Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
POWER MAC WORTH THE $ ??
- Thread starter jshag02
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If the monitor is decent it might be worth it just for that. What's the processor speed? Harddrive size?
Most likely, add some more memory and it should work just fine. And if the monitor is good, you can always keep then when you upgrade later on and keep the G3 PM as a backup/light use system
Most likely, add some more memory and it should work just fine. And if the monitor is good, you can always keep then when you upgrade later on and keep the G3 PM as a backup/light use system
That's not a bad price.
The machine is capable, but not a rocketship. One of its virtues is that it has both IDE and SCSI drive capability, RS-422 serial and ADB. This means it is the last Mac to natively support older peripherals like SCSI scanners, serial communications devices and tape drives, so you often see it in offices of new OSX machines, filling that legacy-device support role.
It is modestly expandable, although the early models only support one drive per IDE buss, not a Master and a Slave per buss. The machine lacks USB and Firewire, but has PCI slots which you can install a FW/USB upgrade card fairly easily.
Can't tell which you have, because the machine came in 233 & 266 MHz, then a second generation of 300, 333 and 366 MHz versions, and in desktop and mini-tower configurations.
OS X can be installed on these machines if you follow some rules, check out www.lowendmac.com for good resources.
Comparison -- Maybe a PIII 500 to 800 MHz? Because of the differences in the processor and OS, it's hard to make a direct comparison.
Will it give you the full-on Mac experience? Not really, because much of today's Mac iApp, iTunes, iWhatever buzz is based around G4's/G5's and OSX 10.3/10.4. But this is a good solid machine from the past generation of Mac.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
The machine is capable, but not a rocketship. One of its virtues is that it has both IDE and SCSI drive capability, RS-422 serial and ADB. This means it is the last Mac to natively support older peripherals like SCSI scanners, serial communications devices and tape drives, so you often see it in offices of new OSX machines, filling that legacy-device support role.
It is modestly expandable, although the early models only support one drive per IDE buss, not a Master and a Slave per buss. The machine lacks USB and Firewire, but has PCI slots which you can install a FW/USB upgrade card fairly easily.
Can't tell which you have, because the machine came in 233 & 266 MHz, then a second generation of 300, 333 and 366 MHz versions, and in desktop and mini-tower configurations.
OS X can be installed on these machines if you follow some rules, check out www.lowendmac.com for good resources.
Comparison -- Maybe a PIII 500 to 800 MHz? Because of the differences in the processor and OS, it's hard to make a direct comparison.
Will it give you the full-on Mac experience? Not really, because much of today's Mac iApp, iTunes, iWhatever buzz is based around G4's/G5's and OSX 10.3/10.4. But this is a good solid machine from the past generation of Mac.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
It depends on the type of monitor it is and the speed of the G3, but my instinct would stay no. G3 Blue and Whites are going for under $100 dollars, so you just need to decide if the monitor is worth $100+ dollars to you. I don't know the equivalent PC speed, but I know it's not going to run OS 10 very well.
Within months if not weeks you will find this machine frustrating to use... poor economy IMHO.
Keep on saving, get something better that will give you better value in the medium term and a more rewarding computing experience.
What do you want to do with this machine?
Keep on saving, get something better that will give you better value in the medium term and a more rewarding computing experience.
What do you want to do with this machine?
Patmian212 said:G3 B&W are not going for under $100I saw some that were like $300-600
There are some on ebay right here. See the two going for BIN 74.99. There are others at this price too. There's one that is around $150, but it has a 60 gig hard drive and a gig of RAM. They are certainly not going for $300 to $600.
Patmian212 said:G3 B&W are not going for under $100
they sell for $69.99 here
http://shop.poweron.com/1-800-673-6...CartId=13134568HSN-ACCWARE-IA85&ic=BW300&tpc=
ibook
Yeah, I would save up for either an iBook or Mac mini. The user experience with the B+W would be frustrating. Upgrades would be fun to install, but expensive. The main issue I think is going to be the cost of software. With an iBook or Mini you get lots of good stuff to play around with. Pay 300 more dollars and get the mac mini. You can find an old monitor for 25 bucks. But, with the iBook. You get a portable mac, with an LCD. Well worth the 999.00. You can find a refubished 12-inch iBook for even less. Sorry, but the B+W would be frustrating and costly.
Yeah, I would save up for either an iBook or Mac mini. The user experience with the B+W would be frustrating. Upgrades would be fun to install, but expensive. The main issue I think is going to be the cost of software. With an iBook or Mini you get lots of good stuff to play around with. Pay 300 more dollars and get the mac mini. You can find an old monitor for 25 bucks. But, with the iBook. You get a portable mac, with an LCD. Well worth the 999.00. You can find a refubished 12-inch iBook for even less. Sorry, but the B+W would be frustrating and costly.
macbaseball said:
Yeah, no hard drive, no monitor, 64 Mb - 128 Mb RAM, no keyboard no mouse. That'll be useful.
Blue Velvet said:
Depends on what you are used to.
I bought my G3 350 in February and coming from a Pentium 450 running XP the 350 was a screamer, even running Panther.
There are a plethora of ZIF socket processor upgrades for the G3, and with the 100 MHZ Bus speed, and the ability to upgrade to 1.5GB of memory, it can rival many of the newer Single processor G4 computers for speed.
The only real advantage gain of the newer G4 models over the B&W with a G4 upgrade, is the ability to run Dual processors on the Newer non ZIF g4 machines, and the fact that you can run older AGP video cards with more advanced features. Up to the G4 Digital Audio, all G4 computers were limited to the same 100mhz bus speed as the G3 B&W with slight architecture advancements.
Most of the speed on the newer G4 computers (post Yikes) came from the type of Level2 (and on newer Level3) Cache on the Processor daughter card. With a Processor upgrade on a B&W you can get similar Level 2 cache as a native G4.
If you buy the G3 for ~$150, and spend ~$150 for a good G4 upgrade (usually used) you will have a totally stable computer, that will run OS-X Jaguar, and most likely Tiger just fine!
I bought my G3, upgraded it to a G4, upped the memory, and was able to run many applications with good speed. Since Feb, I have since built a G4 digital Audio (first with 133mhz bus speed) and installed a Dual 533 processor card on it, got hooked again on the Speed of Macintosh, and since bought a G5.
Be careful, buying a G3, may lead into a long term relationship with Apple hardware