how should I upgrade my new, used bw G3 400?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
hi, I've got a 400 G3 b+w Rev B from work. (Hooray I have Panther in the house and I love it.) 640 megs ram, ibm scsi 9 gig internal drive, 2 external pci scsi cards (one is ultra 2 scsi lvd/se) and I think 1 more internal scsi. It's got 3x128 ram and a 256 in the 4th slot. video is ATI rage 128 w 16 megs vram



I'd consider an upgrade card, but like the idea of upgrading the drives and video to see what happens.



All that scsi! I've never tried it, but what about an external RAID? how much would this affect my panther performance? or is money better spent on RAM (I have 640 megs).



What are my video card options?



I can justify between $400-600 right now.



This machine will spend time with pro print apps, flash, maybe some FCP, and audio



thanks for your attention - I'm pretty excited, and welcome any insight and suggestions





Rod

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Here's the order I'd upgrade things in:



    1. Hard drives. Get rid of the SCSI stuff and get an ATA card. ATA/66, ATA/100, ATA/133, it doesn't really matter. The ATA controllers in the B&W G3 are notoriously temperamental (although the Rev. Bs are better, they're still a slow ATA/33), and you'll want ATA instead of SCSI. SCSI will give you a headache, I guarantee it. Get an 80 GB hard drive from NewEgg.com and put it on the ATA card, and you're set. You could get a 40 GB hard drive or something but right now 80 GB or 120 GB are the best price/performance ratio. You'll only end up spending $10-$20 less for a 40 GB hard drive than you will for an 80 GB. Oh, and make sure that ATA card is Mac-compatible, they're not nearly as common as PC compatible ATA cards. You may have to spend $50 on that ATA card.



    2. Video card. Get rid of the Rage 128 and buy a Radeon PCI or a Radeon 7000 PCI. The Radeon PCI is faster than the 7000, but more expensive. Even so, on eBay, they are both under $100, and they both support Quartz Extreme using a hack called "PCI Extreme" which can be found at MacUpdate.com.



    3. Processor. The B&W G3 takes ZIF processors. Upgrades are fairly cheap, with 900 MHz G3s at about $230. You can also sell the G3/400 ZIF for $50 or so, to a beige G3 owner perhaps.



    4. Optical drive. It probably came with a CD-ROM, or if you're lucky, a DVD-ROM. However, picking up a CD-RW or a Combo drive would be a good idea. Check the Drive Compatibility Database at XLR8YourMac.com for more information on this. I have a Lite-On 52x32x52x CD-RW that works perfectly, and it's cheap - less than $40.



    5. RAM. It's not really a priority as 640 MB is enough for OS X, but if you want you can go up to 1 GB using four 256 MB modules. But 640 MB is fine.



    This will make for a good general purpose machine. If you had a larger budget I'd tell you to just sell the blue and pick up a more recent G4 tower, like a Quicksilver, but with only a few hundred to spend, a G3/900 upgrade, a good video card, and a large hard drive will be enough.



    All told, look at your cost:



    ATA card - $50

    80 GB hard drive - $70

    Radeon PCI - $80

    G3/900 processor - $230

    CD-RW drive - $40

    Total - $470



    Then you can sell your old stuff:



    SCSI hard drive - $20

    SCSI cards - $20

    Rage 128 PCI - $25

    G3/400 processor - $50

    CD-ROM drive - $20

    Total - $135



    So that's a net cost of $335, to get one bitchin' machine that'll kick any G3 iBook straight to hell. Go for it. Even if you don't get as much as I listed for the various items you're selling, it's still a great deal.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    luca dishes out some very good advice. i would put the g3/900mhz upgrade as the most important thing...that, and the video card. a 900mhz or 800mhz g3 upgrade from sonnet (spelling?) will make a HUGE difference from what i understand. before buying any drives, make sure you check the drive compatibility database at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com



    you can put in your specific model of machine and it will give you reports of how different drives have fared for various owners.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    i'd keep everything the same.



    if you 're looking to upgrade, the only thing i'd do is add an ATA drive or two.



    reason being that's an investment you can take with you to another machine.



    save the rest of your money. $500 is half a 12" iBook at student prices.
  • Reply 4 of 12
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Yes, $500 is half a 12" iBook at student prices. Half the cost for probably about 90% of the performance. Sure, you lose portability, but if you don't need that, I think the upgraded B&W G3 is a much better deal. Plus, it wouldn't even cost $500 to upgrade - more like $400, not counting the items you'd be able to sell. And you got it for free (I assume...), so $300-$400 for a machine that'll be nearly as good as a G4 iBook, and way better than a G3 iBook, is a very good deal. A friend of mine has a G3/900 upgraded blue G3 and he swears by it - Panther performance is excellent with the Radeon PCI, and it consistently out-XBenches the G3 iBooks (which were brand new just a couple months ago).



    There's also the slight possibility of G4/1 GHz upgrades and Radeon 9200 PCI graphics cards down the road. There have been 700 MHz-1 GHz G4 ZIFs available for beige G3s for a while now, and they're working on making fast G4s available for the blue and white G3s. As far as the Radeon 9200 PCI - there's a PC version available, and ATI has discontinued the Radeon 7000 PCI, so they'll most likely want to provide a PCI graphics card for Mac users sometime.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    Luca's post does bring up the BW's lack of AGP video, something crucial for quartz extreme and really good OS X performance. For this reason alone, I may consider another system, but I still consider an upgraded BW a very good value.



