Man, I gotta check my facts. 82.9 MHz? Yeah. Try 83.3. ;-)

That sounds a bit like a corrupted CD. Rhapsody DR2, eh? I've got OS X Server 1.2, and it seems to work well on a PowerBook G3, but I've never tried it on a beige G3. What are you using for a web browser?

9.2.2 should positively haul on that machine. Get yourself a nice Rage 128 or Voodoo 3, and you've got a good OS 9 gaming rig if you're into that sort of thing.

Peace,

Drew

You're not using the original POS Matsushita-manufactured optical drive, are you? Try a different drive and see if that helps.

Matsushita is the worst for optical drives. They'll often have trouble reading perfect discs, or just crap out half-way through an install for no reason. Other Macs with troublesome drives from the same firm are the PowerBook G3s (except the Kanga), B&W G3, and the clamshell iBooks - my newer iBook G3s have Toshiba and Sony drives, though my iBook G4 has a Matsushita DVD burner (works for now, knock on wood). I try as much as possible to not use any OEM Matsushita stuff because it'll often break if I do. Surprisingly, other stuff from them was fantastic - Matsushita Kotobuki Electrochemical (MKE) made Quantum's HDAs, and they were some of the best hard drives ever. They make some decent LCD and plasma setups, too.

Anyway, Voodoo cards are fantastic in those old things. My top-end beige box runs a Voodoo3 or 4 (since I'm using a Rev. A 83MHz board with the lame RAGE II, the Voodoo is almost required), and my B&W has a Voodoo5 5500. Sadly, those cards have no OS X support (that I know of), so they should be really cheap - I got mine for free, anyway. It's fantastic running Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, StarCraft, or Diablo II on those machines under 8 or 9. Have fun with it.

Matsushita is the worst for optical drives. They'll often have trouble reading perfect discs, or just crap out half-way through an install for no reason.

Click to expand...

Yes, I originally tried to install Tiger on mine with that drive as you're supposed to use as many stock components as possible with XPF, but it kept stopping with file copy errors during the second stage of the installation (from the second CD, after the reboot during Setup), yet it worked fine with a Sony DVD-RW.

You should try putting Tiger on it though, it does run very nicely on these!

the only way i can get OS X to install on my Beige G3 is by using the stock 24x cd drive. it boots instantly and installs flawlessly. if i use any other drive it wont boot or fails during copy.

i have seen what happens when you OC the system bus to 83mhz, yes you get a performance gain but that is somewhat hampered by the ram timing (refresh timing) being slowed down ( it will be running at 83mhz but the timing goes from CL2 to CL 3) which hurts the memory throughput and in tern hurts the speed gain you would get if the ram stayed at CL2. so i guess you can say it sort of works against itself in some way's.

i am no way shape or form saying you wont see a performance gain from the system bus OC but a bit is lost when the memory timing gets slowed down.

in gauge pro (in OS 9.2.2) shows my memory performance at 75mb/second - 78mb/second and that is with a G3 450mhz (OC to 466 cause of system bus) system bus is at stock 66mhz with 3 256mb PC100 CL2 stick's.

i would like to see other peoples results with the system bus OCed to 83mhz around the same speed or slower G3 CPU. for the life of me i cant remember what memory performance gauge pro showed with the stock G3 266mhz CPU with the same amount of ram (i am thinking around high 40's or mid 50's) but its been a long time since i have seen what it shows so i am not for sure on those numbers.

in gauge pro (in OS 9.2.2) shows my memory performance at 75mb/second - 78mb/second and that is with a G3 450mhz (OC to 466 cause of system bus) system bus is at stock 66mhz with 3 256mb PC100 CL2 stick's.
i would like to see other peoples results with the system bus OCed to 83mhz around the same speed or slower G3 CPU. for the life of me i cant remember what memory performance gauge pro showed with the stock G3 266mhz CPU with the same amount of ram (i am thinking around high 40's or mid 50's) but its been a long time since i have seen what it shows so i am not for sure on those numbers.

Click to expand...

FWIW, I set up a beige G3 with an 83 MHz bus and a G4 500 downclocked to 416 MHz. Gauge Pro reports 105 MB/s.

Slower-than-expected ZIF upgrade

Peace,

Drew

If you overclock, I am pretty sure you will need PC100 memory to run at 83mhz.

And I checked my two G3's and they both have the 66mhz chips.

in gauge pro (in OS 9.2.2) shows my memory performance at 75mb/second - 78mb/second and that is with a G3 450mhz (OC to 466 cause of system bus) system bus is at stock 66mhz with 3 256mb PC100 CL2 stick's.
i would like to see other peoples results with the system bus OCed to 83mhz around the same speed or slower G3 CPU. for the life of me i cant remember what memory performance gauge pro showed with the stock G3 266mhz CPU with the same amount of ram (i am thinking around high 40's or mid 50's) but its been a long time since i have seen what it shows so i am not for sure on those numbers.

Click to expand...

FWIW, I set up a beige G3 with an 83 MHz bus and a G4 500 downclocked to 416 MHz. Gauge Pro reports 105 MB/s.

Slower-than-expected ZIF upgrade

Peace,

Drew

Click to expand...

You're better off with a faster bus and a slightly slower CPU. You might still find a way to get the extra speed out of the CPU, but dropping the system bus speed wouldn't be a good way to do it.

Simple Installation

Apple designed your Power Mac to be easily upgradeable. A processor upgrade installation happens in minutes—simply replace your Power Mac's current processor with a faster 500 MHz or 1.0 GHz Encore/ZIF upgrade. (2) The included documentation details the process step by step. The Encore hardware automatically configures the correct bus ratio without the need for switches. In no time you're Power Mac will be up and running—simply fast.

alright, I scrapped Rhapsody, since I could not get it to configure my network right, even manually inputting the IP, DNS, subnet, gateway, and all that.

