:
Again, I'm only criticizing your English because some of your posts are quite illegible... no punctuation and very poor grammar.

But as for his needs, yes, I realize none of us know. But I maintain that it doesn't seem worth it to upgrade the B&W. It is however worth it just to purchase the base machine for $100. As it's been said above, he could even just sell the machine for a profit right off the bat.

As for flashing cards... I don't think you've flashed one. Some require jumper adjustments, and others don't even have the right voltage. If you flash and improper card and insert it, you could short circuit your PCI or AGP slot, and even fry your mobo if it's done incorrectly. I'm very wary of flashing, and I prefer not to do it, even if it saves a few $$$.

Also, for all we know, $100 may be all he has to spare at the moment, so upgrading may not even be an option.

As for the bus bottleneck, it's not going to be nearly as significant as the CPU bottleneck. You're talking about a 150 mhz difference on the CPU, and only a 33 mhz difference on the bus. Now, if it was a difference from 167 to 900, for instance from a G4 to a G5, then that's obviously different. But the bottlenecking you "think" will happen between a 66 and 100 mhz bus isn't nearly as significant as you think.

Furthermore, I find it curious how a 16 year old, in England, no less, was able to get a Tiger preview...

i'm 15 and an apple technician i like to start young hehehe.

as for flashing video cards i have flashed countless 7000's one 9100 and i helped flash one 9800 for a friend as for electronic incompatibilitys what are you on about? are you talking about how agp 8x cards wont work with a 2x mac, because of the volatge difference? because they will if you tape some connectors to stop the card useing a voltage your mac dose not have and make it use a different one

as for flashing a 7000 is very simple as it requires no resistor moves at all it just requires flashing it with a 64k reduced rom which i can give to anyone that pm's me.

a difference between a 66MHz and a 100MHz bus is bigger than you think look at the g3 in question, you can upgrade it with a sonnet g4 1GHz zif and it downclocks the system bus to 66MHz and some b&w owners that upgraded from a 500MHz g4 card claimed it felt more like a downgrade there cpu xbench score went up but everything elce went down and the system felt slower for most tasks, you can see with your ibook how a slow system bus can drag it down, try to see if you can use a b&w tower to see how much faster it feels. as i have used a 500MHz ibook (my friends) and my g3 and my g3 seems allot faster, it seems to me that any system bus below 100MHz pulls a system down, anything above that wont make to much difference in anything but a g5

as for upgradeing doing it is so cheap, you can get a g4 zif for $80 from www.xlr8.com and a decent 120GB HD from new egg for $90, a pre flashed radeon 7000 usually about $45 on ebay. These upgrades are cheap and effective.

i'm not saying get every upgrade but suggesting them as options and to get what is right for him as even if he dose them all it will run the latest version of os x for a good while and will be much cheaper than a new mac but will serve fine for him
 
Hector said:
i'm 15 and an apple technician i like to start young hehehe.

as for flashing video cards i have flashed countless 7000's one 9100 and i helped flash one 9800 for a friend as for electronic incompatibilitys what are you on about? are you talking about how agp 8x cards wont work with a 2x mac, because of the volatge difference? because they will if you tape some connectors to stop the card useing a voltage your mac dose not have and make it use a different one

Well for one we're talking about PCI slots in this case. Depending on the type of PCI connector it may not have the same voltage, but yes, for AGP slots there is a clear voltage distinction between 8x and 2x cards.

a difference between a 66MHz and a 100MHz bus is bigger than you think look at the g3 in question, you can upgrade it with a sonnet g4 1GHz zif and it downclocks the system bus to 66MHz and some b&w owners that upgraded from a 500MHz g4 card claimed it felt more like a downgrade there cpu xbench score went up but everything elce went down and the system felt slower for most tasks, you can see with your ibook how a slow system bus can drag it down, try to see if you can use a b&w tower to see how much faster it feels. as i have used a 500MHz ibook (my friends) and my g3 and my g3 seems allot faster, it seems to me that any system bus below 100MHz pulls a system down, anything above that wont make to much difference in anything but a g5

Did I mention my mom has a Pismo? Even at 400 mhz with a 100 mhz it lags. However the printing is significantly better. Unfortunately for most tasks, including web surfing, which my mom does regularly, she finds it to be painfully slow.

as for upgradeing doing it is so cheap, you can get a g4 zif for $80 from www.xlr8.com and a decent 120GB HD from new egg for $90, a pre flashed radeon 7000 usually about $45 on ebay. These upgrades are cheap and effective.

And like I said, thats $200 more... that's really not that cheap.

i'm not saying get every upgrade but suggesting them as options and to get what is right for him as even if he dose them all it will run the latest version of os x for a good while and will be much cheaper than a new mac but will serve fine for him

Yes, I agree it will be cheaper than a new Mac, but I don't think it will run the OS as well as you all might suggest.
 
vraxtus said:
Well for one we're talking about PCI slots in this case. Depending on the type of PCI connector it may not have the same voltage, but yes, for AGP slots there is a clear voltage distinction between 8x and 2x cards.



Did I mention my mom has a Pismo? Even at 400 mhz with a 100 mhz it lags. However the printing is significantly better. Unfortunately for most tasks, including web surfing, which my mom does regularly, she finds it to be painfully slow.



