Power Macintosh G3 266 Minitower Mini-Project

The Rev A "Beige" G3

  

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Of my several hobby projects this started as a simple case swap, tune up, and general ‘what the hell is this things problem’, but I thought this might be time to offer some details of what I have learned about the venerable Power Macintosh G3.

 

Original Project Date:  The weekend of 7/27/04.  More has been done since.  See the update at the END for important upgrading/tuning tips.

 

This page was hastily put together and as such is poorly linked to other sites.  However much more information and links regarding my project computers, most of the software and concepts mentioned here, plus other information regarding legacy Macs and/or OS X can be found here, the Site Map from  my Sliced Apple and my 8500 Project site of which this page is a part.

  

This simple list of factoids (many readily available at any Mac site) summarizes all.  However as always, I must blather on.

 

Quick Tech Specs

 

Installed OS

 

Motherboard Type:

 

CPU:

 

Cache:

Main Board Speed:

 

RAM:

 

Ports:

 

Onboard Video:

 

PCI Cards:

 

 

Drives:

 

 

 

Power Supply:

 

Keyboard:

 

Mouse:

 

Monitor (at present):

 

Case:

Apple OS X Panther Client 10.3.5

 

Gossamer Beige G3 266 with Rev A Rom

 

G4 400 Sonnet ZIF Upgrade

 

Standard L1, 1 MB L2 at 1/3 speed

 

66Mhz

 

384 (128x3) PC 100 DIMMS (on 66 Mhz bus)

 

RS432 Serial x2, ADB, SCSI 2, Audio In/Out

 

Rage Pro

 

Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI – Video in use

SIIG USB 2/FW/10/100 Enet PCI Combo Card

SIIG ATA 133 Card

 

Lite-On ATAPI 48x24x48x16 CDRW/DVD

Seagate ATA133 160 GB Hard Drive

Quantum SCSI 2 GB Hard Drive (old)

  

Generic ATX multi-board 450W PC Supply

 

Kensington Mac Slim Keyboard (USB)

 

Basic MS Optical Mouse (USB)

 

Compaq Presario 15in LCD 1024x768*

 

Aluminum ATX Tower - Standard

 

*This is an odd used monitor I came to possess that uses some funny and very hard

to find (short lived) variant of DVI that required a DAMNED EXPENSIVE adapter.  Go Figure.

                                                     

 

This computer was originally purchased as a learner for my girlfriend, now wife.  Unfortunately do to the synergistic vagaries of the Beige G3 and unsupported OS X installs (along with her general toughness on hardware) I inherited it as an office computer.  In other words, it’s a pain in the ass.  First thing, considering I view the Beige G3 case to be hostile, large and heavy, and really sharp, I transferred the components to a more manageable case for permanent use.

 

Luckily the Beige G3 is rather ATX standard.  Except for some now routine back-of-case mods for the non-standard (from a PC standpoint) port array the power supply plugs straight in to the motherboard (a virtue which continued until the Quicksilver G4 gave it up for the “advantages” of the 28 volt requiring ADC connector) and no extra modifications to allow soft power are required.

 

Total case transfer time took about 2 hours (actual work) including motherboard mounting (drilling the mounting holes), and case modification (cutting out the first 3 PCI slots to make room the ports).  I wised up this time and selected a nice all Aluminum case that was easy to cut.  I put the Western Digital 120 GB ATA drive back that is supposed to go with this system back in, and an LG CDRW pulled from a gateway as the CDRW mechanism.

