Need help choosing a video card for a Yosemite

Any video card with an ADC plug on it will not work in G3s of any sort. The video card supplies power to the monitor, and uses an auxiliary connector that's just forward of the AGP connector. If your motherboard doesn't have that extra slot, then your monitor's not gonna work. Only certain G4 systems supported ADC-capable cards (I can't remember which ones).

If the Studio Display that you have is the CRT model, just recycle it now and save yourself the headache.

What AGP? The B&W G3 has only a 66mhz PCI slot for video, not AGP, unless you replaced the mobo in the B&W case with a sawtooth...

I am thinking the former.

AFAIK there are no PCI video cards with ADC connectors. The best you can do is one with DVI. The best video card for PCI is the ATI Radeon 9200 Pro Mac edition. It has 128mb of vram, a VGA, DVI, and S-video port. The only problem is that it is crazy expensive, over $100.

If you find a cheaper card with a DVI connector, apple makes (made?) a thing called a DVI to ADC connector, so you can use a ADC monitor on a DVI port. I know my local micro center still has about 4 of these kits new in the box. I think that would be your best route to ADC on your G3.

-digital

Are these the fancy kits with the adapter cables and the Cube power supply or are they simply the small adapter which allows one to use a DVI display on an ADC Mac? How much are they asking for these kits? Where exactly is this local micro center? (Detroit?)

The pukka ADC-display-to-DVI-port kit (the one DDTM would need) is pretty scarce and usually quite pricey.

dan k

You say "Yosemites" so I'm assuming they're Blue and White G3's. Therefore, you don't have an AGP slot, only PCI. There are a couple cards you can get. There are PCI Mac versions of the Radeon 7000 and 7500 that don't tend to be too expensive. The 7000 ranges from 32mb to 64mb and they have either VGA or VGA, DVI, and S-Video on them. They seem to be the cheapest option. The 7500 would have to be a flashed PC card I believe, and they're harder to find.

The pukka ADC-display-to-DVI-port kit (the one DDTM would need) is pretty scarce and usually quite pricey.

...and also doesn't work with the CRT Studio Display, hence why I suggest he simply rid himself of the monitor.

You sure about that Doc? An ADC-equipped Cube ought to be able to run that display, and the adapter to which I'm referring is based on an original Apple Cube power supply.

Or am I missing the one esoteric bit of info that renders my argument null'n'void?

In any case, the bottom line is that even were I correct, I'd still agree to get it working the display really isn't worth investing more than a scanty few dollars.

dan k

You sure about that Doc?

http://www.applefritter.com/node/4008

Someone around here recently gave the opinion that the ADC connector is superior to DVI. I was wondering in what way.

PCI Radeon 7000's can be picked up on eBay these days for less than $20. How much bang are you really going to want to get off of a Yosemite? I'd just stick with a 7000. Flashing PC video cards is a very interesting learning experience if you haven't tried it (Macelite.com), or you can buy an already flashed version. The Mac version Radeons still sell for a bit more. The DVI on a flashed 7000 only puts out analog, but the quality is a little better than the VGA, and you'll need a DVI to VGA adapter if you want to use the DVI. Never had one, but I assume the Mac versions actually do DVI. But like I say, what would be the purpose of souping up a B&W? I don't think you're going to be overjoyed with Tiger on a B&W that doesn't have a G4 processor. Bang for the buck--at least 512mb RAM, Radeon 7000, and a G4 ZIF, preferably 400-550mhz range--anything higher is pretty much hoping for more than you'll ever get, and you'd be spending as much as you'd pay for a fully loaded used Quicksilver.

Hey, I snagged an ADC CRT that someone had thrown away last week. Took it home and it works fine, but actually, part of me was disappointed that it worked because that model would obviously be the easiest case to make a pretty sharp looking Mac Aquarium out of. There'd be hardly any difficult Plex shaping, and besides the flat front, not much other Plex needed at all, the vent on the top is a nice size for getting into feed the fish and cleaning, and I was even thinking that you could run the air tubes in through the USB port opening. The clear case on those ADC CRT's is quite beautiful, like the clear case on some of the late CRT iMacs.

An R7000 is a pretty good fir with a B&W G3. Much more power than that and the CPU is going to be a bottleneck.

Note that if you're planning to flash a 7000, not all 7000s have a rom big enough to hold the Mac rom. ( Link for educational purposes )

Don't forget that with the extra PCI slots you can have more than one video card if you can't find a one-size-fits-all solution. I ran one of my B&Ws with a 7000 in the fast slot, and an ATI Wonder in another, for video in/out.

At this point I don't know if there's any real gain to be had in upgrading a B&W's video card at all. B&W's are sort of in an interesting place, in that even a stock one is probably about fast enough for anything you'd (casually) want to do with old (OS 8/9) software, while by "modern standards" they're *always* going to be to slow, no matter what you do to them.

On the R7000 in particular, I replaced the Rage 128 in my B&W with an OEM R7000 (which I got for free) and all I can say is I wasn't particularly impressed. I forget the exact numbers, but running an OS X version of the orginal "Quake" the difference in frame rates between the R7000 and the R128 was something like "High 40-something" verses "Mid 30's". Scarcely a night-and-day difference. Sure, I imagine a "Real Radeon" or a PCI GeForce card (which will have huge driver issues under OS 9) could do a lot better on non-CPU-bound OpenGL games (like "Quake", but nothing much newer), but when you consider that:

A: B&W can't "offically" enable Quartz Extreme for GUI acceleration.

B: The framebuffer fill rate/2D speed of an R128 is already about as fast as PCI can do,

C: The CPU limitations of a B&W pretty much restrict it to "internet terminal"/"word processor" territory anyway, and

D: B&W's are 10 years old and were never that reliable in the first place, so you have no idea how much longer one's going to last before the motherboard capacitors start leaking or whatnot

it just seems that there's better things to spend money on, even if the dollar amount is trivial. If a better card lands in your lap, shove it in. Otherwise... eh.

--Peace

Macelite and Eeun's link above both don't mention that there's another way to flash PC video cards without needing to use a PC. You can do it in OS X using Graphiccelerator and ATI Flasher and Dumper and the ROM's available online. I just throw that out as an alternative for anyone who wants to find out about flashing, but you'll have to do all the research on the how to's. It's just as simple as using a PC and the nice thing about a B&W is you're not risking much in the learning process. But yeah, like Eudi says, the smart thing would probably be to live with what you've got and save your pesos for a 4x AGP G4 or a G5, but for a man who's diligently maxing out a PM 8600, I think you're mind works in an alternative fashion of its own with other goals than what we think we're advising about.

... but for a man who's diligently maxing out a PM 8600, I think you're mind works in an alternative fashion of its own with other goals than what we think we're advising about.

I'm just waiting for the thread about how hard it would be to build a do-it-yourself adapter bridge to use cheap AGP cards in PCI Macs. (With iMac Mezzanine support as well, of course.) ;^)

--Peace