imac G3 500. Is it possible to replace video card at home?

Hi, I have imac G3 500 and as I can see in the system profiler it has ATY, Rage 128 Pro2 AGP card with 16 MB ram. Maximum supported resolution is 1024x768.

I'm using an external 17" TFT-monitor and nonstandard 1024x768 resolution is very annoying. So, the question is: is it possible to replace the Rage 128 AGP card to any other AGP card (ATI Radion 9100 or Geforce 4MX, for example)?. Is my mac really has the standard AGP slot? Is Mac OS X has all drivers for ATI Radeon 9x00, Geforce 4, etc... ? And is it possible to upgrade the card at home?

Thanks a ton.

The iMac G3 series has the video circuitry built into the main board. There is no realistic way to change it.

Sux Very good device (with 1GB of RAM and large hard drive), but 16 mb of vram is really sux...

Thanks.

Ok. Then may be is it possible to unlock non standard resolution 1280x1024x256 colors (1280x1028 = just 1.3mb) or even 1280x1024x65536 (1280x1024x2 is just 2.6 mb)?

I tried DisplayX software without any success. It seems that the resolution is hardware locked. May be is it possible to remove some jumper or so to unlock it?

Thanks.

Hi

Wouldn't it be possible to upgrade the VRAM? I mean using the same RAM chips but at a higher capacity (ie a total of 32/64meg) via soldering?

Regards,

CU_AMiGA said:

Hi

Wouldn't it be possible to upgrade the VRAM? I mean using the same RAM chips but at a higher capacity (ie a total of 32/64meg) via soldering?

Regards,

Click to expand...

Technically possible, yes. But it requires some excellent soldering skills, and I'm not really sure if the board will recognise the extra RAM.

Avalon said:

Technically possible, yes. But it requires some excellent soldering skills, and I'm not really sure if the board will recognise the extra RAM.

Click to expand...

I know someone that could prosibly do that job. I would need to know the memory chips and whether the board would recognise the 8meg RAM like you said.

Regards,