PowerMac G3 Upgrades

Hey all,
I'm new to Macs, completely new, Ive only played around on other people's but through advice from a friend I bought this Mac (Apple Mac G3 Base 350Mhz/256Mb/8Gb/CD/ZIP - Tiger OS on eBay, also, PowerMac, Apple Macintosh, Computing (end time 06-Mar-09 23:37:33 GMT)) The PowerMac G3 350Mhz and now I intend to upgrade it, a lot. I have upgraded PCs before and understand what goes where but I was wondering about Macs as the hardware is different. I was wondering what Harddrives I can use and if there's a maximum capacity. Secondly is the drive, I need to replace CD Driver with a DVD+/- Writer and finally PCIs, probably just a USB 2.0 card and Finally can I use any keyboard or is it Mac Keyboards only. Would my Logitech wireless usb keyboard work.
Sorry for all the basic questions but Ive never used a Mac like this before and I don't want to add components that won't work. RAM is fine as there is an option to upgrade the RAM so somebody else can do that.
Any help appreciated.
Sephers.

Give this link a look, it should answer most of your questions:

Apple Power Macintosh G3 350 (Blue & White) Specs (Power Mac G3 - Blue & White - M6668LL/A*) @ EveryMac.com

As far as upgrading the computer...be careful how much you spend. You can end up "sinking" a lot of money into it to upgrade it. And when all is said & done...your purchase price + shipping cost + upgrade costs = you could have purchased a much better computer in the first place.

Here's a 2nd link for a good place to buy upgrades:

Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC

- Nick

I'd intended putting some serious $$ into my G3 b/w 350, but instead bought a G3 iMac for its greater portability. I wanted to do a ZIF processor upgrade to 1 GHz in particular, and boost the RAM to maximum. On the advice of a very good Mac technician, and now the financial situation, I decided against it. Without a faster processor, any upgrades tend to be cosmetic and superficial, although the computer itself is a good one, solid as a rock, great to work on.

• Hard drive maximum is 128 Gb, but you can install two of them, even a third one via internal SCSI. Brand? I prefer Hitachi, or Seagate.
• You can upgrade to USB2 with a PCI card.
• You can install a DVD-RW (recommend Pioneer)
• Any USB keyboard will work with OS X ('tho the G3 still has the old ADB connection socket)
• Wireless is not native to the G3, but maybe an add-on card would do it.

In addition to the links Nick has provided, I strongly recommend Mactracker for further information.

OS? I wouldn't go beyond Panther. The G3 would run Tiger - slowly - unless you put the faster processor in and had the maximum 1 Gb RAM.

G'day sephers and welcome to the forums.

Upgrading a later model G4 with improved architecture is maybe worthwhile, and this is a pretty big maybe. A G3 is not worth outlaying the money on alas.

USB keyboards will generally work, Mac boards have a USB port built in or the mouse. You are limited to a 128GB HDD. You could install a PCI card for a large HDD but they cost around US$!00.00 or so.

There is no way to use an AGP graphics card on models prior to the G4 Sawtooth.

hughvane said:

In addition to the links Nick has provided, I strongly recommend Mactracker for further information.

Click to expand...

Yes definitely...MacTracker is a great Mac computer info program as well!!!

Hi everyone, thanks for all the replies and info. Ive decided USB mouse+keyboard is fine, so all Im going to do is a 100GB Harddrive (Should I use 3.5 IDE?) and a wireless PCI Lan Card. The one I have is a Belkin 802.11g 54mbps. It says its PC Compatible but says nothing about Mac. Could I install it but it would only work if there was a driver for Mac on the internet or can I just not use it at all.
And finally is there a limit to the size of a USB hardrive? I have a 160GB one, will it cope with that?
Thanks everyone.

The 160GB External would work fine as far as it's size but do remember that your G3 and most older computers are USB 1.1 which is a lot slower than modern USB 2.0 so the data transfer rate will be a lot slower but it will work.

dtravis7 said:

The 160GB External would work fine as far as it's size but do remember that your G3 and most older computers are USB 1.1 which is a lot slower than modern USB 2.0 so the data transfer rate will be a lot slower but it will work.

Click to expand...

Good point! Which is why I suggested the PCI USB2 card. In respect of the wireless card, the Belkin one may well work natively with the Mac hardware, it can but be tried. The Belkin website may well provide a Mac driver if the card won't cooperate.

I have a USB 2.0 Belkin PCI Card installed in my G4 DA and it works great out of the box. I will later get the model and post it here.

Haven't posted in quite a while so I thought I'd chime in. I have a heavily upgraded G4 that after it was all said and done cost more that a new mini and isn't nearly as fast.

While an older Mac can still pack a punch on a variety of apps, the upgrades are expensive, and you'll never upgrade one to be near as powerfull as a new one. Plus, you'll see some strange performance that isn't always as good as the upgraded specs on your system make it apear to be capable of.

For example, the web is full of sites that rely heavily on Adobe flash. Adobe's flash player for PPC macs is absolutly subpar and its performance will make your Mac look like it's actually a 486 with 4MB of RAM. I've not found a way to fix it on mine and ultimatly gave up and bought a cheap Windows PC for my kids to use instead so they could visit the kids sites that are very flash intensive (disney.com, seseme street, Nick Jr., etc...).


Just things to keep in mind when you think you are going to save a ton by getting a used Mac.