Beige G3 | PowerPC Macintosh Liberation Army

#1 Fri Feb 12, 2010 1:14 pm Beige G3

Paws for Cause was selling parts computers for $4.99 each. I picked up two of them...

#1:
PowerMac Beige G3 MT 266mhz
2 DIMMs, unknown capacity
4.3GB (?) IDE hard disk
CD-ROM drive
Zip Drive
SCSI hard disk with adapter, unknown capacity
A/V card
Yoda on the left side of the case.

This one needs some cleaning. Hope it works afterward.

#2:
Gateway Athlon PC with bad capacitors
3 DIMMs, at least one is 128MB
NVidia Quadro4 AGP video card
SB Live! PCI sound card
PCI network card
PCI modem
old CD burner
no hard disk

Needs cleaning, but I doubt it will work with the caps in their current condition. I'm planning on moving the guts from my print server PC to this one since this case is built like a tank.

Most of the other computers were either Baby AT cases or P1/P2 systems.

#2 Fri Feb 12, 2010 1:54 pm

Yoda Edition PowerMac G3 - nice pickup.

#3 Fri Feb 12, 2010 2:02 pm

Should be interesting to see what the SCSI drive actually is once I get home. It's a 1/2 height 3.5" drive. Hopefully something ridiculously large like an 18 or 36GB drive. Smile

#4 Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:32 am

#5 Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:50 pm

Very nice for a SCSI. Recently I pulled an Atlas II 6.4GB from a recycle bin. Not sure if it works yet but I should find out as soon as I have a moment to test it.

#6 Sun Feb 14, 2010 10:26 am

I found an ADB keyboard and mouse in my office. However I have not found a Mac-VGA adapter so I can see if it works or not. Sad thing is that I have two of them somewhere.....

I even tried adding an ATI Rage128 PCI card from a B/W G3 to use it for video instead and still can't get it to show a picture.

It does appear to boot though. Upon powering up the bong sounds. It starts, then immediately restarts and sounds like it loads normally.

Is there a way to force the Mac to use a PCI card instead of the built-in video?

#7 Sun Feb 14, 2010 1:45 pm

You might need to zap the PRAM to get it to send the video to the Rage card by default...

I think there's a way to force output on the Rage card via Open Firmware, but if you aren't seeing video there in the 1st place, you have a chicken & egg problem. Wink

Peace,
Drew

Power to the PowerPC!

#8 Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:24 pm

Summon concentration inspired from the Yoda on the side of the case and enter the OF command sequence blind. Do, or do not, there is no try.

Or just order a VGA adapter for a few extra dollars..

#9 Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:52 pm

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Macs with Built-in-Video required the drivers to be installed before the PCI card would work. I remember that being the case when it came to an ATI 4MB PCI card I had in my 8500.

#10 Mon Feb 15, 2010 7:39 am

Finally found a Mac-VGA adapter in my pile of parts. Unfortunately it is jumperless so is stuck at 640x480 on a 17" CRT. I do have a jumpered one somewhere, but have been unable to find it.

It has either MacOS X 10.0 or the public beta installed along with MacOS 9.1. No version number appears on About This Mac, only a build number. With the Rage 128 PCI video card it KPs on me.

This machine was used by someone who worked with graphics. Beside the normal Adobe MacOS 9 applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), there were files for VHS and CD covers.

There was a floppy disk and Zip disk in the appropriate drives. The Zip disk had porn on it. Embarassed

Now I'm trying to get my other Beige G3 to boot with video. It briefly did this morning, but hasn't since.

#11 Mon Feb 15, 2010 1:08 pm

#12 Mon Feb 15, 2010 8:27 pm

#13 Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:45 pm

#14 Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:00 am

#15 Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:50 pm Recruit

Hello, nice PPCMLA community.

This is to proudly present to active service a Beige PPC G3, 300 MHz minitower, 640 MB in RAM, with an Apple Multiple Scan 720 display; actually this post is being made from such a great machine.
Thanks for this opportunity. Further details will be sent, in order to get the best advice in this Forum. In fact I picked up the equipment from the Delivery Office nearly an hour ago.