a Completely Scatterbrained Thread About the Beige G3/266

ATY,mach64 = ATI Mach64, the chip that the Rage IIc, that is, the chip in the Rev. A Beige G3 is based off.

You will need to source a PCI video card for your machine.

The last OS to support the Rage chip was 10.2.

I would suggest sourcing a cheap Rage128 or better card.

If you get a PCI Radeon you can try enabling Quartz Extreme by using the PCI Extreme program (not available from Apple). This will make the machine much faster.

If you don't want to spend any money, then I don't know what your options are other than Linux. You can try Jaguar, but I think the newer browsers require 10.3 and up.

Rev 1 beige g3 machines are not the greatest for OSX, stick with OS 9.2.

Rev 1 beige g3 machines are not the greatest for OSX, stick with OS 9.2.

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If I did that, I wouldn't be able to access most of the sites I frequent.

This is not going to be my main machine. I have a MDD G4 that is more than happy to devour any task I offer it. I just need something with a modern browser for seeking out information online in the rare case that my G4 is in pieces or otherwise rendered temporarily inoperable.

I actually had 10.2 on this beige machine for awhile when it had only 256mb of ram... It was slow, but tolerable.

ATY,mach64 = ATI Mach64, the chip that the Rage IIc, that is, the chip in the Rev. A Beige G3 is based off.

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Thanks.

There is a new version of icab for OS 9 out.

I didn't care much for the older versions of iCab... but I will give the new one a try.

Does anyone know what video card this is / how many mb?

It has a chip on it labeled "Velocity 1.1", and I believe it is from STB. It was installed in the PCI slot of my Performa 6400/200 and uses a standard VGA connector. 6400 is in pieces, otherwise I would just check system profiler.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h149/aphetica/DSCF0055copy.jpg

Right now, I am installing OS 9.0 and partitioning the disk... zeroing the data is taking forever. I'm using a 30gb Samsung and I believe the cache is 2mb... that should be a bit better than the Fireball that was in there before. I think it only had a 512k cache.

I have 3 partitions in it... is there any reason for leaving any free space outside the partitions? I thought I remembered reading something about a disk needing free, unpartitioned space for something, but I'm not sure.

Sorry I am full of dumb questions tonight. I'm feeling kind of manic.

Oh wait... I finally found it... on page 9 of a google image search there was a tiny, blurry pic of the card... the page is in russian, but it says the card is 4mb.

I probably need more for 10.3+, right?

You should be ok with 4MB.

I bet the onbard Rage IIc is faster though. They can be upgraded to 4MB or 6MB. Look at the motherboard. Next to the video chip should be a small SODIMM looking slot. Stick the VRAM in there.

Onboard is already 6mb... I wasn't sure if a video card would up the total to 10mb or just replace it.

I'm having trouble using xpostfacto... first of all, 9.0.4 won't open a .dmg file... so I mounted it on my G4 and then emailed the xpostfacto application to myself and loaded it on the 266, but 9.0.4 says it can't be opened because the application that created it cannot be found.

I am searching for answers on Google, but have not found anything yet.

This is probably something that is really easy to fix...

The first Mac OS I ever used was 10.2, so I'm still learning when it comes to classic stuff.

Tried mounting the xpostfacto dmg with disk copy, but it says the option did not complete because xpostfacto.dmg does not have a recognized file type.

So... 10.4 recognizes it as a classic application...

but 9.0.4 doesn't recognize it as anything at all.

Nevermind again. Once I found a .sit copy of xpostfacto to DL, everything was okay. Starts fine now.

Onboard is already 6mb... I wasn't sure if a video card would up the total to 10mb or just replace it.

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No, it is not cumulative.

Though with a 2nd card you can run a 2nd monitor.

Hooray! Thanks to everyone who helped / provided information.

It's 6:35am and it took me most of the night to get this done, with all the research I had to do to get over a few snags... but it honestly wasn't as hard as I was expecting it to be. Had no problems booting with the lack of a video card. Installation hung on the first try (on disc 2), but rebooted and everything went smoothly.

Safari 3, Adium, and iStat pro... it's like a home away from home.

It is quite slow when booting up, (a couple minutes?) but once that's done, everything runs well... infact, quite a bit better than I expected it to.

I even played a youtube video... it was quite choppy, but I'm thinking if I could upgrade to a 32mb video card, it would be okay. I was surprised it loaded at all, considering the aneurisms that OS9 had while trying to load javascripts.

I'm really happy with the way things turned out.

Next thing I'm considering is maybe overclocking from 266 to 300mhz... has anyone here done that?

I have lots of pages on how to do it, but I think it would make me feel better to hear some success stories first.