And like I said, thats $200 more... that's really not that cheap.



Yes, I agree it will be cheaper than a new Mac, but I don't think it will run the OS as well as you all might suggest.

a 400MHz pismo benchmarked faster than a 500MHz ibook i remember the scores from a mac mag the 400MHz pismo got 108 and the ibook got 90 and this is relative to a 350MHz imac which was given a score of 100, these figures are from memory so i could dig up the mag if you really wanted me to

stop comparing laptops with desktops the mobile gpu and the 2.5" HD make any notebook a much much slower for daily use, as for your mum get a faster HD in there and it will feel like a new mac seriously, get at least a cheap 40GB 5400rpm drive (assumeing your up for the take apart) or even a 7200rpm 60GB one if you have the cash though they are a little pricey.

as for the cost effectiveness of upgradeing old macs i have worked out a cost effective way of upgradeing a cube with a budget of £1000 and this would be between the speed of a single 1.8GH g5 and a dual 1.8GHz g5
 
vraxtus said:
And I'm qualified to tell you that there is a problem with Panther on those computers... and mine has 384 MB RAM!
I've already been in a fight with someone who loves to talk but doesn't listen worth crap once on this board this week, so I'm not eager to get into this with you. You and Hector can continue having fun. Just let me point out something: You discredited my opinion because it's only based on my observations but your opinion, which you so vehemently defend, is just based on your observations. That's too funny.
 
brdoco said:
Power Mac G3 350MHz
640 MB RAM

Is this gonna be enough to run panther?

Sorry if I missed this somewhere, but how much video memory does it have? I have a B&W G3 tower that runs Panther very well, and it's a G3 400 overclocked, but it still runs very well.

As for Tiger, there are numerous developer versions circulating on Bit Torrent these days unfortunately, but people DO have it. A look at the versions of OS X in the past up to Panther have shown that they run better and better on older hardware, so who knows if the G3 chip will run Tiger or not? My guess would be a definite yes.

And vraxtus if you read Hectors signature, it says he is dyslexic (even I can't spell it.) Way to go making fun of his spelling :rolleyes: why don't you trip an old lady on the way home while you're at it?
 
Horrortaxi said:
You discredited my opinion because it's only based on my observations but your opinion, which you so vehemently defend, is just based on your observations. That's too funny.

Yet your own "observation" is merely that there are "no problems." Your lack of specifics IMO discredits your views, simply for the fact that you have no specific references to point out or prove that it does indeed run "well."
 
Hector said:
a 400MHz pismo benchmarked faster than a 500MHz ibook i remember the scores from a mac mag the 400MHz pismo got 108 and the ibook got 90 and this is relative to a 350MHz imac which was given a score of 100, these figures are from memory so i could dig up the mag if you really wanted me to

stop comparing laptops with desktops the mobile gpu and the 2.5" HD make any notebook a much much slower for daily use, as for your mum get a faster HD in there and it will feel like a new mac seriously, get at least a cheap 40GB 5400rpm drive (assumeing your up for the take apart) or even a 7200rpm 60GB one if you have the cash though they are a little pricey.

as for the cost effectiveness of upgradeing old macs i have worked out a cost effective way of upgradeing a cube with a budget of £1000 and this would be between the speed of a single 1.8GH g5 and a dual 1.8GHz g5


I realize the difference... I've had desktops before.

However even as you've mentioned from the benches, the Pismo does score higher than the 350 B&W... and from the sheer standpoint of basic webpage loading, it takes the Pismo about 15 seconds to load the basic Hotmail frontpage. It's these kinds of specifics that I'm basing my observations upon. Horrortaxi can claim that "it runs fine" all he wants, but what is "fine" other than a subjective relativity?
 
5300cs said:
And vraxtus if you read Hectors signature, it says he is dyslexic (even I can't spell it.) Way to go making fun of his spelling :rolleyes: why don't you trip an old lady on the way home while you're at it?



As for this, I thought his sig was a joke... much like the from the Simpsons when Ralph says, "me fail English, thats unpossible!"

So, my apologizes, I was ignorant to that fact.
 
vraxtus said:
I realize the difference... I've had desktops before.

However even as you've mentioned from the benches, the Pismo does score higher than the 350 B&W... and from the sheer standpoint of basic webpage loading, it takes the Pismo about 15 seconds to load the basic Hotmail frontpage. It's these kinds of specifics that I'm basing my observations upon. Horrortaxi can claim that "it runs fine" all he wants, but what is "fine" other than a subjective relativity?

it's a 350MHZ imac which has a 4200rpm HD a slower video card.

i'll make a film of me useing my g3 and loading pages on safari playing itunes booting up quake 3 and doing some photoshop work.
 
seamuskrat said:
how many PC users can say that XP Pro runs on their 1999 PC? You have to hand it to Apple that 10.3 runs useably well on a 1999 Mac. With RAM update.

XP runs perfectly on computers of the 550mhz P3 generation. Xp might run slow but isn't cornered by Microsoft to run on certain hardware only. Get your facts straight before dogging. I would go for the G3, I might be looking for an iMac myself to tinker with Panther.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.