Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Today's Haul(Beige Content)

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,391
6,565
Kentucky
I put out a "feeler" a little while back about a G3 minitower, and a few other OWR systems I was interested in.

I got a response from someone located in Southeast Indiana-about an hour and 45 minutes away-who said he had two. He also had a few other OWR Macs that weren't on my "list" but got my interest anyway-an 8600(with 484MB of RAM), and a 7350 Workgroup Server. He also had two(licensed) copies of Appleshare IP and a copy of Apple Network Assistant. We dickered on and agreed on a price.

I also mentioned that I was interested in Extended II keyboards if he had any, and he responded that he dug up "a few."

I made the trip up this afternoon, and ended up having a really nice visit as well as walking away with all four computers and a whole bunch of keyboards and mice. One of the G3 minitowers is labeled as a server, and has a RAID set-up(I haven't checked into the specifics).

Here's the photo-including 8! Extended II keyboards. I love these keyboards, so am thrilled with the find. He told me that a few of them have dead keys, but I've rebuilt my fair share of Alps switches and have yet to find one that can't be resuscitated. If nothing else, I can scavenge the good switches from the dead keyboard to keep others going.

I haven't fired any up yet(I just got back a few minutes ago), but he told me that he powered all of them on yesterday and all of them worked.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1317.JPG
    IMG_1317.JPG
    769.2 KB · Views: 181
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LightBulbFun
A few additional reports on this lot-
1. One of the G3s(not the server) has either a Wings or Bordeaux personality card-I'm not sure which and don't feel like digging through a couple of pages of conflicting information this evening to determine which it is exactly. It has RCA A/V and S-Video both in and out.

2. As I mentioned, the server has a RAID set-up. It has a single IDE drive(presumably the boot drive), and a pair of 68-pin Ultra-Wide SCSI drives connected to an ultrawide card.

3. The minitower is MUCH easier to access than the desktop, and carries a much lower risk of breaking plastic when working on it.

4. There was a very nice surprise hiding in the bottom of the G3 server case-pictured below. It is 80 pin, but fortunately adapters to 68 pin are cheap. I'm not sure if it's ever been used.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1318.jpg
    IMG_1318.jpg
    2 MB · Views: 160
bunnspecial said:
A few additional reports on this lot-
1. One of the G3s(not the server) has either a Wings or Bordeaux personality card-I'm not sure which and don't feel like digging through a couple of pages of conflicting information this evening to determine which it is exactly. It has RCA A/V and S-Video both in and out.

2. As I mentioned, the server has a RAID set-up. It has a single IDE drive(presumably the boot drive), and a pair of 68-pin Ultra-Wide SCSI drives connected to an ultrawide card.

3. The minitower is MUCH easier to access than the desktop, and carries a much lower risk of breaking plastic when working on it.

4. There was a very nice surprise hiding in the bottom of the G3 server case-pictured below. It is 80 pin, but fortunately adapters to 68 pin are cheap. I'm not sure if it's ever been used.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the G3 desktop? I have one of my own and i love it! Whats the configuration on the model you have. and whats a personality card?
 
comda said:
Are you referring to the G3 desktop? I have one of my own and i love it! Whats the configuration on the model you have. and whats a personality card?
Click to expand...

No, there is not a G3 desktop in this lot. The "desktop" format computer in this photo is the 7350.

The two G3s in this photo are the two shorter minitowers. The G3 minitower is very similar to the G3 desktop(the logic boards are actually interchangeable between the two), but the minitower is a lot more expandable and just generally more "roomy" on the inside so that you can do fun things like the RAID array.

The "personality" card is a card that plugs into a special brown-colored slot on the logic board(called a "perch" slot) and provides A/V functionality for the computer. There were three different personality cards-"Wings", "Whisper", and "Bordeaux." The most common one is the "Wings" card, which just provides audio in and out via a pair of 3.5mm stereo jacks. Both of my G3 desktops have these, as does the minitower server that I just picked up. The "Whisper" and "Bordeaux" cards add additional A/V functionality-basically they allow you to input both video and audio via RCA jacks or S-Video. As I understand it, the Bordeaux is a higher end card with better hardware. Beyond that, I don't know how they differ. When I was researching them, I know I came across a G3 desktop with a Bordeaux card that had sold for BIG money(over $200), although I don't know if that's just an oddball or indicative of the usual selling price for one of these cards.

BTW, from the reading I've been doing, it seems that all of the AIO G3s(the "Molar Mac") had a Wings card.

One last thing-the additional functionality of the Wings and Bordeaux cards is lost in OS X. Apple actually crippled these systems somewhat in OS X, as the floppy drive doesn't work either.
 
Incredible haul man! I'd build a retro network up and have a nifty setup! How much would you be willing to let a AEKII go for?
 
thats the card i wanted in my Beige G3. But i only got the standard audio jacks. Thanks for clearing that up. And haha sorry i could read which desktop that was it has the same design as the Beige G3 Desktop. However, congratz on the haul... very nice.. not jealous at all.. I am not a good lair...
 
The Bordeaux card was a build to order item. It has all the features of the wings and whisper cards, plus a hardware dvd decoder on it. You access the dvd decoder by using OS9 and the DVD Player 1.3 app. The newer dvd player 2.x will not use the hardware decoder. I have one in my G3 minitower, and works very nicely.
 
poiihy said:
$200? $100? $150? $0?
Click to expand...