 

At the start the internal drive (the 120 GB already being used with the machine) was trapped in a funky OS 9 install hiding beside a partially working OS X Panther install.  After some effort showed unrecoverable drive directory damage I decided a clean format and install was the ticket.  I have acquired some scattered, mostly sneaked, experience with this transitional PAIN IN THE ASS along machine (my wife likes to do it herself) along with its hostility towards OS X (although I never had leave to figure the tricks to make it run well).  Similar to a number of other Macs of its day this Mac cannot boot into OS X from any IDE partition not in the first 8 GB of the physical drive, along with the obligatory install block.  Most importantly, this thing just hates booting in general.  Considering my spankings at  attempting to use cleverly devided user or other root disk folders  (such as Applications) that try to spread out their structure over multiple drives works I decided other tricks hopefully less of a nuisance were in order. The solution most interesting (also a pain) is to use XpostFacto’s helper disk functionality to boot from the large partition while using the small one as the helper.  The hard part (not too hard, just time consuming) is getting the install on the large partition in the first place.  This time I cheated and just placed the drive in a Sawtooth AGP G4 on loan to my parents, rebooted into OS 9 and reformatted the target drive with two partitions, a 7 GB and a 110 GB (formatting in OS 9 is required for booting legacy X installs), then rebooted back into 10.3.4 to use the install CD’s (running from the installers hidden in the System file) to perform a standard 10.3 install on the large partition.   I also did a simple drag and drop OS 9 install on the small partition along with grabbing XPF 3a17 and b2, CPU Director 1.5f2, and Sonnet PCI Tuneup 1.2.7 and 1.2.8 beta.  After all this was finished the target drive was placed back in the Beige to be booted in OS 9 off the smaller partition for hopefull OS X enabling and tuneup.  All that remained was using XPF to install its missing legacy drives and custom bootx file plus the helper drive trick to get it booting from that otherwise unbootable large partition.

 

The Beige was a typical pain to get to boot as desired.  It was easy to start from the OS 9 CD (after five tries when I correctly held down the right keys at the right time) but flat refused to start from the newly installed  drive’s new OS X install (using XPF).  It just could not find the drive as if OF (open firware – sort of like bios to PCers) had lied before restart or was sleeping now (this appears to be an XPF issue now fixed).  After much futzing and changing from XPF b2 back to a17 I managed to get it booting from the 110 GB partition using the 7 GB one as a helper drive.  Not straightforward this involving using a CD boot to boot in OS 9 on the small partition then using XPF and jumping to the large partition in OS X.  The system then worked pretty well remaining stable even while suffering lots of tuning, hardware additions, and numerous restarts.  Total time to get it running stable in 10.3, including install, about 2 hours, although during the install I was otherwise occupied.  It as then updated to 10.3.4, received PCI Extreme patch to activate Quartz Extreme, and underwent some memory rearranging (along with others) to give it three 128 meg DIMMs for a total of RAM of 384 MB.  This is skimpy RAM and the minimum required for 10.3 stability in my experience.  Total figuring out Beige G3 tricks and settling finally on a stable config, around 3 more hours, although most of my time was just playing, surfing, and the like until some issue presented itself (several days) so it is  hard to tell.

I had a SIIG PCI Combo USB 2/FW/Ethernet 10/100 card (no Mac support) that always seem to work well in the Biege. This card has the dreaded Realtek 8139 Ethernet chipset but this does not seem to cause the Beige problems (the Realtek 8139 Ethernet chipset has problems in older Macs).   It also had a genuine ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition PCI card for video.  Its location in the office really needs wireless, and after finding the OFFICIAL wireless cards for Macs were $100 I opted on a $39 Motorolla 802.11G PCI card from Wal-Mart that failed to mention Mac support but as it was Broadcom based appeared OEM Apple Airport to the beige in OS X.

 

Some run time then confirmed its tendency to corrupt IDE drives attached to the internal bus.  This appeared be mostly OS 9 related as most damaged occurred while booted into OS 9, or early in booting OS X before OS X’s drivers are in control.  This was controlled by minimizing OS 9 time along and restarts but it was soon clear that sufficient drive corruption to make it unbootable was inevitable with aggressive routine drive repair delaying but not preventing this end point.

 

Looking for better solutions I installed a 2 GB SCSI drive and connected an 80 GB FireWire drive that contained a working and often used 10.3.4 install.  I removed the IDE drive hoping that FW booting using the SCSI drive as helper would avoid any IDE related corruption.  This worked well and ran significantly better than when booted from the IDE drive.  The FW drive was faster and less CPU requiring.  Surprisingly all measured performance benchmarks improved, although only slightly.  Drive corruption also disappeared.