There is a new version of icab for OS 9 out.

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Oh, and thanks to you, I found out that I really like the PPC version of iCab.

I used it on 68k before and didn't have very good luck with it, but the PPC version is very nice.. I don't think there are any browsers that can compare to it on OS9.

icab lets me use gmail when IE5 will not.

icab lets me use gmail when IE5 will not.

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Yeah, that's why I liked it... I didn't find a whole lot of limitations to it... I was surprised how well it handled a lot of scripts, plus the fact that even if it did find something it couldn't handle, it wouldn't take the entire machine down with it like netscape or IE.

Next thing I'm considering is maybe overclocking from 266 to 300mhz... has anyone here done that?

I have lots of pages on how to do it, but I think it would make me feel better to hear some success stories first.

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Go for it. I've been successful getting my 266 to 300 (pushed it a bit higher but it hung a couple of times) and my 300 to 420! (Too scared to push any more.)

Just get something that can check your CPU temperature. I used the one from powerlogix but it only runs in os9.

See details on the temperature subject at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/G3_temp.html also http://www.wmld.com/tech/wierdg3.html has some good info.

I don't know how the MT or Desktop are but the AIO design, closing the case is critical to the airflow over the processor. It will heat up to scary levels if you leave it open while you test.

Ahh, the G3.

I still have my BeigeG3 MT sitting in the closet. It's an awesome machine.

Instead of overclocking the machine (which works fine on most boards. I OC'd my 300 to 366 for a while before I bought a ZIF G4), I would suggest picking up a faster processor off of e-bay for cheap.

I have 2 Beige G3's, I removed both stock chips and replaced them with the 1MB cache ones (400 oc to 433 in the tower, and a 300 in the desktop). 1MB cache seems to make them decently faster then the older 512K versions they started with (266 I think they were).

Ahh, the G3.
I still have my BeigeG3 MT sitting in the closet. It's an awesome machine.

Instead of overclocking the machine (which works fine on most boards. I OC'd my 300 to 366 for a while before I bought a ZIF G4), I would suggest picking up a faster processor off of e-bay for cheap.

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I'm planning to do that, but I just thought this would be fun (and a learning experience) right now, while I'm utterly broke.

Are there any problems with adding a G4? Any loss of compatibility in OS9? One of my main reasons for having this machine around is to have something with functional scsi and OS9 gaming, etc.

The last OS to support the Rage chip was 10.2.

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By the way, I had no problems getting 10.4 installed without a video card. Did you mean official support?

Next thing I'm considering is maybe overclocking from 266 to 300mhz... has anyone here done that?

I have lots of pages on how to do it, but I think it would make me feel better to hear some success stories first.

Click to expand...

Go for it. I've been successful getting my 266 to 300 (pushed it a bit higher but it hung a couple of times) and my 300 to 420! (Too scared to push any more.)

Just get something that can check your CPU temperature. I used the one from powerlogix but it only runs in os9.

See details on the temperature subject at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/G3_temp.html also http://www.wmld.com/tech/wierdg3.html has some good info.

I don't know how the MT or Desktop are but the AIO design, closing the case is critical to the airflow over the processor. It will heat up to scary levels if you leave it open while you test.

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Do you remember what jumper settings and bus speed you used? It seems like there is more than one way to get to 300mhz.

In the desktop model, the fan is almost directly over the processor, so I don't think heat should be too much of a problem, although if it is, I could always redirect some airflow or... I'm sure I have a larger heatsink around somewhere.

Just ran into a minor problem.

I used the G3 in 10.4 all last night and earlier this afternoon, shutting down several times and everything was fine.

I went to start it up late (2am?) today, and it loaded to the happy mac icon and simply hung there perpetually.

Following the troubleshooting file included in Xpostfacto, I rebooted into OS9 by restarting with the option key held down. (the timing was kind of tricky)

I relaunched Xpostfacto from within OS9 and chose my 10.4 partition and rebooted and everything worked fine once again.

Not a big deal, but I figured I'd post my progress / troubleshooting in this thread incase anyone else runs into the same issues.

I believe I initially ran into this problem because my battery is slowly dying... (it won't keep the system time and date) I'll have to replace that eventually.

If you're using XPostFacto for OS X, a good PRAM battery is crucial. I found that with almost every machine i've run it on, running without a good battery can cause the machine to hang on boot, restart into OS 9 constantly, etc.

Do you remember offhand approximately how much they cost?

Does anyone know if there is a firmware update available for the 266, and if there is, will updating the firmware effect the way xpostfacto works?

if i recall they cost no more then a fiver

and what do you want a firmware upgrade for ?