So, I popped in my OS 9.2.1 CD, and installed that. I now updated it to 9.2.2, installed all my games , and slapped iCab and soon Office 2k1 on there, and it will be a decent rig for my parents.

I also plugged in my 12" LC CRT to the built in video, which can not pull anything higher than 640x480x67htz, though it can pull millions of colors; and tried to get OS X going. i got the apple logo, and the spinner, but that was it, it just kept spinning for 20 minutes. If I had a spare CD-ROM, I would swap that in. Hell, if I had an apple DVD-ROM, I would pop my decoder card from my RAGE 128 in my B&W on to the ATI video card in it.

I also noticed the ATI video card has a SGRAM slot, which is odd, because I do not know of any older ATI Rage cards with expandable memory. I will ID it in ASP as soon as I am done copying files.

I am not going to OC the thing, why mess with success? besides, guage pro reports it running at 50C as it is, which is 122F. My B&W is currently reporting 100.4F at 400mhz.

Another thing I noticed with the built in video, I get a white screen for a split second before it starts booting, from what I can tell looks like a text cursor. Open firmware? I am not pressing anything. If I can, I will get a video of it.

-digital

If I had a spare CD-ROM, I would swap that in. Hell, if I had an apple DVD-ROM, I would pop my decoder card from my RAGE 128 in my B&W on to the ATI video card in it.

Click to expand...

Do you have any other CD or DVD drives at all, not only Apple-logoed ones? PC ones should work, though not all will boot the machine - Sony ones usually play nicely with Macs if you have any of those.

nope, at least I don't think I do. Maybe in this one big box of computer parts. I did have 3-4 52x drives I got cheap, and a 32x sony drive...

-digital

I also noticed the ATI video card has a SGRAM slot, which is odd, because I do not know of any older ATI Rage cards with expandable memory. I will ID it in ASP as soon as I am done copying files.

Click to expand...

Ayup, they sure did. All Beige G3s and tray load iMacs with either a Rage IIc, Rage II+DVD or Rage Pro came with an SGRAM slot on the mobo that could take a 2 or 4 MB SGRAM DIMM. Later machines (such as Rev. C G3s (IIRC) and Rev. B, C and D iMacs) already came with a 4MB DIMM in the slot.

I installed the ATI utilities, and it recognises the PCi card as a Rage Pro. The built in stuff is a Mach64, and ASP identifies that as having 4mb of VRAM. No idea how much the card has. The slot on it is empty.

Makes me wonder what revision the ROM is, not that I care...

-digital

The BIV would be a Rage IIc...the Rage II was basically a redesigned Mach64. On top of that, those were the only three chips that Apple used on the Beige G3s: The Rage IIc, Rage II+DVD and Rage Pro. Rage IIc machines got a Rev. A ROM, so yours would most likely be Rev. A

People say "Rage IIc", but they really mean Rage II+DVD (the two are virtually the same thing, and the underlying 2D/3D acceleration of the II+DVD is the same as the IIc). I've never actually heard of a Rev A machine with a straight Rage IIc. My two Rev A boards have Rage II+DVD. But all that is a fancy way of saying Mach64, and it's a silly distinction. ;-)

Rage IIc was used on the x500 Gazelle motherboards (about time, too, as the Valkyrie was getting a little dated). IIc/II+DVD/Mach64 was also used on Rev A Bondi iMacs.

The Rage Pro was used on Rev B beige G3s and on Rev B/C/D iMacs.

The video card is probably an ATI XClaim 3D Pro. (More here: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/index6.html )

Peace,

Drew

all I know is my head is spinning with all of these video card names. I know about them all, but when you list them all in one post, and connect them, that's a major brain fart

I got office 2k1 installed. Going out to find a USB->PS/2 adapter, so I can use the existing keyboard and mouse, and they have a descent pentium killer.

-digital

Beige's are great machines. I have one that has been working great for me for years. Good quality machine. Almost as good as my 8500, almost.

alright, I got it all set up, hooked up, and I am typing on it now in iCab 3.03 under OS 9.2.2.

One issue I am having is I can not get the Deskjet 812c to work. It's hooked to the USB card, but the HP utility can not find it, even though it is hooked in properly (tried both USB ports), and it's on.

Any thoughts? I always seem to have trouble with printing in OS 9. I don't know why.

other than that, it's a great fast little box, virus free (thanks to norton systemworks), which I think my dad will get a lot of use from, a lot more than the slow as molasses windows 98 pentium 166 box, which would always crash. I have only had 2 type 11 errors on boot, but only after installing something, and a nother reboot fixed that problem.

Oh, and I love how GURU (guide to RAM upgrades), the little app put out by newer does not seem to think Apple made a Beige G3 in a 233mhz tower config, but made a 233 in a desktop config. It's not there.

-digital

hello from the beige. I popped 10.2.8 on it tonight. Runs like a champ with 384mb, quite a nice rock stable machine, until my dad figures out how to KP the thing. He already locked up 9.2.2 hard more than a dozen times, so I figured I may as well pop X on it.

Now I just need Office 2k4 and a working printer, and USB -> ADB adapter, and away we go.

-digital

You'll probably want to stick with ADB on that machine as the USB card requires drivers (it doesn't have drivers in the ROM like later machines) to work and thus won't work until the OS boots past a certain point. If you ever need to trouble shoot, ADB is indispensable.

Are you using the Rage Pro for video? I would recommend putting at least a Rage 128 in there as it has better support in OS X. Rage 128s should be cheap ($20 or less) on the used market.

Peace,

Drew