PowerMac Upgrade to G3 still available for purchase?

I got my uncles PowerMac 9600/300 recently. I read that it was one of the few remaining models that could be upgraded and have OSX on it. There was something about getting the memory upgraded to 1.5gig but I am not sure and the memory cost was a little high, so I could wait on that.

I have read in other places where people as 'why would you want to upgrade such an old computer when you can get a used one for cheap'. Well this one was free. And depending on the cost of the upgrade (assuming it exists) it might be less than one of those used laptops.

This is for a game I had on my ibook called EV Nova.

Last question assuming all this were possible and there was a place online that sold the CPU card, could I use the OSX 10.1 that came with my iBook?

Thanks for any info.

Regarding the G3 upgrade. Your best bet is e-Bay. But that doesn't mean any will be available right now. This really is like "looking for a needle in a haystack"!

Yes you are correct on the ram...although I doubt you would ever need 1.5gig of ram for almost any Mac OS version or app you would be running.

Realize that this was a top-end computer back then & it shipped with 64meg of ram...and this was quite a bit of ram back then. Lower end Mac's of the same vintage were only shipping with 16 or 32meg of ram (and they were expected to do everything with that amount of ram). So 1.5 gig of ram is an unheard of amount for a 1997-1998 computer.

If this computer was upgraded to a G3 cpu...yes it could run OS X (very early versions). And no...you cannot use the OS X 10.1 disk from your iBook. Those gray disks are model specific.

FYI...this computer is worth MAYBE $20-$25 bucks (if you could find someone willing to pay $25). So be very careful how much you spend on it. Also realize that you will have a pretty difficult time getting on the internet with it.

But it would be an ok computer to just "mess-around" with...especially if you have some 15 year-old software to run on it.

HTH,

- Nick

Thanks, I will keep an eye out on ebay. My Uncle was big into Photography and I got a Slide Scanner with the computer. It's a quality scanner that you can still find at places like bhphoto.com for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Even if I don't find the upgrade, I may update the memory a bit. It's too bad I can't just install OS 9.2.1 over the top of OS 8.6 (I've read that the max that the machine will accept is OS 9.0.2).

Thanks again.

According to Low-End Mac.com...A Powermac 9600/300 can run up to OS 9.1:

Power Macintosh 9600

- Nick