 

Configured like this the machine was a pretty good and pleasant performer and was stable prompting me to leave the FW drive as the boot drive for now.  I also pulled the Lite-On CDRW/DVD drive from the 8500 to replace the LG CDRW.  I figure the 8500 could share since it also had a CDRW/DVDr  and I thought reading data DVD’s essential for my office system as I have gone to DVD for most backups.

 

The final result is a stable machine that runs and feels smooth and responsive running OS X Panther with overall adequate and predictable operation.  This included good function of FireWire and USB 2 including USB 2 drives, 10-100 and wireless networking, and CD burning.

 

Update:  This machine has been a star, at least for the first month and is outperforming the 8500 in many ways.  It remains super stable as well.

Bigger Update:  Finally adding an ATA 133 card worked magic.  See the update at the end for the best answer.

Below is a copy of the Read Me I placed on the Beige’s HD to help any poor lost hapless user, such as my wife, father, ect… that for some reason must maintain or use this system.  Much of it is rendered old news by the ATA 133 card. 

Following this is the list of little tidbits reference earlier.

 

Important information for using THIS computer

Aluminized Beige G3/G4 400

 

This computer should never leave my possession, as it is a heavily modified older Macintosh running an unsupported OS.  However in case it does, or for some reason someone else has to maintain it for some length of time, I have included this brief Read Me to help explain the basics.  These basics are not typical for Macintosh systems such that the information in this file would likely be required within a short time.  I suggest printing a copy of this file while you can.

 

Any Utilities, Applications, or files mentioned in this Read Me are present somewhere on these disks.  Applications would be a good place to look along with the Desktop folder in my account.  Downloads in my account is also a good bet for newer versions. I also try to keep them in the Upgraded Beige G3 Utilities folder located on the root level of most drives.

 

IMPORTANT:  Rev A PowerMacintosh G3 computers had a faulty IDE controller chipset that led to severe hard drive corruption for most if not all after-market IDE hard drives attached to the built in IDE bus.  This does not seem to be an active issue if running solely from FireWire and/or SCSI drives.  This problem seems to be minimized when using OS X but is clearly present in OS 9.  That means any boot into OS 9 from and IDE drive is likely to result in data damage or data loss and soon results in an unbootable computer.  If while running from the internal IDE drive one has to boot into 9 you should, as soon as possible, use XPostFacto to reboot into OS X from the Faithful Sidekick partition of the main hard drive.  Do not use a helper disk since Faithful Sidekick does not need one.  After booting into OS X (hopefully) use Norton Utilities to repair Big Cheese and/or Lugs then use XpostFacto to boot back into Big Cheese (using Faithful Sidekick as a helper disk) if using internal IDE or Lugs (using The Hand as a helper disk) if booting off the FireWire drive.  Finish by repairing the appropriate helper disk using Norton Utilities.   A restart after this is not required. In general, if running from IDE, being careful to not run much in OS 9 (the SCSI bus is OK) and quickly booting back into OS X and repairing all drives will help keep this computer stable.  Running from a FireWire drive with a SCSI helper disk it best as it seems to eliminate this problem.  Read the rest of this read me for details about what all this means.

 

Overview and Technical Details

 

This is a PowerMac Beige G3 Mini-tower originally with a 266 G3 processor and represents a transitional machine between SCSI/ADB based Macs to ATA (IDE)/USB Macs.  The motherboard in this machine is essentially the same as the 1st generation iMacs and the Blue and White G4's that followed it except it includes a SCSI 2 buss in addition to two ATA 66 buses and continues to use ADB as the input port rather than USB.  Do to its combination of transitional and first model year characteristics it is a particularly difficult and finicky system to maintain even in a vanilla configuration, which this system is not.

