powermac g3 blue and white.

Hi all,
I have just recently got my hands on an old powermac g3 and I got it for £6.50. I mainly bought it cause I heard that it can take up to 3 hard drives. Now. I wanted to install 3 different types of OS. I was thinking 9(which I haven't got), 10.2 and I was thinking linux or windows. But I wasn't sure if this mac could support linux or windows. And when I first booted it I have booted from disk and it was fine up until I had to choose which drive it was and there were none to choose from. And I had to try and do it quickly cause I bought this without my parents knowing. So it could have just been me trying to rush. Also does anyone know where I can get cheap secondhand software for the mac apart from eBay? any help will be appreciated!

Thanks all!
Jack Rose

Forget Windows as the only program is Virtual PC and on a G3 is as slow as slow to be worthless. And there is no such thing as cheap second hand software anywhere. TRake your chances on eBay.

You can run a PPC version of Linux. I know where a whole stack of Mac Addict CDs are at a thrift store for OS9...look at a Thrift stores or rummage sales for old software.

Welcome to the world of multi-drive PPC. I too have a G3 b/w tower (see my specs), and it works admirably with both OS X and OS 9. Don't try to go beyond Panther for X, and you will need an OS 9.2 Install disk for the other drive. You can add a third SCSI drive if you really want to.

Search with Google for older Mac software, eg. Old Version for Mac Downloads - OldApps.com.

hughvane said:

Welcome to the world of multi-drive PPC. I too have a G3 b/w tower (see my specs), and it works admirably with both OS X and OS 9. Don't try to go beyond Panther for X, and you will need an OS 9.2 Install disk for the other drive. You can add a third SCSI drive if you really want to.

Search with Google for older Mac software, eg. Old Version for Mac Downloads - OldApps.com.

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Hugh, I live dangerously I guess! I have Tiger on my B&W G3 350 with 768 Megs RAM. I agree Panther is better for it though and a lot cheaper to purchase!

dtravis7 said:

Hugh, I live dangerously I guess! I have Tiger on my B&W G3 350 with 768 Megs RAM. I agree Panther is better for it though and a lot cheaper to purchase!

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I read online somewhere that the B&W had 2 different motherboard types. Revision 1 and Rev. 2. It said that Rev. 2 could handle tiger fairly well, while Rev.1 seem to crash and burn with it.

hughvane said:

Welcome to the world of multi-drive PPC. I too have a G3 b/w tower (see my specs), and it works admirably with both OS X and OS 9. Don't try to go beyond Panther for X, and you will need an OS 9.2 Install disk for the other drive. You can add a third SCSI drive if you really want to.

Click to expand...

I agree. 350 Mhz seems like a little too slow to handle Tiger.

Macdood, mine is a Rev 2. Since I only use the B&W to mess with, tiger runs quite well actually. I have a Rev 1 but never tried Tiger on it and after what you just said, probably never will!

dtravis7 said:

Macdood, mine is a Rev 2. Since I only use the B&W to mess with, tiger runs quite well actually. I have a Rev 1 but never tried Tiger on it and after what you just said, probably never will!

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Macdood? ;D LOL But yeah, probably not a good idea to run Tiger on it.

Revision 1 and Rev. 2. Its more to do with IDE and support for second hard drives and being able to upgrade the CPU. The issue was fixed with Rev.2.

Mac SK is totally correct. That was the only real difference between a Rev 1 and Rev 2 board in a B&W G3. On the Rev 2 they also included a Dual Drive bracket as the Rev 1's had issues with Dual IDE drives also. I have one Rev one here that corrupted data on a 20GB Seagate drive!!!

Here is a URL that tells all the changes.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/newfeatures.html