To be blunt, it's none of your business. It's rude to ask questions like that when the information is not volunteered.

After all the crap you gave me about what I paid for Leopard Server, I'm especially not inclined to tell you what I paid.

----------
Surrat said:
The Bordeaux card was a build to order item. It has all the features of the wings and whisper cards, plus a hardware dvd decoder on it. You access the dvd decoder by using OS9 and the DVD Player 1.3 app. The newer dvd player 2.x will not use the hardware decoder. I have one in my G3 minitower, and works very nicely.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information on the Bordeaux card. I guess that since I don't have a DVD drive in mine, I can probably pretty safely assume that it's a Wings card.
 
Damn... That's a great haul! I can't believe you got 8 AEKIIs! I love mine a lot, and I know many say that is the best ADB keyboard, and now I see why.
 
bunnspecial said:
There was a very nice surprise hiding in the bottom of the G3 server case-pictured below. It is 80 pin, but fortunately adapters to 68 pin are cheap. I'm not sure if it's ever been used.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! I am super jealous of the room you have to house all these goodies. Well done on getting all those keyboards. That SCA drive, though, it is going to be pretty noisy in a beige tower, no? 15k rpm is VelociRaptor territory.
 
Wow. Makes me feel a little bit better about my growing collection of portable macs...
(PB 540c, PB G3FW, PB 12", PB 15", PB 17", MBP 17", MBA 11" 2010, MBA 11" 2014 - The red ones are the only dead ones)
 
weckart said:
Congratulations! I am super jealous of the room you have to house all these goodies. Well done on getting all those keyboards. That SCA drive, though, it is going to be pretty noisy in a beige tower, no? 15k rpm is VelociRaptor territory.
Click to expand...

The 10K drives are loud as it is, so I have no doubt that a 15K will be extremely noisy. I have the computer running now, and it's bordering on obnoxious. The 15K drive will probably end up in a newer G4 tower, as I don't really need that much space in the G3 tower. The primary IDE bus doesn't even have anything connected to it now(all the HDDs are SCSI-one 50 pin and two 68 pin), with the only IDE device being the optical drive. I could pretty easily stick an 80gb IDE if I just wanted storage space, and I imagine the 10K drives in RAID 0 are plenty fast for this computer.

With that said, I have a whole bunch of 15K SAS drives(probably 50 of them easily, even though I've never counted) in sleds that fit my IBM SystemX rackmounts. I've never noticed them being particularly noisy, but then the SystemX stuff can wake the dead even without hard drives installed. It's fun to unmount one and then pull it before it has time to spin all the way down. I've noticed the gyroscope effect even with 3.5" 7200RPM drives-it's even more noticeable in a 15K drive.
 
Last edited:
With older drives, I've found the "whine" of 15K RPM drives to be slightly easier on the ears than 10K drives.

Great score, though! I particularly love my WGS 7350. I don't suppose yours has original restore discs with it? I've been trying to find the original System 7.6.1 + AppleShare IP 5, and just am having no success! I have a copy of Appleshare IP 5.0.3, but it requires Mac OS 8. I really want to keep it on System 7.6.1...


weckart said:
15k rpm is VelociRaptor territory.
Click to expand...

VelociRaptor (and the 'just plain' Raptor) were 10K RPM. Their big claim to fame is that they were the only SATA "home" 10K drives - all other 10K or faster drives were SCSI/SAS "enterprise" drives. The VelociRaptor's big improvement over the 'plain' Raptor was that it was a 2.5" design, rather than a 3.5" design. (The innards of the original Raptor were really 2.5" platters, just in a larger 3.5" 'chassis' to help with heat dissipation in usually-worse-airflow desktop systems compared to better-airflow server systems most 10K drives were designed for.)

SSDs made the Raptor/VelociRaptor line obsolete. (Far more performance, equal capacity, much less power usage, silent, and about the same price.)
 
Last edited:
Anonymous Freak said:
With older drives, I've found the "whine" of 15K RPM drives to be slightly easier on the ears than 10K drives.

Great score, though! I particularly love my WGS 7350. I don't suppose yours has original restore discs with it? I've been trying to find the original System 7.6.1 + AppleShare IP 5, and just am having no success! I have a copy of Appleshare IP 5.0.3, but it requires Mac OS 8. I really want to keep it on System 7.6.1...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, no on the restore disks(or at least I don't think so-I still need to dig through the software boxes).
 
desantii said:
Nice! Love the 8600s...
Click to expand...

I'm doing a college assignment on one right now! The unique boxcar design grows on you. Got mine for 20 bucks, sold as 'for parts'. Turned out it was fully working with a copy of Mac OS 9.1 and a ton of software :roll eyes: I love clueless sellers! :p
 
bunnspecial said:
To be blunt, it's none of your business. It's rude to ask questions like that when the information is not volunteered.

After all the crap you gave me about what I paid for Leopard Server, I'm especially not inclined to tell you what I paid.
Click to expand...

What crap? Nobody answered why Leopard Server is so damn expensive. I just wanted to know why it was so expensive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back