 

This particular computer is a project computer of mine and as such has been upgraded with the addition of a faster more sophisticated G4 CPU, FireWire and USB 2 ports, wireless networking, and upgraded video.  Note that USB 2, FireWire and wireless networking are all via cards that officially do not work on Macs (along with the CDRW/DVD-ROM drive).  In addition it is running on unsupported OS that will not normally install or run on this machine.  Lastly it has been placed in a non-Apple ATX tower case requiring minor read modifications.  The result is this computer takes a significant amount of knowledge and experience with using legacy Mac hardware, OS 9, and the Unix derived OS X in order to get out of real problems and do complex installs or upgrades.  This brief Read Me will hopefully provide enough information to keep it going and solve simple problems.  For experienced and technically literate users, including PC users, some technical background should help in understanding the issues (along with having sufficient balls to try something instead of panicking) but is not absolutely necessary.  Either-way I have provided some technical explanations where understanding them might be helpful.

 

*  This computer is running OS 10.3 Panther courtesy of an open source project named XpostFacto 3.0.  XPF is a single application useable from OS 9 or OS X that consists of an installation enabler to allow legacy Mac hardware to boot of the OS X Installation CD's for OS X installs, along with a set of OS X drivers for legacy PCI based Mac Systems.  It works very well and produces fully operational installs with stability equal or superior to new hardware.  The use of XPF is simple and straightforward and fully explained in its included HTML documentation if further help is necessary.

 

Note that the internal 120 GB ATA hard drive is partitioned into two parts, a smaller 7 GB partition currently named "Faithful Sidekick" and a larger 110 GB partition currently named "Big Cheese".  Technical reasons exist for this partition strategy.  There should also be a small 2 G SCSI hard drive named "The Hand" and an external FireWire hard drive (although possibly suspended or mounted in the front of the case) named "Lugs".  One or more of these drives may not be present at any given time or additional drives may be in place.  You should note which drive is the boot drive so that you will know which drive to reset as the boot device if neccessary.  The boot drive will be the first to mount on startup and is usually present in the right upper desktop screen after boot.

 

As the first generation Apple desktop with on board IDE (this is officially a Rev A. PowerMacintosh G3 266 Minitower) this machine has some quirks that must be noted.

 

1)      This machine is supported in OS 8? through OS 9.2.2 and OS 10.0 through 10.2.x.  It is NOT supported by Panther 10.3.x.  Panther support can and has been obtainted via a 3rd party utility, XPostFacto.  XPostFacto is required to install Panther from the 10.3 install CD's, render a 10.3 install bootable on this machine, allow this machine to boot from 10.3 based repair CD's, or boot from otherwise unsupported hardware such as FireWire drives via the use of "helper disks".  XPostFacto can and possibly is being used to allow this machine to boot from the large 100 GB partition "Big Cheese" (which is not bootable in OS X) while using the smaller partition "Faithful Sidekick" as a helper disk.  Alternatively it might be booting from the FireWire drive using either Faithful Sidekick or The Hand as a helper disk. (Note the The Hand can also be used as a helper for Big Cheese.)  As of this writing XPF 3b8 was available and in use here although b2, b1, and a17 also seemed to work fine.  Also note that significant performance benefits can be achieved by

via activated Quartz Extreme, normally inactive by default on PCI video cards.  Quartz Extreme is an Apple technology that uses the game rendering graphics built into modern computers to speed up the normal 2D display. PCI Extreme is a patch that will activate QE if it gets turned off and Quartz Check can be run to confirm activation.  The patch must be reapplied after certain OS upgrades (such as to 10.3.4) so if the interface starts to feel sluggish, check for continued activation of this patch.  Also check for activation of the CPU card (cache) as described later although failure of this to activate is unlikely.

 

*          This machine IS a supported install in Jaguar 10.2.x which may be a better choice for some.  Reasons for preferring Panther despite some extra support headaches include: significantly faster performance on older hardware (especially G3 based machines), an improved, much better networking especially with windows machines, X11 support, and fast user switching among other advantages.

 

2)      Each of the two IDE buses can only see one drive each (no support for slave drives). OS X works around this allowing two drives per controller, but only one drive is bootable per controller, the master drive.

