got 2 blue/white g3 towers from a sdsu surplus auction, but.....

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XLiveUSR

Weaksauce
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Jul 13, 2004
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as the title states, i got 2 blue/white g3 towers from a sdsu surplus auction today and i'm trying to clean up the machines. hardware wise all ok. the issue is i cant seem to find a way to uninstall apps i dont need at all. since i dont have the os 8.6 to do a clean install. i want to remove as much useless junk as possible from the one working g3 and clone the disk if possible to the 2nd g3 because the 2nd one just comes up with a ? meaning no os, i think? been a long time since i actually played with a mac on my own

or can i just put os 9 on both and be done with it. the g3's will be spare units incase my gamming pc goes down or i'm runnin a disk utility and need access to the net to kill time
 
Those are one of my favorite cases so personally I would gut one of them and use the chassis for a PC.

I have a G3 in my house and while OS 9 had its charm it feels very outdated now. I would suggest putting OS X on that thing at the very least. You should be able to put 10.3.9 on there which will allow you to run an awful lot of software out there.

Good luck and keep us updatd!
 
Just put 9 on it and get rid of 8.6. If you meet the minimum requirements, you could try running OS X on those...but I don't recommend it.
 
i have spare sdram i can pop in. as of now both machines have 256 pc100 up from 128. i dont know how osx will run on the blue/white g3 towers w/256 meg of ram or if it will be smooth. if someone has done this, please reply.
i'm thinking os9 might be a better bet. i can see if my work has a os9 cd in their tech shop hopefully so i can fix the g3. from what i gatered, one has a 4gb hdd and the other has a 6gb in it.

as for other ideas for the g3, i was thinking of lighting up the "g 3" marking behind the frosted sidepanel some how.....
but 1st things 1st working on getting the g3 runnin is #1 now
 
XLiveUSR said:
i have spare sdram i can pop in. as of now both machines have 256 pc100 up from 128. i dont know how osx will run on the blue/white g3 towers w/256 meg of ram or if it will be smooth. if someone has done this, please reply.
i'm thinking os9 might be a better bet. i can see if my work has a os9 cd in their tech shop hopefully so i can fix the g3. from what i gatered, one has a 4gb hdd and the other has a 6gb in it.

as for other ideas for the g3, i was thinking of lighting up the "g 3" marking behind the frosted sidepanel some how.....
but 1st things 1st working on getting the g3 runnin is #1 now
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Limit your signature to 10 or less lines per forum rules.
 
Put OS X 10.4 on it. It'll run faster than 9. Just make sure you get some extra RAM for them. You could also stick Linux on one if you want.
 
What's the speed of the G3 processor?

I had 10.3 running on a 366mhz (240MB ram... Or something) ibook G3 and it seemed to work ok. Minus anything that required hardware graphical acceleration... ie quartz.
 
from what the metallic sticker on the back says & what system profiler confirmed says it's a g3 300 w/ 128mb pc100 6gb hdd ( the g3 now has 256mb pc100. had some spare stick lying around)

did u also had osx on the 6gb hdd? i have a ole maxtor 80gb 8mb cache ata133 lying around. i could try and pop it in [ as a secondary hdd ] and see if it see's it and if i can format it. i'm thinking osx may bee to much for that little 6gb hdd. but i'm gonna try and get the disks tomorrow from work or monday when i go back and try and install os9
 
I got OS X running on a 5.2gb HD :).

Yeah if you make sure that you remove all "printer drivers" and "other languages" you can get the install under 2gb... Make sure you remove all programs you dont need too (or ones that wont run, like Garage Band, Imovie, Idvd etc.)
 
Arcygenical said:
I got OS X running on a 5.2gb HD :).
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I got it running on a first gen ibook. I think that had a 3 or 4 gig drive in it. Yea.....

To the OP. I picked up a 450 g3 blue and white a while ago from asurplus sale. Think it has 640 ram it it now(found all my pc100). Runs 10.3 server ok for surfing the net. I just upgraded it to a radeon 7000 or 7500 because the rage it it sucked(can't remember what card). Got it because it was 10 bucks. I had given my friend my g3 powerbook to take notes on in school so I use this sucker when I need to backup an apple. Works fine.
 
buzzard34 said:
Just put 9 on it and get rid of 8.6. If you meet the minimum requirements, you could try running OS X on those...but I don't recommend it.
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I have 2 also and they run OS X great ;)
 
CEpeep said:
Put OS X 10.4 on it. It'll run faster than 9. Just make sure you get some extra RAM for them. You could also stick Linux on one if you want.
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Do NOT put 10.4 on a G3.

10.3 runs much smoother with 95% of the same functionality of 10.4.

I would suggest finding a copy of 10.3 and installing it to see how you like the machine. It shouldn't cost you more than $50 or so now.
 
Come to think of it, I have a copy of 10.3 I'm not using anymore. If I can find it I'll sell it to you for $25.
 
Rocketpig said:
Do NOT put 10.4 on a G3.

10.3 runs much smoother with 95% of the same functionality of 10.4.

I would suggest finding a copy of 10.3 and installing it to see how you like the machine. It shouldn't cost you more than $50 or so now.
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I've used them both and actually thought that 10.4 was faster on mine, though it was maxxed out with 1GB of RAM. 10.4 makes better use of additional RAM, so that could be the cause of my speed boost. With 256MB, 10.3 could very well be faster, but I wouldn't know.
 
