I got me a Smurf tower!

pumpkintoshpumpkintosh
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hey guys.



Over the past few months, my Pismo has been headed down hill. First the audio-out jack started coming loose, so now I cant listen to music with headphones, and then the hard drive died. I managed to bring the drive back to life by putting it in the freezer, but it has been on the brink of disaster more than a few times since. I realized that pouring the amount of money needed for a new hard drive of sufficent capacity and a new audio board into this Pismo would have been a little crazy. So, last week I started looking around on eBay for a used Power Mac that would suit my user needs and my budget to replace this Pismo, and last night I found that machine:



Power Mac G3 B&W @ 350MHz

Revision 2 Motherboard

1x 256MB stick of RAM

Stock CD-ROM Drive

Zip Drive

10GB Western Digital (5400 RPM)

40GB Maxtor (7200 RPM, ATA 100)

Stock Rage 128 16MB

Ultra ATA/100 Controller Card

Apple USB Keyboard and a MacAlly mouse.

----------

$299.99, Buy It Now.



The machine is in excellent shape according to the pictures, which is definately a plus.



I already have a 120GB Seagate Barracuda, a 52x32x52x CD-RW and a 16x DVD-ROM that I bought as thee first 3 parts for a PC that I decided not to build which I will be adding to the B&W when it arrives.



As the rest of the world upgrades, I seem to be downgrading.



Anyways, just wanted to share the news.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    That is neat, especially considering there is a pretty good market of processor upgrades for old g3s and g4s If you wanted to, you could likely update that bad boy to a 1 ghz g4, or beyond.



    combined with that HD and those optical drives, that will be a very nice machine, May want to update the graphics too though.



    at anyrate, for $300, that's not bad at all
  • Reply 2 of 8
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Sounds a lot like something I just bought.



    - 350 Mhz G3

    - 640MB ram

    - 6Gig Maxtor 5400 (stock), 60gig IBM Deskstar 7200

    - Internal Zip

    - DVD/CD

    - UltraATA/100 PCI card

    - Adaptec 2930U card

    - Apple Pro Keyboard & mouse



    $295, last minute poach



    Pretty good price, huh?



    By the way, for $250 you can get a Powerlogix 900Mhz G3 uprade from OWC.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    dmband0026dmband0026 Posts: 2,345member
    I want one! Just cause they are sweet looking and easy to upgrade.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    pumpkintoshpumpkintosh Posts: 51member
    Hot damn, a friend of mine just offered me a deal on his B&W that I couldnt refuse:



    Power Mac G3 B&W @ 450MHz

    Revision 2 Motherboard

    640MBs of RAM (2x 256, 1x 128MB)

    Lite-ON 48x CD-RW

    Stock CD-ROM Drive

    SCSI Zip 250 Drive

    40GB Maxtor HD

    ATi Radeon 7000 32MB PCI

    Two SCSI Cards

    Apple ADB Keyboard, USB Mouse

    ----------

    $225!!!



    Looks like I'll have two B&W's soon. I'll probably put the best componets of each into one machine to create a super B&W, I will call this mission: "Project Papa Smurf" .



    Then I'll sell the other on eBay.



    w00t!
  • Reply 5 of 8
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Some people have told me that all of the Rev 2 B&W's use the same G3 chip. I'm not sure this is entirely true, but I think it is in regard to the Rev 2 350's and 400's at least. (from personal experience)



    Once I get my 350 I'm certainly going to play with it a bit.



    Even so, 225 for that machine is quite good. If you remove the non-Video PCI cards you can even run PCI Extreme on it, which speeds things up a bit.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    pumpkintoshpumpkintosh Posts: 51member
    Yeah, I heard that about the Rev2 CPUs as well. It's probably true, Apple has done it before.



    I probably wont keep the SCSI cards so that I can run PCI Extreme, as you said. They'll probably go in the B&W that will be eBay bound.



    Anyways, this is great. It's looking like I will have a fantastic B&W that will be very capable as a main machine until I am able to get an MDD G4 or G5 next year. And my overal cost on the G3 will be under $400.



    Sweet!
  • Reply 7 of 8
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    What kind of PCI SCSI cards are in there?
  • Reply 8 of 8
    pumpkintoshpumpkintosh Posts: 51member
    I dont actually know, neither does he. He just knows that they work. He thinks one of them is an Ultra2.



    I'll check them out when the machine gets here in a few days.
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