3)      USB and Firewire are supported via add in PCI cards, but not at boot time such that keyboard controls at startup require an ADB keyboard. (i.e. open firmware controls such as command-option-p-r to reset the PRAM, ect...)

 

*  THIS MEANS YOU MUST ATTACH AN OLDER ADB APPLE KEYBOARD IN ORDER TO SUCCESSFULLY USE OR HOLD DOWN KEYS ON STARTUP AS DESCRIBED LATER (ADB keyboards are those beige colored keyboards that have round connectors with four metal pins and a black plastic guide that sort of resemble a PC PS2 connector).

 

4.       Although OS 9 can see the entire IDE disk on startup (since it loads reasonably current device drivers from each drive at the start of each boot) OS X can only see the firsts 8 Gig on an older IDE controlled disk and so the startup volume must lie within first 8 Gigs (not really true, but complicated).

 

5.       Both the one drive per IDE bus and the 8 Gig limit can and are circumvented.  The first is a function of OS X, although only after boot.  The other is dealt with using a program called XPostFacto which uses a valid (from a hardware standpoint) startup disk (with or without an OS install) to store early loaded drivers that it boots from initially and then switches to the real startup disk after loading the device drivers.  The valid disk used to help another disk boot is known in XPF as a "helper disk." *

 

*          This may seem confusing but it makes sense.  Any computer has to boot by loading some OS from some type of storage device, like a hard drive.  However prior to loading that OS and all its device drivers a computer can only see a very limited few types of drives that is has been hardwired to see.  If a connected drive is not one of these types nothing can be loaded from it until after the OS and its drivers are loaded.  XPF works around this by using a helper disk.  Essentially XPF places a small portion of the full OS (just the boot loader) along with the drivers on a disk that CAN be seen at startup and then switches to the full startup disk after loading the drivers such that the full boot disk can be seen.  After the switch the helper disk is not needed until another boot but can and does function as a regular extra drive.  Note that an OS does not have to be installed on the helper disk, only those few files XPF places there, but if an OS is installed it is not disturbed by use as a helper disk.  I use a helper disk on this system so that I can run from the entire (or most of it) ATA HD or off a FireWire drive.  Running off an 8 GB partition can be irritating since the user folders fill up quickly requiring constant policing in order to move files to the large partition where nobody can ever find them.  The fact that OS 9 can see the large partition for booting, where OS X cannot has to do with the different way the two load device drivers.  OS X is limited by the fact that the basic IDE controller in this computer can only see 8 GB of hard drive space until the booting OS loads enhanced drivers.

 

Routine, Steps, and Tricks for Starting this computer

 

Because of the use of a helper disk ANY upgrade, update, or install which adds or modifies the extensions in the OS X System will cause XPF to change the boot disk to another disk, probably containing OS 9.  This is to compel the user to "sync" the boot and helper drives (happens automatically when XPF is run). Most simple applications will not do this when installed, and none that are simply copied will cause the need to sync.  Generally any application that prompts for an Admin password during install should be suspected of modifying the System.  Therefore one must either disable all automatic updates (probable done) and refrain from installing new software, or follow the routine after install//update use of XPF the boot disk prior to restarting or shutting down, or be prepared to randomly start up from a different drive (while being shocked and confused) where you must find and use XPF to reset the choosen startup disk to the proper startup drive (which varies as to my mood so I hope you noted it.)

 

-        Routine starts and restarts should proceed normally and require no extra work.  Issues like the helper disk, activating the CPU cache (turning on the accelerator card), and Quartz Extreme should be taken care of automatically for such routine activity.

-        If the startup device needs to be reselected this can be done from OS 9, 10.2 or 10.3.  You can either start from OS 9 or OS X on The Hand, OS X on Faithful Servant, or, by using a helper disk, OS 10.3 on Big Cheese or Lugs.  If you are having trouble getting started at all then start from an OS 9 CD using the following gude:

                  -        Connect an Apple ADB keyboard and hold option while starting.  This generally forced the computer to boot into OS 9 from a helper disk.  As of this writing only The Hand had a bootable OS 9 install.

