Need help with Rev A Power Mac G3 B&W

[mectojic]

Just acquired a 300 Mhz Rev A B&W Power Mac G3. I've already read, and I know, these things can be really poorly behaved. But I'm in Australia, so it's lucky to find one at all!

When I picked up the Power Mac, I confirmed that it could boot to 10.4 Tiger. But as soon as I brought it home, it stopped booting. The hard drive would make a few noises at start up and then nothing happened. Also, it stopped recognising that I had a display plugged in, and stopped doing the Apple boot up chime.

Any suggestions from B&W people for how I can bully this thing into working again?

 

[PowerHarryG4]

It’s possible that the hard drive could have died. You could try booting from a Mac OS cd if you have one.

 

[MysticCow]

Unplug EVERYTHING (except for the monitor cord so you can what's happening) and see if it boots.

If that doesn't work, remove one RAM stick at a time and see if it boots.

If that doesn't work, the PRAM battery might be dead or needs reset. Replace the battery. If that doesn't work, hold down COMMAND-OPTION-P-R until you hear three startup bongs.

If that doesn't work, the hard drive is likely dead and needs replaced.

If none of those work, your G3 has more severe issues.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

CUDA reset has always worked for my revB. It's done similar squirrely BS but the cuda switch gets it off the strike line.

This thing.

 

[mectojic]

Thanks for the advice. I did a few CUDA resets, eventually this fixed the problem.
I did try a PRAM keyboard reset first, but that didn't work this time, since not even the Apple chime was sounding.

 

[Nermal]

I had what sounds like the same issue with my B&W, and it needed a new PRAM battery.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Makes sense to replace the Pram battery regardless on such an old machine. I buy em in sets of 8 or 10 off ebay. Much cheaper that way. I used to buy them as $3.00 singles at a local battery plus bulbs but they've gone up alot over the past few years. I think they're up around $6 bucks now.

 

[philgxxd]

I bought on amazon a set of 5 units "SAFT" for 24€.

 

[GermanSuplex]

I bought on amazon a set of 5 units "SAFT" for 24€.

Nice avatar 👍

 

[mectojic]

The person I bought it off had replaced the PRAM battery, but that too was about 7 years ago.

Can you still use a Power Mac without a PRAM battery?

if I needed to get one, what do they look like?

 

[LightBulbFun]

you should be able to use it without a PRAM battery,

but yeah Rev A G3 BW's can be very touch and go

I find just shuffling the RAM sticks around in their slots can help get one booting again most of the time

and if you have a mixed bag of ram sticks installed, id recommend replacing them all with known good (preferably new) matching RAM sticks

 

[Project Alice]

The person I bought it off had replaced the PRAM battery, but that too was about 7 years ago.

Can you still use a Power Mac without a PRAM battery?

if I needed to get one, what do they look like?

I use most my Macs without PRAM batteries, including my B&W (Rev C) and my Beige G3s. They function better without a PRAM than they do with a dead one. I can't speak for the Rev A B&W on that though.
This is what the batteries are, they can still be purchased from most places.

you should be able to use it without a PRAM battery,

but yeah Rev A G3 BW's can be very touch and go

I find just shuffling the RAM sticks around in their slots can help get one booting again most of the time

and if you have a mixed bag of ram sticks installed, id recommend replacing them all with known good (preferably new) matching RAM sticks

Everything LightBulbFun says on this topic is correct, probably the best resource on these forums for older PPC Macs like this.

I'd recommend getting RAM from here. (Though for some reason the PowerMac G3 section is missing, I know it used to be there) However they should still be able to source memory for it. OWC will also have the correct RAM but at a ridiculously marked up price. For the most part PC100 or 133 memory should work in it, but it can be picky . It also doesn't particularly like double sided sticks for some reason.

I would like to add that all the B&W G3s are temperament with their IDE controller; especially the Rev A. It would not be a bad idea to get a PCI ATA133 card (Or a flashed SATA card) either will be faster and get around the 128GB limit.
I've got ATA133 cards in my B&W and my Beige tower and it's much easier to get them to do anything than using the built in controller.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

I had similar issues as you with my B&W, ultimately CUDA / PRAM resets got it going.
Some other things that I feel were worthwhile to making it more solid:

• Matching RAM sticks, around a year ago OWC prices for the correct ones were actually reasonable, compared to trying to roll the dice on eBay for used stuff. But that other link looked promising. These machines can be really picky.
• New PRAM battery as already discussed, it's the right thing to do the next time you are making an online order.
• Project Alice above touched on a really good point for a Rev A model which is the flashed SATA card. This gets around all of the DMA issues that plagued the Rev A boards and is an honest upgrade. Drop a line here or PM me for more info, you can get a cheap card and there is a Wiebetech firmware file you can flash from within OS X. Plus, you can then plug right into a budget SSD to truly bring the B&W on song.