PowerMac G3 350/256 vs 14" iBook G3 800/640

[RedCroissant]

Hello again to everyone.

I know that I just received the PowerMac, but with an iBook that just needs to be "slightly" fixed, I was wondering what some people here thought. I personally love the PowerMac and the ability to get up to 1GB RAM and the fact that I already have an extra 3.5" 120GB IDE drive makes it more appealing.

However, with the iBook I have: a more powerful computer (I think), with more memory, airport, a combo drive versus the CD-ROM only in the PowerMac. It can also boot into OS 9 and take advantage of the classic environment as well which would make this a pretty good machine for what I would also like. The downside is that the battery is dead.

Anyway, general thoughts?

 

[Hrududu]

350Mhz is pretty slow. First order of business is to overclock that bad boy to 400MHz! I've got B&W's ranging from 350 to 450MHz. The 450 has 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9200, and its about the slowest machine I can really "get online" with. This was my primary machine from 2002-2005, and still gets use in the back of the bowling alley. The 350's are REALLY bad. One has 1GB and another has 896MB of RAM, but it doesn't make much difference, the CPU is where they hit the wall. By contrast, the iBook is probably more of a struggle due to the 640MB of RAM capacity and you have zero options for CPU or GPU upgrades.

 

[RedCroissant]

350Mhz is pretty slow. First order of business is to overclock that bad boy to 400MHz! I've got B&W's ranging from 350 to 450MHz. The 450 has 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9200, and its about the slowest machine I can really "get online" with. This was my primary machine from 2002-2005, and still gets use in the back of the bowling alley. The 350's are REALLY bad. One has 1GB and another has 896MB of RAM, but it doesn't make much difference, the CPU is where they hit the wall. By contrast, the iBook is probably more of a struggle due to the 640MB of RAM capacity and you have zero options for CPU or GPU upgrades.

Yeah I know that it's pretty slow, so I wouldn't be making it my primary machine or anything. I am just looking for the best option to run OS 9 for retro gaming. The iBook has more Vram but like you said, not really upgradeable after maxing out the RAM.

Here's another question though. My iBook is not recognizing the iBook restore media that it came with so I'm guessing that the drive is just inoperable now. I'm wondering something...

If I upgrade the PowerMac by installing OS X as well (because it doesn't have it right now) and I clone the drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, will that also clone the OS 9 portion of it so that I can get it onto the iBook?

 

[MacCubed]

Yeah I know that it's pretty slow, so I wouldn't be making it my primary machine or anything. I am just looking for the best option to run OS 9 for retro gaming. The iBook has more Vram but like you said, not really upgradeable after maxing out the RAM.

Here's another question though. My iBook is not recognizing the iBook restore media that it came with so I'm guessing that the drive is just inoperable now. I'm wondering something...

If I upgrade the PowerMac by installing OS X as well (because it doesn't have it right now) and I clone the drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, will that also clone the OS 9 portion of it so that I can get it onto the iBook?

It depends, the the OS 9 system folder is on the same partition as OS X, then it will all come over. If not, then you could clone the whole drive and then restore

 

[Hrududu]

Yeah I know that it's pretty slow, so I wouldn't be making it my primary machine or anything. I am just looking for the best option to run OS 9 for retro gaming. The iBook has more Vram but like you said, not really upgradeable after maxing out the RAM.

Here's another question though. My iBook is not recognizing the iBook restore media that it came with so I'm guessing that the drive is just inoperable now. I'm wondering something...

If I upgrade the PowerMac by installing OS X as well (because it doesn't have it right now) and I clone the drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, will that also clone the OS 9 portion of it so that I can get it onto the iBook?

If you're talking about just going with OS 9 native games and software, there really isn't much the B&W can't do for you CPU wise. I'd go with the PowerMac just because it isn't hard to get the graphics up to or beyond that of the iBook, more RAM is possible, faster HDDs are available, and you can get a lot of screen real estate for it.

 

[bunnspecial]

For gaming, I'd rather have the 1gb of RAM, a Radeon 9200, and the better screen I could put on the B&W.