Your Own G3 Supercomputer?

[Dronecatcher]

Has anyone any experience of these:

https://everymac.com/upgrade_cards/totalimpact/totalpower_g3/totalpower_g3_400.html

Imagine that...a beige tower with 25 G3s in it.......

 

[swamprock]

I'm guessing that the whole package was on a PCI card because of the G3's so-called issues with multi-processor setups. I say so-called because I read something somewhere that mentioned that the G3 didn't run very well in dual-processor configurations...

EDIT: it was a blurb on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_hardware

"The G3 processor was not SMP-capable, but the G4 and G5 were, and Apple introduced many dual-CPU G4 and G5 Power Macs."

 

[AphoticD]

Cool find. I imagine these cards would be as rare as rocking horse sh*t. I can only imagine how horribly bottlenecked the G3 processors would be on an old 33Mhz PCI bus.

One interesting tidbit from the EveryMac page:

2. The TP series supplement the original CPU, rather than replace it.

It's a fun concept, but yeah, a 9600/200 with a supplemental Quad G3 400Mhz PCI card would probably still lag behind a Sawtooth G4 400Mhz

 

[bunnspecial]

Just toss a bunch together in Xgrid and call it a day

I forget if there's a GigE card that will work in the B&W. @Intell would probably know. If you're throwing beiges into the mix, be sure you have the space/budget for a 10/100 card in each.

 

[eyoungren]

I forget if there's a GigE card that will work in the B&W.

Yes

Netgear GA311. I have two of them installed in my G3 server with the native ethernet port disabled.

No drivers needed to be installed.

 

[Intell]

While a gigabit Ethernet card will work in a G3, it'll be limited by the PCI bus. That with the assuming bandwidth hungry PCI G3 card would make a slow experience if there is any intensive computations or data transfers happening.

 

[XaPHER]

The card looks nice, but it's clearly for specific applications that use the (as mentioned in the EM url) Total Freedom libraries. I've never heard of that library before, so chances that any common program use it are low. Coprocessors are nice, but software must be aware of them. SIMD are a bigger benefit than this since they need no driver to be used. Thus I choose a G4 anytime over this.

G3s are non SMP-capable, i.e. a kernel cannot provide true support for < 1 processors. It's still possible to have multiple CPUs but they'll become mere "peripherals" or coprocessors that are controlled essentially by a host CPU (in that case, the mac's processor will control the 1-4 processors via pci).

What I'd really like to see is a G3 mac that Apple hasn't intentionally put specs down after Apple's first G4 mac. That I would find awesome

 

[MysticCow]

A beige tower with 25 G3's in it--maybe it'll run Youtube!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I still love my old G3's, but they stay in OS 9 anymore.

 

[AphoticD]

A beige tower with 25 G3's in it--maybe it'll run Youtube!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I still love my old G3's, but they stay in OS 9 anymore.

I can clearly recall how much my first G3 (a B&W tower) kicked every other PC or Mac to the kerb. It was a huge upgrade from the 603 based 7220/200 which was my daily driver at the time. Of course this was zipping along in Mac OS 8.6, but it was fast at getting my work done nonetheless. My staple apps were Photoshop 6, QuarkXpress 4 and Acrobat. The G3 rocked for DTP. I can’t ever recall having problems pushing around those 300dpi TIFFs, but maybe that’s just the rose colored glasses of nostalgia...