Rocketpig said:
Come to think of it, I have a copy of 10.3 I'm not using anymore. If I can find it I'll sell it to you for $25.
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If he doesn't want it and you find it hit me up with a PM. I could use a copy since I can only find my tiger disk and 10.3 server disks.
 
thx 4 the help, but i'm gonna try and get the disks from work and see if they let me have it ( os9 )being it no longer being sold or if they have a older osx cd or dvd lying around that i can have or buy it from the tech shop. surfing the net on the g3 sucks a$$ barley make it out half the time
 
swatbat said:
If he doesn't want it and you find it hit me up with a PM. I could use a copy since I can only find my tiger disk and 10.3 server disks.
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If I can find the disk, it's all yours. I'll check in the next few days.
 
OS8 and OS9 are both abominations, resource hogs, no major functionality over OS7, etc.
I still wouldn't try OSX without at least 512 megs of RAM, preferably a gig, but neither would I pay more than $10 for a blue and white G3 tower, they had those machines in the Education lab where I went to college, and absolutely hated using them.
 
NulloModo said:
OS8 and OS9 are both abominations, resource hogs, no major functionality over OS7, etc.
I still wouldn't try OSX without at least 512 megs of RAM, preferably a gig, but neither would I pay more than $10 for a blue and white G3 tower, they had those machines in the Education lab where I went to college, and absolutely hated using them.
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may be for some, but when i was in school , like back 1999 they were ok. never had any issues at all. infact they were perfect for the basics like office type work.

anyway....well i got 9.22 from work and i'll be installing it tonight and see what happens.....
 
XLiveUSR said:
may be for some, but when i was in school , like back 1999 they were ok. never had any issues at all. infact they were perfect for the basics like office type work.

anyway....well i got 9.22 from work and i'll be installing it tonight and see what happens.....
Click to expand...

9 is fine as long as you are running a single app. If you can bump the system up to 384 or so(more if you can) 10.2/10.3 should run pretty good on it. I'd also try to dig up a bigger hd. On my blue and white I just dug up a 30 or 40 gig 7200 rpm drive. I could notice the diffrence.
 
swatbat said:
9 is fine as long as you are running a single app. If you can bump the system up to 384 or so(more if you can) 10.2/10.3 should run pretty good on it. I'd also try to dig up a bigger hd. On my blue and white I just dug up a 30 or 40 gig 7200 rpm drive. I could notice the diffrence.
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well i put in an extra 256 for a total of 384 megs o ram. i installed os9 on the original and then on a 80gb maxtor diamondmax9 series hdd. on the larger it seems to load way better that the old 6gb.... the other g3 b/w is a 350 with a dvd drive and has the mpeg2 card attached to the ati so i ;m using that now and i'm going to try to get the other g3 b/w runnin later in the week. i just need to tweek some more, well not much since its a clean install. i was thinking of puttin a combo drive in their so i can burn cd's. can i get any ole combo unit from the pc side and pop it in or does it have to be mac specific?

the drive in their is a matshita DVD-ROM SR-858.and under system profiler it say "apple disc burning" is supported. does that mean it's a dvd/cdrw combo drive?

if not, i found a apple specific combo drive unit, genuine apple logo & apple firmware, brand new on ebay from a powerseller. i can add jaguar for $10 or panther for $30 if i wanted...
 
XLiveUSR said:
if not, i found a apple specific combo drive unit, genuine apple logo & apple firmware, brand new on ebay from a powerseller. i can add jaguar for $10 or panther for $30 if i wanted...
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I would add Panther. It found it to be much faster than Jaguar on older machines.
 
I use Panther on both my old G3s. I have 2 new macs, including a 24" iMac, but I use the G3s just "for fun" if you know what I mean. Mainly I use them as backup machines, but I use the iMac as a CD player in my room, and I have a wireless adapter plugged into it so I can check email and stuff. My other G3 is actually a powerbook, which I got broken from a garage sale for $5 and I fixed it, it was simply a matter of unplugging the PRAM battery, which was so dead it would not allow the comp to boot. So have fun with your G3 systems, there's lots of things you can still do with them!
 
TheLordsServant said:
I use Panther on both my old G3s. I have 2 new macs, including a 24" iMac, but I use the G3s just "for fun" if you know what I mean. Mainly I use them as backup machines, but I use the iMac as a CD player in my room, and I have a wireless adapter plugged into it so I can check email and stuff. My other G3 is actually a powerbook, which I got broken from a garage sale for $5 and I fixed it, it was simply a matter of unplugging the PRAM battery, which was so dead it would not allow the comp to boot. So have fun with your G3 systems, there's lots of things you can still do with them!
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Hehe, was I the one that told you to unplug the battery? I think I remember your thread about this.

To the OP. How you tried to put 10 on it yet?
 
swatbat said:
Hehe, was I the one that told you to unplug the battery? I think I remember your thread about this.

To the OP. How you tried to put 10 on it yet?
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yes. one of the techs let me take the disc from work so i can test and see if it works, i have 10.4 up and osx boots up dam good and d/l the updates too and still amazing and surprised is more like it being it only has 384mb of ram. it just fine for me.

i'm gonna try and nail the combo unit with the osx option so i can put the burner in the g3 350 and i'll put the dvd drive in the g3300
 
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