B&W Processor Upgrade

[iBeldar]

My dad is getting me a B&W from work that they are going to scrap. All I know is that it is a B&W G3. I need a decent computer to do my music stuff on, so I want to upgrade it. Of course, I want to stuff it full of RAM. But I also want to upgrade it to a G4. I saw a B&W on ebay that had a 700MHZ G4 upgrade. I don't know if the motherboard is a Rev1 or Rev2, but what is the highest each can take?

 

[dtravis7]

Here is one place with the G4 upgrade CPU's for your B&W.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/accelerators/ZIF-Upgrades/


Here is another site.

http://www.fastmac.com/ProductPage/zif.php

 

[jhelm007]

My dad is getting me a B&W from work that they are going to scrap. All I know is that it is a B&W G3. I need a decent computer to do my music stuff on, so I want to upgrade it. Of course, I want to stuff it full of RAM. But I also want to upgrade it to a G4. I saw a B&W on ebay that had a 700MHZ G4 upgrade. I don't know if the motherboard is a Rev1 or Rev2, but what is the highest each can take?

The Revision 1/2 issue is as far as I know only a HD data corruption issue. If you get a revision 1 you can add a SATA card or ATA133 card to connect your HD and it fixes the problem. Then you can put a bigger, faster, more modern HD in there. (This is not such a bad upgrade even if it is rev.2)

The G4 upgrades higher than 700MHz (i.e. Sonnet's 800MHz and 1GHz) downclock the bus to 66MHz. So I would say 700MHz G4 is as high as you want to go with either revision. There are lots of good deals on G4 upgrades at 500-600MHz range on the web and on eBay (check out www.4daystar.com & www.wegenermedia.com,). I think sonnet is the only place with a 700MHz ZIF upgrade.

There is also an earlier thread or two about this that you might want to search.

 

[iBeldar]

Yeah i'll probably go with the 700MHZ. I have two 40 gig drives laying around that I will probably put in there. And I have probably more than a gig's worth of PC100 and PC133 RAM. Not to mention my cousin is getting a new computer so I will probably take his old RAM since he can't use it in his new laptop. Its going to be a pretty fast starter PowerMac. Will probably be used for my main computer too.

 

[jhelm007]

Yeah i'll probably go with the 700MHZ. I have two 40 gig drives laying around that I will probably put in there. And I have probably more than a gig's worth of PC100 and PC133 RAM. Not to mention my cousin is getting a new computer so I will probably take his old RAM since he can't use it in his new laptop. Its going to be a pretty fast starter PowerMac. Will probably be used for my main computer too.

I think a blue and white will make a great starter Mac, especially if you upgrade it. They are still good machines with lots of life left.

I had a B&W (rev1) that I upgraded to 500MHz G4, 40GB (on ATAcard), combo drive, and USB2 card. It only had 448MB RAM, but I never noticed any serious slowdowns. I only sold it b/c I need the money to pay off my MacBook.

I think the B&Ws max out at ~1GB of ram, but they can use most PC100 and PC133 sticks up to 256MB.

 

[iBeldar]

Yeah I have quite a good bit of RAM Sticks. The smallest one I have is a 128 stick, then have like, 3 256 sticks. My first actual mac is my iBook G3, but its not very fast with only 10 gigs and a 256 stick. It was just something to put music on and play with Photoshop. Im about to have a bigger desk too so I can put all three of my computers on just one desk.