You got real lucky bumping that 300 to 420. Most beige G3's don't have the parts necessary to do that. I know my two don't.

When overclocking in general, though, you want to bump the bus as high as you can get away with even if it means knocking down the CPU multiplier. A slightly slower CPU on a faster bus makes for a faster machine overall. If you can bump both the bus and the multiplier then you're golden, but more often than not that won't happen.

if i recall they cost no more then a fiverand what do you want a firmware upgrade for ?

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Just so everything is up to date.

The last OS to support the Rage chip was 10.2.

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By the way, I had no problems getting 10.4 installed without a video card. Did you mean official support?

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Yeah.

There was a lawsuit against Apple relating to the video capabilities of the beige g3's in OS X.

From what I remember, when I upgraded to 10.3 I had to get a new video card. This is when I also had to use Xpostfacto, as X.2 Jaguar is supported on the Beige G3. I recall there being an option in Xpostfacto to 'force old nddrivers' or something like that. Basically it was telling Xpostfacto to re-load the old video driver and tell X to use it.

My memory of events could be off. I have been blessed for the last few years in owning machines that do not need to be hacked in order to be OS X compliant.

Okay, so I got it to boot at 292mhz w/ 83mhz bus. I tried 300mhz w/ 66mhz, but I couldn't get the machine to boot...

How do I know if I am running at a safe speed? Is there any way to test for stability? Temperature sensing apps or benchmarking? What do you prefer?

Also, is there a specific type of jumper that I should be using? I just used some spare HD jumpers I had.

I probably should have done benchmarks before I overclocked.

One thing to do is to replace the thermal goop between the CPU die and the heatsink. It will almost certainly have dried out. There are guides.

Okay, so I got it to boot at 292mhz w/ 83mhz bus. I tried 300mhz w/ 66mhz, but I couldn't get the machine to boot...
How do I know if I am running at a safe speed? Is there any way to test for stability? Temperature sensing apps or benchmarking? What do you prefer?

Also, is there a specific type of jumper that I should be using? I just used some spare HD jumpers I had.

I probably should have done benchmarks before I overclocked.

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Just because it is booting doesn't necessarily mean it is stable at that speed. You should give it an intense break in like running folding@home for a few days straight without powering down. If it survives that, it should be good for anything else you need. Oh,and some Arctic Silver and an oversized heatsink/cooling fan would be nice, just in case.

Also, it's reporting my vram as 8mb despite everymac saying that this machine's max vram is 6mb. I do not have a video card installed.

I've had it up for about 40 minutes total and installed the new Tiger updates. It seemed to get a little warm then and the HD temp went from 22c to 26c, but I really don't think that's indicative of ambient temperature.

I have some fans around that I can use until I can get some thermal paste. I wonder what the chances are that I can get a quieter / higher airflow fan to replace the PSU fan.

Just because it is booting doesn't necessarily mean it is stable at that speed. You should give it an intense break in like running folding@home for a few days straight without powering down. If it survives that, it should be good for anything else you need.

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Will do. I'm still trying to find some kind of temperature monitor though.

As for replacing the fan in the PSU, the is easy.

Open 'er up. Measure the fan and take note of the connection type (or if the wires are soldered on to the PCB). Next thing is to visit your friend google, and get to work.

My BeigeG3 runs stable at 83MHz. It is a Rev A board with a Rev B ROM and a Raytheon VRM for G4's.

As for replacing the fan in the PSU, the is easy.
Open 'er up. Measure the fan and take note of the connection type (or if the wires are soldered on to the PCB). Next thing is to visit your friend google, and get to work.

My BeigeG3 runs stable at 83MHz. It is a Rev A board with a Rev B ROM and a Raytheon VRM for G4's.

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I know how to replace a fan, I just hate shopping for them. :/ You don't happen know what dB the PSU fan runs at, do you?

What difference does the rev. B ROM make?

I have no idea what the db rating of the fans are.

The Rev B ROM allows for the use of slave devices on the IDE chains.

So, I've been thinking. I don't have a whole lot of spare cash right now, but I would really like to upgrade something. I could get a 450mhz G3 for about $10, or I could try and find a video card for this machine. Personally, I kind of want to get a VC first, but I have never added one since most of my machines have onboard graphics capabilities.

I know I need a PCI Radeon Mac edition to enable quartz extreme (I think?), but there seems to be quite a few versions of it..

A less expensive 7000 in 32mb or 64mb flavors, or a 9200 with 128mb... which I haven't found any cheapo deals on yet.

So... hmmm.

What cards are all of you running, and what do you think about them?

