Forums | MacLife

sevoneone · 2005-04-17 4:14 pm

Hey all. A while ago I inherited a Beige G3 233 Tower from someone who was just going to toss it in the donation box. Anyway I've beefed it up pretty good with some spare parts/freebies: 333 Mhz G4 (350 Mhz Apple ZIF module), 320 MB of RAM, 30 GB HDD, CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo, ATI Radeon PCI Mac Edition, and running 10.3.8 thanks to xpostfacto. It is running pretty good and I'd like to use it a media/network appliance hooked up to my TV via s-video on the radeon. I doesn't seen to have any problem playing back mp4 and 3vix files up to 640x480. There a few questions I have. First and foremost would be size and noise. I'd like this machine to have the smallest footprint possible for obvious reasons, I have an old 7300 out in the garage that is the same form factor as the desktop G3s. It shouldn't be too hard to swap out the tower components and put them in the 7300 case should it?
Second up is noise: the PS fan on this thing blows both literally and metaphorically, is there anything I can do to make it quieter? Also on that note I don't have a fan on the CPU, just a heat sink, which is all that Apple ever had on the 350 G4, and being that it is in fact under-clocked at 333 I should not have any problems with that.
Third: Network performance. 10Mbps won't work to well for streaming video files from the G5. I have a D-Link DFE-530TC+ Rev. D 10/100 card that I once upon a time used in a PowerMac 6500, though it did take a hacked driver to get it to work. Any chance of this working under OS X on this machine?
Last but not least is drive performance. I have read some bad things about the built in ATA controller on these motherboards and that they can screw up royally with OS X. Does anyone have a good, cheap, 3rd party solution to suggest?

Thanks.

Orion · 2005-04-17 8:22 pm

Okay, for starters, changing the case may be more than you bargained for. You have to dremel the back of your case to get it to fit. The personality card for the G3 won't line up with anything on the desktop case. Not sure about the powersupply and getting that to fit. The G3 can use a standard PC power supply if you change the jumper on the board to PS/2 (its near the PCI slots). Maybe you could put it into a desktop PC case with a super quiet powersupply, or just get a quieter power supply for the Tower. I happen to have two desktop G3's and two tower G3's like you have, and I agree that the desktop seems to take up less space than the tower. Maybe if you had a closet or large cabinet nearby you could put the G3 in there and extend the cables to where you need them. I am not sure about the ethernet card with OS X. If you are looking for a good replacement for the ATA controller, I will recommend the Sonnet Tempo Trio card. It has two ATA 133 controlers, plus you get two firewire ports and two USB ports. Then you could use a wireless USB keyboard, freeing you from having wires strewn everywhere. I have one of these in my "frankenmac" G3 and I am fully satisfied with it. Having everything on one card frees up two other slots for more cards.

Hopefully someone more helpful will pop in here with more info.

ironhawk · 2005-04-17 8:25 pm

Look for and Acard ATA PCI adapter...
I hear those sell on the cheap. I think an ATA 100 would do well, tho you can go as fast as SATA, and would notice the boost in speed, regardless of the machine's bus speed.

As for the fan, the only real solution is to replace it with the quitest fan of the same size you can find.

You'll have to try the network card in your G3, to find out whether OS X will behave with it or not. OS X may very well already have drivers for it. A Google search will reveal whether anyone else has made OS X drivers for it.

If you want a smaller footprint, you should just put it in a smaller tower.
A small aluminum ATX would make a pretty cool media center smile

ironhawk · 2005-04-17 8:28 pm

Orion wrote:
Okay, for starters, changing the case may be more than you bargained for. You have to dremel the back of your case to get it to fit. The personality card for the G3 won't line up with anything on the desktop case. Not sure about the powersupply and getting that to fit. The G3 can use a standard PC power supply if you change the jumper on the board to PS/2 (its near the PCI slots). Maybe you could put it into a desktop PC case with a super quiet powersupply, or just get a quieter power supply for the Tower. I happen to have two desktop G3's and two tower G3's like you have, and I agree that the desktop seems to take up less space than the tower. Maybe if you had a closet or large cabinet nearby you could put the G3 in there and extend the cables to where you need them. I am not sure about the ethernet card with OS X. If you are looking for a good replacement for the ATA controller, I will recommend the Sonnet Tempo Trio card. It has two ATA 133 controlers, plus you get two firewire ports and two USB ports. Then you could use a wireless USB keyboard, freeing you from having wires strewn everywhere. I have one of these in my "frankenmac" G3 and I am fully satisfied with it. Having everything on one card frees up two other slots for more cards.

Hopefully someone more helpful will pop in here with more info.

I don't think he even needs the Personality Card, because he has a Radeon, and that's what OS X will use to decode DVDs. He's also using it to connect to his TV.

sevoneone · 2005-04-17 11:34 pm

Thanks for the replies and info... I'll check out the ATA cards though if I recall the Trio is rather pricey.
I went ahead and tried the ethernet card, I was a little hesitant because I had tried it in a G4 back in 10.2 days and it caused kernel panics, but it looks like Panther not only likes it but has drivers for it!
As for the case change I figured some modification would be required, but you are right about the personality card, I don't think there is anyway to get it to fit right. Will the system boot with it removed? The only down side of removing it is that the audio I/O is on the card and I'd be forced to use a USB iMic or similar device...

ironhawk · 2005-04-18 10:38 am

Your Mac should boot just fine without the Personality Card.
And, remember, you could always pick up a used surround sound card, which would keep things more tidy than a USB device.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2005-04-17 4:14 pm

Media Center Mac

#2 2005-04-17 8:22 pm

Re: Media Center Mac

#3 2005-04-17 8:25 pm

Re: Media Center Mac

#4 2005-04-17 8:28 pm

Re: Media Center Mac

Orion wrote:

#5 2005-04-17 11:34 pm

Re: Media Center Mac

#6 2005-04-18 10:38 am

Re: Media Center Mac

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