g3 all in one powermac

most people wont ship these cause they are 60 pounds. i got mine from a school auction the Beige G3 AIO was only sold to the education market. you might find a school that wants to sell them or throw the out, or some one that has one that is going to throw is away cause its to heavy to sell on ebay and ship.

you can go to diffrent Mac forums and post a WTB a Beige G3 AIO and willing to pick it up if it isnt to far.

my Beige G3 AIO i have and use has been highly upgraded (no i wont sell it). it has a G4 450mhz cpu overclocked to 466 cause of the 66mhz system bus, a Radeon 7000 PCI video card powering a 15" external CRT monitor, a 120GB HDD, 768 MB ram (you have to buy 3 256mb stick's for a B&W G3, they are 16 chips on it, 8 on each side, or known better as low density ram i bought 3x 256mb PC100 for a B&W G3 data memory systems), i bought the 4mb vram sodimm upgrade for the onboard video to make it have a total of 6mb vram,

bought a Pioneer DVR-110D (it wont boot a OS X install cd but will a OS 9.x install cd, i got a USB 1.1 PCI card (i had it for a wile) and it works fine but you have to watch out cause if the usb device drains to much power it will make your system freak out, i bought a Belkin wireless G+ PCI card model F5D7001 version 1102 (works only in OS X tiger, wont work in tiger version 10.4 but will in tigers later versions, it shows up as a airport extreme

there is no support for this card in OS 9.x cause it uses a broadcom chipset. but hopefully belkin gets back with me on that.

so far i have had no problems with the wifi on my system.

it might be hard to find one of these system's , you can find a Beige G3 DT (desktop) or MT (mini tower) they use the same motherboard as the AIO uses. you might be happyer with a non AIO system. cause you wont have to deal with the onboard video GPU (cause its so slow and non supported in OS X for acceleration. with a DT or MT you can bypass the onboard video and use a PCI video card ( i recommend a Radeon it will make useing OS 9.x or OS X allot better.

Thanks for the great info! I would love to do something like this to an AIO if I could find one. I would only put OS 9 on it b/c i wouldnt want to deal with the beachball i would get from 10... i just like os 9 alot anyway. So theres no wireless option for os 9.x?

By the way, how much does it cost/ what kind of upgrade is the g4 upgrade? About the ram, I have like 4 or 5 sticks of pc100 256 and 128 mb ram laying around - is that what it needs? Or is it actually a specific kind of "low density ram"?

Whaa?!?! the last time I ever saw that problem was back in 10.1/10.2. i haven't had that problem EVER in the recent versions. OS X is TOTALLY stable. Much more stable than say... Vista or XP. I would put my money on OS X for rock solid stability over my XP Machine. And I know quite a few tricks on XP/Vista to keep them humming. I have gotten more blue screens in vista than I have had a kernel panic or hangup in OS X between 10.3/10.4

The only thing you gotta watch out for on ANY OS X, is that it wreaks havoc when you use the beige's internal Video. it like to cut out the video whether it's the tower or the AIO.

if you REALLY want a performer, get a regular VGA monitor, a cheap Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edition, and a *DESKTOP* Version and then put the VGA on it. that would be a more practical way to do it. because with ANY games it is going to be horrible on the stock video. you would have better luck being able to upgrade off the original Video onto a Radeon.

I just got done about 6 months ago taking the components out of that horrible system and moved it all to a tower case. looks better, feels better to use it, and I got more expansion out of it.

You might be able to track down a used Farallon Skyline with PCI adapter. It works well with OS 9.

There's a link off Dr. Bunsen's wireless FAQ featuring a 'definative list' of wireless hardware and compatible OS versions...but the link is dead.

...but it works if you paste the link into the Internet Archive like THIS

You got me wrong here. I didn't mean the crashes I meant the fact that osx was more intensive and would thus be more laggy than an older os... I really just wanted the AIO g3 powermac because of its looks and I wanted a computer to run os9 cause I like it as well as something to do a bit of printing from etc etc. I dont need a performer really. I just wanted a novelty.

EDIT: I was curious about the video card upgrade for this system - do you have to use it to power an external or is there a way to hook it up to the internal display?? I would like to get a powerful PCI card in there but dont know what the most powerful one I can put in is and I dont even know if it will work with the built in display. Does anyone know?

i have Tiger 10.4.10 and i can tell you that its the same if not faster in most area's than what OS 9.x is on my G3 AIO. i have never ran in to beachball problem ever in tiger, unless my Pioneer drive starts to act weird wile playing a DVD movie causeing dvd player to stop responding and i force quit and all is fine.

but tiger so far has been very reliable and 99.9% stable on my system in my sig.

I have an AIO that I would probably sell. What do you mean by "next to nothing?"

i will have a g3 aio i could sell u as well

lol i hope he dont have it shipped, cause the price for shipping for a AIO would kill some people.

good luck on getting one, they are real nice machines once you upgrade them

these things weigh 60lbs so shipping is most likely out the question. it would cost more than the systems worth to ship it.