                  -        If that does not work put an OS 9 CD in the CD drive and restart while holding the 'C' key and then switching to the shift key one the screen activates and holding it until “All Extensions Off” is displayed.  Please read on for important CD Drive issues during boot.

 

-        If a routine startup boots into OS 9 (rainbow Apple at top left), find and run XPosxFacto .  XPF is probably on the desktop on most drives and/or in the Downloads or Applications folder.  Look for the newest version but don't stress on it.  Make sure XPF is set to start from OS X in Big Cheese or Lugs  and a helper disk is set (ignore everything else, it should be right), click restart, and be patient during synchronize.  The helper disk should set as Faithful Sidekick or The Hand unless you intend to boot from those drives which do not require helpers.  If you are staring from Lugs or Big Cheese and helper disk says "None" then change it to Faithful Sidekick or The Hand.)  If you feel the need to click and inspect Options you MAY click "Verbose" if you like lots of startup text.  Auto-boot under Open Firmware should always be checked.  Input device should be keyboard (not very important) and output device one of the ATY options, preferably ATY,RV100.... if present (not very important).  Leave the video and debugging flags alone and do not enable the L2/L3 cache, that is best done by other  software..

-        Note OS 9 has issues with the installed Radeon 7000 video card such that starting up in OS 9 requires either disabling certain ATI extensions prior to boot (already done on OS 9 installed on The Hand) or holding Shift on start to disable all 3rd party extensions.

-        If during an OS X update install a message from XPostFacto requiring Syncing pops up that means you have installed new or updated drivers and they need to be copied to your helper disk.  This is easy.  Run XPostFacto, enter the admin password, and reset to start in OS X from Big Cheese with Faithful Sidekick as a helper disk or Lugs with The Hand as helper, and restart.  The files will be synced before restarting (same if you happen to miss this and start in OS 9.)

-        This System has had the original G3 266 MHz CPU replaced with a G4 400 MHz ZIF upgrade.  It will run slowly unless the 1 MB cache on the upgrade card is activated.  CPU Director can be run to verify the cache is active however unless you are booting off a drive not mentioned in this Read Me activation software has already been installed..  When checking CPU Director if the L2 Cache reads as disabled then it is disabled, if enabled it is on and their is nothing to do.  CPU Director can also be set to turn on caches immediately and/or at each boot.  Currently a small Sonnet program (sonnetcache.kext) is turning on the caches but activation of CPU Director does not seem to conflict and in fact it is also set to activate the caches on boot.

-        Starting from a CD containing Panther requires use of a helper disk since Panther is NOT a supported OS on this computer and therefore does not have the ability (without help) to boot it machines for which it has no hardware drivers).  10.2 and older are supported and should boot normally (ya, you wish).  This means repair CD's that use some version of 10.2 for booting are supported - all the ones currently in existence.  It is most reliable to boot from an OS 9 CD if real trouble booting is encountered but that requires DOING THIS.  To boot from an OS 9 CD, place it in the CD drive and restart while holding the 'C' key.  Continue holding the 'C' key until the small Mac appears in the center of the screen (be patient, this may take awhile) and then quickly change to holding down the Shift key.  When the message.  "All Extensions Off" appears you may let go. This procedure is necessary because on this machine with the upgraded ATI card OS 9 crashes while loading the ATI Acceleration extension and therefore that extension must be dynamically disabled since a CD is read only.  If you do freeze while loading the ATI extension just restart (by pressing command-option-power on the ADB keyboard all at once, or pressing the front power button, or turning off the back power button, pulling the plug, ect..) and try again.  Note that holding the 'C' key tells the computer to boot from the CD drive.  Holding down shift tells the loading system NOT to load any 3rd party extensions and is the equivalent of "Safe Mode" on Windows based PC's.  Once booted into OS 9 or 10.2 (does not require a startup key) go and find XPosfFacto on the mounted drives (look first on the Desktop, then in /Applications, /Users/rwikoff/Desktop, or Users/rwikoff/Downloads on each drive) and use it as described above/below to boot into the OS X 10.3 install on the normal boot drive.

