12-09-2004, 04:18 PM

Hey, i'm new to Mac, but i've used them before and i love um, so i just bought one, its an old 300 MHz Rev. 1 Blue and White G3 Powermac with OS X. it has 128MB of RAM, and a 6 GB HD, and a CD-ROM (yeah, no burner or DVD... yuck) so i plan on making some upgrades... i was looking into it and it uses IDE HDDs and optical drives, and PC100 Memory. It just so happens that i've got an old gateway system that has a 10 GB IDE HDD and an IDE CD-RW, i also have 256MB of PC100 RAM (2x128) and i was wondering if any of those would work in the apple, or if they arn't compatiable?
I was also thinking about getting a Sonnet CPU upgrade, i was thinking either the 800MHz or 1.0GHz upgrades, anyone had any expiriences with them and know if its worth the price for the performance upgrade.
Thanks a lot for any help, its much appreciated!

12-09-2004, 07:33 PM

wait a mo *calls macman*

he'll be here in a minute

12-09-2004, 08:18 PM

that sounds good... i hope i can figure this out!

12-09-2004, 10:40 PM

sorry Im late, he said hed call me, but I got no calls or emails, so Im here. depending on the brand of the ram, it should work, as far as the 10 GB IDE HDD and the IDE CD-RW, it also depends on the brand a little, for the cdrw, you may have to download drivers from the manufacturers website, Id check there first, if the drivers are available, itll work, if not, you can try and hope the drive will run natively in os x, on the hard drive, will it fit internally, or will you get a case for it to be external? what brand is the hd? even if its not a brand that is known to support mac, it may work, but itd have to run externally or not as the main hd at first so you could format it if necessary, or use it as a second hd, which may be better if since its bigger, you can work off of it or use it as a scratch disk, and have only apps and the os on the internal 6 gb.get back to us with info on the brands and what not.

12-10-2004, 11:06 PM

Well, my plan is to use the 10 GB for just files and music and what not, the 6 GB already has the OS installed, so i'll just leave it (i may eventually upgrade to a larger HD, 80 GB or so, but this'll be fine for now)
i believe the RAM is kbyte, the CD-RW and HD i'm not sure about right now, i'll know tomorrow when i've got time to open it up, i'll post it tomorrow afternoon.
i would like to be able to have this run OS X and Photoshop (CS or 7.0) relatively smoothly, i currently have a 2.0 GHz celeron laptop (Dell) and the performance is decent and i was wondering what processor may be comprable, i was looking into upgrading the CPU (as i mentioned above) and i wanted to know if you knew how much of a difference a 800MHz or 1.0 GHz would be from the 300MHz, thanks!

12-10-2004, 11:15 PM

basically, a 800 mhz processor in a mac running os x and at least has 512 mb of ram will run like a 2.0 or probably a little faster pc, so 800 mhz is good if you add more ram.

12-11-2004, 09:08 AM

Ok, well i've got 384MB now (assuming my old PC RAM will work) but what is the most i could get in there? 3x 256MB? and eventhough this is an older mac would it still run like a newer one with the processor upgrade? (at my school we've got a dual 1.0 GHz G4 with the two silver doors that we use for imaging and video editing, how would it compare to that for basic tasks and stuff?, and it would be from a G3 to G4)
the HD is a "Quantum" and i believe that the drivers for the CD-RW are built in because when i installed Linux (Fedora Core 2) it automatically detscted and installed drivers, and so did windows 98.

12-11-2004, 07:18 PM

well, i got the RAM and HD, and CD-RW to all work, thanks a lot for your help!

12-11-2004, 07:27 PM

cool, let us know if you need help on anything else or have questions on something.