Upgrades for Powermac G3 B&W

I just bought a powermac g3 350 mhz 384 ram off ebay for 35 bucks; however, it only has a 12gb hd in there right now. This may seem stupid but what kind of hard drive does this thing take? Does it need something special or can I just buy any internal hd? Also are there any suggested modifications that I should do to this thing to make it more usable (Overclocking?, better Graphics cards)?

Thanks

It's a standard IDE drive. You cannot use a drive bigger than 120GB on the internal controller. Recommended upgrades in order of priority are after a HD upgrade:

1. RAM. It can take 1GB maximum.

2. Hard disk controller. The built in one is Ultra ATA/33 (33MB/s) which is slow by today's standards. You will find a massive speed boost by installing a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 IDE controller card. This will also remove the 120GB limit and also some of the problems with the B&W G3's buggy IDE controller in rev. 1 machines.

3. Processor. You can get a faster G3 or G4 upgrade from Sonnet too.

4. Graphics card. You need something like the Radeon 7000/7500/9000 or 9200. These cards support Quartz 2D in Mac OS X 10.2+ and will make the response time of graphics on OS X much much faster.

This should give you enough to think about!

Agreed with Vicky on all her points. All highly recomended if you want the most out of the G3 Powermac. Is this a Blue and White Tower? Just making sure. If so, Mod away!!

I have the 300 Mhz version here with 512 Megs RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Makes a nice little Music server. If you do all that Lil suggested though, it will not be a bad little system. Also when you get it, let us know if it has the Revision 1 or 2 motherboard. There are a couple of ways to tell. It's it's Revision 1, the Hard Drive controler has issues with 2 drives installed and sometimes with larger Hard Drives. If it's the older revision, be sure to get that Hard Drive controler that Lil told you about.

You got a very good deal for that low price.

...Dennis

Alright so i got the powermac, and i had both a belkin pci wireless card that is supposed to work with os x, and i had an 80 gb hd lying around. Now how do I tell what rev. the motherboard is? Also, will a geforce 64 mb graphics card with in a powermac B&W?

chrisb2999 said:

Alright so i got the powermac, and i had both a belkin pci wireless card that is supposed to work with os x, and i had an 80 gb hd lying around. Now how do I tell what rev. the motherboard is? Also, will a geforce 64 mb graphics card with in a powermac B&W?

Click to expand...

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

Check this URL. Ignore the Video Card but check the IDE Chip numbers and the Dual Drive bracket.

Remember, the B&W has no AGP slot. So if that geforce is AGP, it will not work at all. Also the Video Card has to have a Mac Rom. A lot can be flashed to work with a Mac. Not sure about that card.

...Dennis