B&W Powermac Questions

UPDATED: B&W Powermac Questions

I just bought a B&W Powermac, and am looking at upgrading it some.

Current Stats:
Powermac G3/ Blue and White
450 Mhz
512 MB Ram
9 GB Hard Drive
16 MB VRAM
2 USB
2 Firewire
32x CDROM

Here's what I'm looking at:

Necessary: DVD Drive, USB Mouse and Keyboard
Optional: CD/DVD Burner, Wireless Card, Bigger Hard Drive, More Ram, USB Hub

EDIT: More questions...

1. I'm thinking of putting in more Ram. I know the current ram is PC100 DIMM. Do I have to put that exact ram in, or can I just grab a stick at Best Buy, and it will work?

2. I'd like a bigger hard drive. The current one is a 9GB SCSI drive. When I buy a new hard drive, what do I need to buy? What will be compatible, does it have to be SCSI, is SCSI easy to find, etc?

3. Is the video card upgradeable on this mac?

4. I'd like to put at least a DVD drive, but possibly a CD and/or DVD burner in it instead. Do I need a special kind? What is compatible?

5. I'd like to put a wireless card in. I want G. What are my options? What's compatible?

6. At it's current stats, but with a HD around 60 GB, would you put Panther, or Tiger on it? Why?


Right now I don't want to put a huge amount of money into this mac. I bought it for $100. For me to have it usable, it needs the DVD drive, and it needs to have the keyboard and mouse (this doesn't have the normal/modern plugs for them). The rest is all just stuff I'm considering right now. So for all of the above upgrades, I intend to buy the cheapest stuff I can find.

rs2sensen said:

I am the new owner of a B&W 450 Mhz Powermac G3. I bought this Mac with no operating system installed. I would like to install OS X on it. The computer does not have a DVD drive, and I only have DVDs for Panther and Tiger. I have a couple questions.

1. Is there any way to break up the packages on the DVD and use several CDs?
2. Is there any way to install OS X on the Powermac using my Powerbook's DVD drive?
3. Will an external DVD drive work to install OS X on the mac?
4. Can I just install OS X, or do I have to have OS 9 on there first?

I know I can send the OS X DVD into Apple and for $10ish they will send me several CDs, I would prefer to do it on my own however.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

On some macs an external DVD drive will work, but the B&Ws didn't have bootable FW (I think). If you are willing to take apart your external DVD drive you could install it on the internal ATA connector just for this install. I don't know how to break up the DVD to CDs, but I thinks its possible.

Good luck.

Oh and as for OS9 you can install OSX without OS9, If you plan to boot into OS9 alot, I would install it first. Otherwise don't worry about it.

Congrats on a sweet deal by the way.

Thanks for the help. I just decided to screw it and buy a DVD drive for it anyways. I'm going to get another hard drive for it for sure now, and I think I'm going to max out the ram. It's tempting to throw a better video card in it, but I don't know if it's worth the money. I will put a wireless card of some sort in it.

It is also tempting to just install OS X on the internal drive, and get an external instead of an internal, but I don't know if I want to spend the money.

I am already planning on overclocking this guy, probably just 50Mhz to get to 500Mhz, but I'll try more and experiment with stability. Apple made overclocking soooooo easy on this mac.

Right now it's just looking for good deals and something that's compatible!

Anybody have answers to my new ?s found above?

As far as a DVD drive that works with all the I-Apps, I had great luck with the Sony 16x that New Egg sells. It comes in both black and white. All applications in OSX work fine with it and it's a great DVD drive. Have one in my G4 Sawtooth.

I found a Samsung DVD Player/CD Burner on sale for $20, and I just installed it. It worked fine, and read my OS X DVD, although I wasn't able to install from that, because it is my Powerbook's DVD, and my Tiger DVD is at another location. However, the fan was clicking. So, I opened it up, disassambled the fan area, and then put it back together. Now, the thing won't turn on! Ugh

rs2sensen said:

EDIT: More questions...

1. I'm thinking of putting in more Ram. I know the current ram is PC100 DIMM. Do I have to put that exact ram in, or can I just grab a stick at Best Buy, and it will work?

2. I'd like a bigger hard drive. The current one is a 9GB SCSI drive. When I buy a new hard drive, what do I need to buy? What will be compatible, does it have to be SCSI, is SCSI easy to find, etc?

3. Is the video card upgradeable on this mac?

4. I'd like to put at least a DVD drive, but possibly a CD and/or DVD burner in it instead. Do I need a special kind? What is compatible?

5. I'd like to put a wireless card in. I want G. What are my options? What's compatible?

6. At it's current stats, but with a HD around 60 GB, would you put Panther, or Tiger on it? Why?


Right now I don't want to put a huge amount of money into this mac. I bought it for $100. For me to have it usable, it needs the DVD drive, and it needs to have the keyboard and mouse (this doesn't have the normal/modern plugs for them). The rest is all just stuff I'm considering right now. So for all of the above upgrades, I intend to buy the cheapest stuff I can find.

Click to expand...

It will work fine with USB Keyboards and Mice, that is what shipped with it. It also has 1 ADB port, so if you can find an ADB keyboard cheap, that will work too.

For RAM, stick with PC100 RAM I buy all my ram from OWC (www.macsales.com).

SCSI hard drives are expensive on a per GB basis. ATA drives are much cheaper and will work fine with your new (old) powermac.

I've got one of these beasts and I stuck a RADEON 7000 in it. Any PCI Radeon card (as long as its the mac edition) is a good upgrade for this computer.

In Panther, any wireless card with the broadcom chipset is automatically recognized by the airport software. I got a Motorolla PCI wireless G card to work in mine, but I'm not sure the current crop is still made with the Broadcom chip. www.xlr8yourmac.com keeps track of compatible PCI wireless adapters (or tries to).

I haven't tried to run Tiger, but Panther works great in the B&Ws.

Hope you resolve your fan issue and get it to boot.

Tiger runs fine on a B&W but I went back to 10.3.9 because Safari keeps crashing and I dont like the others. If Apple gets it fixed I might go back.

I got it to boot! I just let it sit for 15 min and she works fine now. I bought a Wireless card for it, will throw that in later. I just bought a cheap USB keyboard and mouse for it. Right now I'm debating how much money I want to put into this. It's tempting to upgrade to G4, and throw in the better video card, but this thing could quickly become a money pit

Great to hear you got it up and running. Keep us posted if you do anymore to it. I got Panther 10.3.9 on mine and upgraded the ram and HDD. Will be doing more in the future.

what are you planning on doing with it?

iLEFTOVERCRACK said:

what are you planning on doing with it?

Click to expand...

Jeez! nosy?!

Just kidding. Its a reasonable question. It just struck me as funny when I read it. Maybe Its just the sleep depravation kicking in.

Who were you asking, what are you going to do with it? Me or RS2?

Well, if it's me...

I have no clue what I'm going to use the Powermac for. No matter what I do to this one, my powerbook will outgun it, so idk. It depends how much money I really want to put into it. This thing is so fricken' expandable, I could dump a grand into it if I really wanted.

Right now, I can't get the side door open though, grrr... Now I just gotta figure out what I did to screw it up.

on that Side Door sometimes you have to pull the lever pretty far. I have thought it was all the way but it would not open. Just don't pull too hard!!

Yeah, I figured it out. It was that locking loop in the back. I have to push that in slightly to open that case. I could care less now though, this G3 is being traded for a clamshell iBook and some cash. The second, worse one I bought is being traded for cash, and I got a G4 for myself.