G3 Wallstreet laptops, lots of questions

[Millsy]

Well, I just won an auction on E-bay for 8 G3 laptops and a bunch of parts, all in different stages of not having stuff.

So far I've figured out that 4 of them have CPU's (266mhz) couple of them have RAM, 3 have HDD's (2 and 4gb).

A friend is going to bring over his power adapter (none of them have batts) and we will begin testing everything.



These are my first Macs, been a PC guy for as long as I can remember, hated Macs in high school, but found out that was because they were really crappy, and completely locked down by an inept tech guy. After using my friends G3 (desktop model) I've found I like the hardware quite a bit (Enough that I bought a MAC USB keyboard for my PC, and I have a lian-li PC-V1000 case that looks almost exactly like the new G5 cases). And would love to see quite a few features of OS 9.2 in windows.


But back to the point, where do I start once I figure out what works? In addition to the 8 laptops (13 and 14" screens) I have 7 extra screens. 5 total hard drives (3) 2gb, (1) 4gb, (1) 8gb. And 4 Extra CPU's ranging from 233-266mhz (2 probably won't work according to the stickers on them).

I'm willing to bet I can get 2 or 3 fully functional laptops out of the batch. What's the best place to get parts for them. (CD-rom, batt's, hdd's ... etc)


Also, about the screens, is it possible to get a VGA adapter for them? (It would be kind of sweet to have a 14" screen on the side of my case or something as a 2nd monitor)


What else do i need to know, what programs do I "Need" any bugs to worry about (my friend told me that each laptop will probably need to have the bios flashed to install OS 9 on them) Anything else?


Thanks for any advice. This is kinda fun, soooo many computer parts, new kind of hardware for me in 2 ways, never had a mac, and never had a laptop before, now I have tons of them!

 

[Orion119]

I'm glad you like macs and are excited about your purchases, but I think you should step ot of OS9 into X. It will enhance your enjoyment of the macs by far.

Oh, and why so many laptops and screens and stuff? Are you running a buissness?

 

[Millsy]

No, not a business, though I do intend to sell most of the screens (if they work). It just happened to be a good deal ($600 for the whole lot).


About OSX though, on my friends G3, (333mhz, 786mb/ram) it runs like ass. I don't see how it would run well on a little 266 with 64Mb ram. OS9 runs really quickly comparatively. He’s also not a big fan of OSX, and though I can never remember everything he complains about, he seems to make good points when he rants about it. Only thing I always remember is the lack of input sprockets (very handy thingy btw).

I also remember reading a comparison of XP (btw I hate Xp, I run Windows 2003 on all my machines) vS OSX, and it had one point, where deleting a lot of files took 7 minutes. I know the last time I looked at the review, that had changed with a newer version of OSX, do you mind pointing out which version is which? The names sure don’t help to tell which is the newest version

 

[Millsy]

Wow, I'm amazed. I just grabbed that power adapter tonight. Of the 5 Laptops I tested, 3 of them work perfectly. They even had OS's installed on the hard drives! (One has 8.2, the other 2 have 9.1)

Over the next week now, I get to test the extra CPU's that I have, and then all the screens ( that's going to take a while >_<)

That little 266 runs OS 9.1 quite well.


It will be interesting to learn Mac OS some more. Oh and talking to my friend tonight, he mentioned a few more things that he doesn't like about OSX.

No Extension manager. Is there an equivalent to this in OSX?

USB memory sticks, in OS9, my NTFS formatted memory stick works just fine. However doesn't work in OSX.

I'll probably have some more questions about that.. Though It's kind of moot point I guess, as there is no point in upgrading past 9.2 just due to speed.



Oh well, still loads of fun mucking with these laptops!