    Would you be running OS 9 or OS X?
  • Reply 6 of 12
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    You can run Quartz Extreme on the PCI bus, but it's not fully supported and apparently it uses a lot of the PCI bus's bandwidth. Also, PCI video cards tend to be more expensive. The fastest Mac-compatible one is a Radeon, which costs nearly $100, whereas you can get an equivalent AGP card for half that, and some pretty amazingly powerful AGP cards for anywhere from $100 to $400. If you're not planning on playing games, though, a regular Radeon will suit you fine. A G3/900 isn't exactly the best gaming machine anyway.



    For slightly more expandability it is possible to pick up a Sawtooth G4/400 or so for about $300 or $400. Selling your blue G3 with all the stock stuff would get you $200 or $250. However, I don't think it's the best way to go - you'd have a slower processor (presence of AltiVec doesn't make up for less than half the MHz) and you'd still have to upgrade most of the components, although you wouldn't have to get an ATA card because the newer G4s have fine onboard ATA controllers. If you were buying a machine now, I'd suggest a graphite G4 over a blue G3, but since you already got the blue G3 I think it's wiser to stay with that.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    I have an upgraded B&W G3 - and I absolutely love it.



    OWC G3/550 upgrade

    SIIG ATA-133 PCI card with WD 30 GB and WD 80 GB hard drives

    SIIG USB 2.0 PCI card with DVD-ROM and WD 40 GB hard drive attached

    1 GB RAM (4x256 MB)

    Radeon 7000 - I used to have PCI Extreme! enabled, but removed it - runs faster without clogging the PCI bus

    Lite-On 12x10x32x CD-RW

    Panther



    The only thing I'd change (if I had the $$$) is I'd put in the G3/900 ZIF.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    I had the Radeon 7000 in my B&W G3, When it worked, it worked great, but it did have an issue with heat. It would cause enough extra heat that something would get hot enough to lock the entier machine. Some creative cardboard ducting took care of it. (Cardboard and electrical tape are non-conductive) Just something to keep in mind. Of course, I could have had some defective components in the mix too.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    fantastic responses - thanks everyone,



    It's interesting - the main reason I asked the questions was because a coworker got me all excited about the scsi. So I was half expecting confirmations and scsi advice. You guys are sure, right - bail on the scsi? I read about overall performance boosts with a RAID set-up over at accelerate your mac, and it's not too expensive until you get into the 10-15 k drives.



    But my needs really are OSX, and graphics (not games), so this is sounding like I should save my money - a bigger ATA drive(s), and maybe a proc upgrade, but not much more, and save up for something that properly handles an up-to-date graphics card.



    quote:

    "luca dishes out some very good advice."



    I'll say.



    thanks again
  • Reply 10 of 12
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by follow

    fantastic responses - thanks everyone,



    It's interesting - the main reason I asked the questions was because a coworker got me all excited about the scsi. So I was half expecting confirmations and scsi advice. You guys are sure, right - bail on the scsi? I read about overall performance boosts with a RAID set-up over at accelerate your mac, and it's not too expensive until you get into the 10-15 k drives.



    But my needs really are OSX, and graphics (not games), so this is sounding like I should save my money - a bigger ATA drive(s), and maybe a proc upgrade, but not much more, and save up for something that properly handles an up-to-date graphics card.



    quote:

    "luca dishes out some very good advice."



    I'll say.



    thanks again




    I wouldn't necessarily ditch scsi. historically, macs handle scsi very well, though i imagine some of this support is waning with OS X. SCSI drives can provide fantastic performance, but the costs of the drives is also high if you wish to add more storage space.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    drewpropsdrewprops Posts: 2,321member
    Yes, thanks to Luca et al for that great info!



    I own both a B&W G3 and a 600Mhz iBook. I always enjoy going back to sit in front of the tower...it seems SO FAST compared to the iBook. Just dropping in a new processor would be a fantastic upgrade for me!
  • Reply 12 of 12
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    A few reasons to ditch SCSI:



    1. Performance from Ultra2 SCSI is 80 MB/s. That's fast, but Ultra ATA/100 is faster, at 100 MB/s.



    2. A drive that will take full advantage of the speed of Ultra2 SCSI while also providing enough storage to actually be useful is going to cost a lot of money. Most SCSI drives are 9 GB, 18 GB, 27 GB, 36 GB, or 72 GB. Anything above 18 GB will cost about the same as or more than an 80 GB ATA hard drive.



    3. OS X has poor support for SCSI devices.



    4. Getting more than one SCSI device to work is a nightmare. You're welcome to try but I bet after a few tries messing with jumpers and SCSI ID settings you'll give up and go with ATA.



    There is Ultra160 and Ultra320 SCSI, which provide 160 MB/s and 320 MB/s () transfer rates, but in order to buy a drive that can take advantage of those incredible transfer rates you're going to have to spend a few hundred bucks. And you won't see enough of a performance increase to be worth it. If you just get a Wide Ultra2 SCSI hard drive, yes it'll be fast, but most likely it'll be 7200 RPM like an ATA drive, and the performance will be nearly identical.



    If you want to mess with super-fast drives, maybe try getting a Serial ATA card and a Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM hard drive. Serial ATA has a max transfer rate of 150 MB/s, nearly as much as Ultra160 SCSI, but it's cheaper and simpler to set up. It couldn't be easier - even easier than standard ATA. With regular ATA, you can put two drives on each controller, a master and a slave. With Serial ATA, you just connect a cable from the hard drive to the controller, and you're done.



    But personally I'd just go with a plain ATA/100 or ATA/133 card. It's not worth spending lots of money on a 10,000 RPM serial ATA hard drive and matching card. If you need good drive performance, just get a drive with 8 MB of cache. Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, and probably some other manufacturers offer drives with extra cache, and it does help performance.



    BTW, thanks everyone for the compliments! My friends and I have done lots of stuff with blue G3s so that has helped me out. It's almost making me want one, even though my PowerMac is more modern.
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