Re: Super G3 - Is it possible?
Originally posted by G3-Pwnz-G4
i have an uber-g3 blue and white.
500mhz (soon to be 600, once i get better cooling), 576mb ram, 4 hd's (3 of them IDE...i miss my zip drive, but not enough), 2 moniters run by a rage 128 and a voodoo5 5500.
my question is, i have an empty blue and white g3 tower with a 400mhz chip. is it possible to merge both of my comp's together to create one super-g3? a dp g3 would be sweet 
Nope, the G3 doesn't support multi-processor communication. That's one of the reasons it's much cheaper than the G4. If you want raw speed, the best upgrade at the moment (in theory) is the Powerlogix 800 Mhz G3 upgrade. Unless you do lots of audio/video editing or encoding, or PhotoShop work, which are things that make use of AltiVec. Then a G4 upgrade would be a better alternative. If you can get your hands on a 550 Mhz one, they can be overclocked to 600, and will give you more speed than the G3 800 for
these specific tasks. I said in theory because I ordered a G3 800, but it was DOA. I'm waiting for Powerlogix to ship me a replacement. Apparently, it runs fine at 850 MHz, but only in the Rev.B G3s with the taller heatsink. Some reportedly work at 900 MHz, but I would recommend a fan for that. Since you say your G3 is 500 MHz, I would think it's a Rev.B.
Maxing out your RAM at 1,024 MiB, using the fastest available (CL2) will give you a slight edge over what you've currently got. Especially if you're running OS X and high-end apps. That will cost you about 100$US at OWC, for a matched set of 4x 256 MiB CL2 modules.
If you do a lot of large data intensive work (i.e. video or multi-track audio editing), get your hands on a fast ATA133 PCI hard drive card. OWC has some of those for about 80$. Of course, you'll need ATA133-capable HDs to take full advantage of it. But if even if your drives are only ATA66, a card will still help, as the B&W's internal ATA interface is only a 33. With 1 drive, you won't see much difference, but with 4, you'll see a big one. OS Xs built-in RAID 0 capability is plenty fast for all but the most high-end users.
If you have some high-end games, or do any video work, get the best graphics card you can get your hands on. From what I've heard, the fastest card compatible with the B&W is the original ATI Radeon PCI (not the 7000, which is apparently a bit slower). Unfortunately, that model was discontinued about 2 years ago, so they're really hard to find. I don't know how the VooDoo compares to the Radeons.
Just as a reference, here's my current setup:
350 MHz G3 (overclocked 300)
1,024 MiB CL2 RAM
ATI Radeon 7000 with two 17" monitors @ 1,280 x 1,024
ATI Rage 128VR with a third 17" monitor @ 1,280 x 1,024 and video in/out
IBM Deskstar 120 GB 7,200 RPM HD (partitioned 80/40)
40 GB 5,400 RPM HD
I'm using this setup mostly for 3D modeling. That's why I need lots of RAM, and HD storage (though HD speed isn't very important). More processing speed would be nice, though not as much as if I was rendering or editing video (not there yet). Every setup is different. It all depends on what you want to do with the machine. For what I do now, my setup is fine.
