beige G3

[zmatt]

I just got a free beige G3 from a friend of mine. I haven't booted it up yet, so i dont exactly know which OS is on it and what the exact specs are. But before i get bogged down in that, are there any ideas of what use i can put it too?

 

[zmatt]

wow one day and no responses. is anybody out there?
BTW its missing its CD drive, but this model is IDE so can i just plug in any CD drive i have laying around?

 

[macdude425]

I don't know how I missed this message.

You SHOULD be able to pop in any IDE CD drive and have it work just for booting and installing Mac OS - however, how it will work past that, I could not tell you how functional it would be.

 

[zmatt]

well i got in home today. i booted her up. its 266mhz with 32mb ram and a 4gig hd. the floppy drives use some proprietary connector i have never seen. if i really wanted a floppy drive i would simply find the pins and make my own connector, but a can do with out. It booted OS8.1 and thought the year was 1952 lol. anyways according to lowendmac they take standard sd ram so i will pop in some sticks i have laying around. It also has a nice guide to OCing the machine and i see no harm in taking this puppy up to 300 or 400mhz.

 

[zmatt]

I just upgraded the ram to 96 megs and it flies! i also put in a cdrom drive, im about to test it. the major problem it that when the original was removed they took the bay with it so i have no way of locking down the cd drive. any ideas?

 

[macdude425]

Duct/masking tape. When I built my PC-in-a-box, I taped the CD drive down very well with masking tape, and that sucker didn't budge.

 

[zmatt]

lol are you serious? well the cd driver works. thats a relief. i tried using it with t he front cover but the tray kept hitting it so i removed it for now. it technically works its just not going with the apple style lol.

 

[zmatt]

I updated to oS9 today and increased the ram to 160 megs, it runs a little slower but its fast enough. i wish it didn't have the half height ram deal because if it could take full height then i would have maxed it out by now.

 

[djg320]

Maybe you could put Debian on it. I wonder if it'd work correctly. If so the things you could do would be pretty diverse, especially if you got it up to 400mhz.

 

[zmatt]

well its 233mhz right now. i want to oc it but i never have the time.