 

If desperate zapping the PRAM is the way to go (clearing the settings in non-volatile memory…dude…chill…it’s a Mac, it’s all OK). Hold command-option –p-r through 3 or 4 chimes on boot and then just keep trying different startup keys (C, option, Shift-Command-Option-Delete until it boots from something.  Don’t give up!!!!

Good Luck

Notes:

 

Startup keys (modify startup parameters)

command-v - start in verbose mode (OS X only - write standard Unix logs files normally written to the console to the display)

command-s - start in Unix single user mode (OS X only - worthless unless you know what to do, reboot gets you out)

c - start from CD

option - start from alternate boot device

shift-option-command-delete - start from a different alternate device

command-option-p-r - clear all non volatile RAM settings (hold until mac beeps twice - long pause between beeps)

shift - turn all extensions off (9 or OS X)

spacebar - launch extensions manager on startup (OS 9 only)

 

For lots more information checkout the XPostFacto site at Other World Computing - http://www.macsales.com, or my web site at http://slidedapple.ath.cx.

 

-R

 

 

Things I have learned about Rev A Beige G3’s (not sure what applies to the B and C)

 

Oddities as yet unexplained (but probably just needs some tuning, updates, ect…)

 

The Benchmarking is odd since the Beige is easily clobbered by the PM 8500.  That makes sense for some things, such as processor speed, given the bigger faster caches and CPU, but not for others.

 

The PM 8500 memory speed is almost even with the Beige on benchmarks.  However memory interleaving on the PM 8500 should only address its memories tendency to run even slower than its 50 MHz bus.  The Beige with its 66 Mhz bus and PC66 memory should easily outrun the PM 8500 for memory bandwidth.  Also the PM 8500 easily beats the Beige in most graphics test including Quartz and Open GL by large margins.  Only the interface test is equal.  They are running the same (basically) graphics card and even with some CPU differences the cards should not be so different.

 

Basically the PM 8500 (as upgraded) trounces the Beige G3 (as upgraded) and I don’t think it should.  The faster bus and faster memory of the Beige should count for more.  It is not surprising that the ATA 66 bus is not that fast compared to the newer card in the PM 8500 and we just have to give it a pass on that.

 

* With tuning most of this is resolved.  Memory speeds on the Beige are now 40-50% faster than the 8500 and most graphics and interface tests (except OpenGL which must be CPU intensive) are slightly faster on the Beige.  CPU and HD tests are, not surprisingly, still much slower.  In use the Beige still has less range than the 8500 running out of breadth early but the interface seems crisper under light conditions.  Some of this is simply RAM differences but one suspects that the demands of running from an ATA drive are also at work.

 

  

Just thoughts.

 

Update ~ 8-9/2004

 

After slow corrruption from just occassionally having to boot back to the normal busses. I finally broke down and bought an ATA 133 PCI card (by SIIG).

 

DAMN!!!

All of a sudden that Beige boat anchor became something else.  No drive corruption. No 8 GB install limit.  No 127 GB hard drive size limit.  Drive throughputs that jump from 10Mb/sec to 50Mb/sec.   All ATA drives look SCSI to the System ALL THE TIME.  Bascially my Beige went from being worthless to damn fast and reiiable.

This one upgrade did more than the bigger hard drive, new video card, and hot CPU upgrade combined.

 

My now firm recommendation.  Just fork over the $99 and get a new ATA card and save yourself months of hassle and years of life lost to stress.

 

I have exchanged experiences with another Beige owner and his solution has been a new SCSI card with fast SCSI drives.  I agree that this is a better technical solution but one likely to be significantly more expensive since high volume SCSI drives are much more expensive that high volume ATA drives.

 

 

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Document made with Nvu

 

Created early 8/2004

Updated 6/10/2005 - ATA 133 card update, Nvu update, general fixes.

Updated 6/16/2005

Updated 12/26/2006 - Updated to Nvu to correct various tags and errors created by MS Words HTML creation