Mostly I am concerned about performance in X, since 9 does fine with only the onboard video. Then again, Tomb Raider 2 in 9 looks like butt compared to the PSX version. (is it supposed to, or is it just my limited graphics?)

I guess the overall goal of the project right now is just a general performance increase, a learning experience, and also millions of colors in 10.4, which the onboard video stutters over when enabled.

Planned mods, for personal reference:

- G3 zif, anything with 1mb cache.

- video card, atleast 32mb

- maybe a usb card. probably. that would make sense, if I intend to have this as a backup machine.. but in that case;

- updating the rom might make sense as well, in the case that I ever need to transplant a drive from the G4.

- a controller (for games, yay!) maybe I can find a PS to usb adapter, since we have like... 4 PS controllers here and I like them anyway. I hate trying to play games using thing keyboard.

Any Radeon with 32MB of RAM or more can be made to work with the PCI Extreme hack. I would go for a Radeon 7000 Mac Edition with 64MB of VRAM. A 9200 would be nice (I don't know why people rain on them, I have owned 2 and love them) and that 128MB of VRAM for a frame buffer could come in handy, but if I were you I would save my money.

Then I would pick up a G4 CPU if you are planning on running X. The Altivec optimizations coupled with your now enabled QE should be able to provide decent to good performance when in use.

Then next step is more RAM. Max that sucker out. OS X loves RAM. Feed it some and it will make you happy.

I would also recommend a storage controller upgrade. Even a step up to ATA33 or 66 can make a huge difference. Sonnet Tempo ATA/133 cards are best of class IMO and work great with X. Coupled with an older 40 or 60GB AT/133 HD overall system performance is markedly improved. As we all know the HD is the slowest component in any system.

If you are going to upgrade the storage controller, there is no need to upgrade the ROM. The controller chip on the PCI card will take over.

USB is required by Panther I believe, and Tiger wants firewire. Pick up a USB/Firewire PCI card on the cheap from Fry's or e-bay. Then you should be all set for ports.

Well, so far Tiger hasn't complained about not having USB or firewire. The RAM is already maxed out.

Are there any problems in OS9 with the G4s? Will it interfere with my SCSI stuff? I thought I read something about that somewhere. Maybe that's a 6400 upgrade that I am thinking about though.

I will probably end up with a Radeon 7000. The 9200 is more of an "if I get lucky" kind of thing.

Do you remember what jumper settings and bus speed you used? It seems like there is more than one way to get to 300mhz.

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Sorry but I dont. It is not running anymore as I do not use the 266 cpu anymore. Also in the name of truth, the 420 I have was overclocked from a 350 not a 300.

I have run out of the little jumpers. I hope to get more in the next week or so. If I do, I'll try to re-create my oc successes and report back.

JHV

Do you remember what jumper settings and bus speed you used? It seems like there is more than one way to get to 300mhz.

Click to expand...

Sorry but I dont. It is not running anymore as I do not use the 266 cpu anymore. Also in the name of truth, the 420 I have was overclocked from a 350 not a 300.

I have run out of the little jumpers. I hope to get more in the next week or so. If I do, I'll try to re-create my oc successes and report back.

JHV

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That's okay. I already got to 292mhz with an 83mhz bus and it seems to run fine. On top of that, I bought a 450mhz zif today.

I used this page for reference: http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~t-imai/g3ae1.html

Honestly, I landed on 292 because many of the other settings required having 2 or more jumpers directly next to each other, and the hard drive jumpers I had simply would not fit.

Looking at the settings here, it seems that I will need to buy some mini jumpers to configure it for the 450.

Finally got my ZIF from ic-china.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h149/aphetica/450copy.jpg?t=1207004815

I didn't really think it would be this easy... I managed to get it jumpered correctly using hard drive jumpers even though the fit was a little tight.

Bus is running @75mhz, btw.

Anyway, it booted fine the first time and things seemed to go a little more smoothly. I timed a few boots, and OS X went from 50 seconds (from power 'till the second the menu bar appeared) to about 46 seconds with the new ZIF. I suspect it may load quicker also if I turn Menushade and the Dock off. Maybe. ?

When I tried booting into OS 9, I got a timebomb with an "address error" and it forced me to accept its demands to restart, but it froze instead. Second restart, another freeze. Booted with extensions off and switched the boot OS back to X.

...not totally sure what that's about yet. I need 9 to be functional.

Also, I noticed there was some kind of thermal pad on the old processor when I took it out. Will the new one do okay with only thermal paste, or do I need that pad? It won't come off of the old processor, and the heatsink sits crooked without it. I'm scared to run it for more than a minute or two without the heatsink mounted properly.

So... hooray for my first processor upgrade!

I guess next is a video card, whenever I can afford that.