I got a AIO G3 for $10 USD. Works great, but had corrupted hard drive and a dead battery to keep the clock running. I fixed it up, works. It's taking up lots of room in my basement. x)

I am in Southern Ontario Canada.

I have one of the later AIO G3, with the almost Imac style coloured cases, that if you pay for the shipping I will send to you.. or if you want to pick up?

Anyway.. you get the idea.

James

is this the AIO you are talking about. if so its called a Beige G3 AIO (the first AIO G3 system) by most. in normal terms its a Power Mac G3 AIO its even known as a Molar Mac by some. the only models (stock) had a 233mhz or a 266mhz CPU. the later AIO Mac's was called iMac G3's ( the ones with the colored cases)

yes, thats what I have, but the back part of the case is clear plastic from the factory is it not?
You call it Beige, but only the front surface around the drives and monitor is beige, the rest clear?

Surprised you say you have had so many issues with the onboard video. Both of the machines I have run on board just fine. Now the highest OS I am running is 10.3.9 on one of them ( The one in regular use)

I had a couple of them.. plus 2 b&W G3s(Rom A...grr) for $75.. the two AIOs are still running.. well one is used, the other is not wanted.. and I would see it go to a good home.. if someone wanted to pay to ship.

Thanks
James

that's vaer interesting sounding. is there any way that you could post some pictures???

I believe that's just the bog-standard G3 AIO.

I never knew for the longest time that the top/rear panel was clear. I'd never seen one in person, and it's difficult to tell from photos.

It wasn't until I saw one that had been lit from under the clear plastic that it became obvious.

There's a few good pictures of one here

i always thought it was white too... er beige...er whatever color the rest of the computer is.

yeah, the back and top plastic is like an opaque-translucent clear. More of a hazy white. It's a nice system, but the 2 main reasons I turned mine into a Desktop G3, was because I have a rather large knick in the screen from the previous owner. The other is, I wanted to run 10.3.x on it, and the screen kept cutting out from OS X's incompatibility with the onboard video of the G3. I turned it into a Tower G3 with a Radeon 7000 Mac Edition and sped it up greatly.

Well what I ended up doing.. was taking the plastic off.. and painting it LIGHTLY with plastic paint..I say lightly because you don't want it to hold more heat in ... but I did it in a nice Lavender for my daughter.. and now she has an ultra cheap.. but useful computer that cant get virius' and plays lots of MP3s..
I have installed a NON msn IM client for her to chat with her msn friends.
AND it runs a generic Altheros wireless night with that Orangeware software (very cheap to register) and I did not even have to wire her up.

Hey Coius, is that Radeon 7000 retail or Apple OEM? I am looking at updating the ROM to the latest, and wonder if it works on the APPLE OEM version even though the updater warns me its for retail only.

James

Not sure if it still matters or not but I have a spare AIO kicking around just taking up room that I'd be willing to give away. It's not in the best condition (a handful of pry marks around the edge from someone who tried to take it apart, but they can be cut and sanded down). I have a second AIO which was upgraded and used for a while, but im not sure if I'd be willing to part with that.

They're cool machines, but would have been cooler to have your hands on about 7 years ago... just seem too old nowadays.

here is a site that reviewed the AIO G3 233

molar Mac review

the onboard video problem didnt happen with all Beige G3's its a hot and miss issue. some have it and some dont. mine just happen to have it and i had to run the 2 terminal commands that the Apple doc's provide. it started up in 10.2.8 and again some people had the issue and some didnt. when i ran 10.2.8 i never had the problem, it wasnt till i installed tiger that i started to have the issue. so i figured it was the same issue so i tryed it and it fixed the problem.

my AIO also has the Radeon 7000 and it gives the system a good performance gain in OS X and in OS 9. games love it as well.

be very leery about upgrading to the Rev c rom, there is some PCI cards that are incompatible with it and then there are some cards that only work on the rev c rom.

i have a rev b rom AIO.

Mine is a retail Radeon 7000 32MB PCI. The control panel will work with the Apple OEM version. The control panel also works with my iBook's Radeon 9200 32MB. So it's not limited to who makes it. afaik, it's just accessing the chip. Besides, OEMs are just re-branding a card that is a set standard by the company. My Saphire Radeon 9550 (now flashed to 9600 Pro) for my PC works with ATI's Windows control panel. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that it has a supported chipset (Radeon/Rage/II/GL/GX/GX+ / Whatever. It just has to have an ATI Chip in it.

I know that the current Intel Macs don't have a control panel for them yet (only G5's have one) as I tried one on my mom's iMac Intel 2.0Ghz with a radeon x1600. Didn't recognize the chipset. It DID recognize the screen rez and stuff, but it just said "Supported GPU not found"

Anyways, it will be fine. Let me know if you are looking for the OS 9 one, I have it. I also know where you can download it, as I have a friend that has it on his site