Power Macintosh G3
Encyclopedia
The Power Macintosh G3, commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases, was a series of personal computer
s designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from November 1997 to January 1999. It was the first Macintosh to use the PowerPC G3
(PPC750) microprocessor
, and replaced a number of earlier Power Macintosh
models, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models. It was succeeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
, which kept the name but introduced a radically different design. The introduction of the Desktop and Minitower G3 models coincided with Apple starting to sell user-configurable Macs directly from its web site in an online storehttp://web.archive.org/web/19980509035420/http://www.apple.com/, which was innovative for the time as Dell
was the only other major manufacturer then doing this.
The Power Mac G3 introduced a fast and large Level 2 backside cache
to Apple's product lineup, running at half processor speed. As a result, these machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed at launch, an assertion that was backed up by benchmarks performed by Byte Magazine
, which prompted Apple to create the "Snail" and "Toasted Bunnies" television commercials.
The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa
/LC
models and the six-PCI slot Power Macintosh 9600
. It is the earliest Old World ROM
Macintosh model officially able to boot into Mac OS X
, and one of only two Old World ROM models able to boot into Mac OS X, the other model being the early PowerBook G3
.
Apple developed a prototype G3-based six-slot full tower to be designated the Power Macintosh 9700. Despite demand from high-end users for more PCI slots in a G3 powered computer, Apple decided not to develop the prototype (dubbed "Power Express") into a shipping product, leaving the 9600
as the last six-slot Mac Apple would ever make.
The beige Power Macintosh G3 series came in three versions: an "Outrigger
" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300
(and ultimately derived from the Macintosh IIvx
); a minitower similar to (but shorter than) the Power Macintosh 8600
enclosure;
and a version with a built in screen, the G3 All-In-One ("AIO"), sometimes nicknamed the "Molar Mac" due to its resemlance to a tooth
, that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) CPU from Motorola
, these machines used a 66.83 MHz system bus and PC66
SDRAM
, and standard ATA hard disk
drives instead of the SCSI
drives used in most previous Apple systems; however, they retained a legacy Fast SCSI internal bus (up to 10 MB/s) along with the then-standard DB-25 external SCSI bus which had a top speed of 5 MB/s.http://www.transintl.com/technotes/mac_g3memstor.htmhttp://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/stats/powermac_g3_233_mt.html Each bus could support a maximum of 7 devices.
The G3 used Apple's new "Gossamer" logic board, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. This was known as the "Yellowknife" project, which had sought to develop the first Apple RISC product -- capable of running any OS that would support it, be it Mac OS or Windows. It was an effort by Apple to gain market share, by allowing their hardware to run industry-standard software, but still remaining Mac OS proprietary . The prototype had a ZIF-socket G3 processor, PCI and ISA slots, Mac and PC serial ports, onboard SCSI, PC and Mac floppy drive connectors, ATX power supplies, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, inserted into an ATX case . The project was scrapped by Steve Jobs, after his return to Apple, and his realization of the devastation of Apple's profits due to the Clone makers . Remnants of this effort can be seen in the form factor of the production G3: the logic board's similarity to the PC ATX
motherboard standard; solder points for a PC-type floppy drive; and the ability to use both proprietary Apple power supplies and industry-standard ATX power supplies. As a compact and versatile motherboard, the Gossamer board was originally designed to be able to support both the high-end PowerPC 604e and the new PowerPC G3, but when initial tests found that the cheaper G3 outperformed the 604e in many tests, this functionality was removed and Apple's 604e-based systems died a quiet death.
These machines had no audio circuitry on the logic board; instead, a PERCH slot (a dedicated 182-pin microchannel connector; a superset of the PCI spec, but which does not accept PCI cards) was populated with a "personality card" which provided the audio circuitry. Several "personality cards" were available:
DVD-ROM drives were now an available option, and Zip drive
s continued to be available as well.
These machines had onboard and external SCSI (from the custom MESH IC
), ADB
, 10BASE-T Ethernet
, two MiniDIN
-8 serial ports, and onboard ATI
graphics (originally IIc, later updated to Pro and then Rage Pro Turbo) with a slot for VRAM upgrade. Three full-length PCI slots and one internal modem
slot, as well as three SDRAM slots (for up to 768 MiB RAM) rounded out the features.
The G3 was the last desktop Macintosh to include built-in external serial port
s.
Early G3s with Revision A ROMs do not support slave devices on their IDE controllers, limiting them to one device per bus (normally one optical drive and one hard disk). Additionally, they came with onboard ATI Rage II+
video. G3s with Revision B ROMs support slave devices on their IDE controllers, and had the onboard video upgraded to ATI Rage Pro. G3s with Revision C ROMs also support slave devices on their IDE controllers, but the most significant technical differences are the newer Open Firmware
version than the previous two models (2.4 vs. 2.0f1) and another onboard video upgrade, this time to ATI Rage Pro Turbo.
The G3 was the last Power Macintosh with a 4 MB ROM. The trend of increasingly large ROMs ended after the introduction of the New World ROM
in the iMac, and then the B&W Power Macintosh G3
.
), though this was in the form of a PCI card, which occupied another PCI slot. The 333 and the (canceled) 366 MHz model had only 6 MiB VRAM; the 300 MHz model shipped with a 128-bit iXMicro
PCI video card with 8 MiB VRAM.
, floppy drive, and the "Wings" personality card. Half of the AIO's case was translucent, suggesting what was to come with the iMac
.
cards and FireWire/USB combo cards (especially after the release of the first generation iMac, which caused many vendors to start releasing USB peripherals for the Macintosh), 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T (gigabit Ethernet
) network adapter (for those who need faster than the onboard 10BASE-T), video cards (ATI Radeon 7000 and 9200 cards are a popular choice), ATA/EIDE, Serial ATA
and Ultra SCSI cards. Television tuner and radio cards are also often chosen to supplement the AV features on a Wings personality card, or to provide A/V input for models with the Whisper personality card.
Some users have upgraded the Whisper personality card in their Beige G3s with a "Wings" Personality card (which is plugged into the same PERCH slot), and some have upgraded the ROM
on their Beige G3s to a newer version (Revision A boards to Revision B or Revision C boards).
For storage, the G3 is capable of taking any ATAPI/IDE hard disks, provided that the drive's size is within the 28-bit LBA limit. This means a G3 is capable of supporting ATA hard disks of up to 137 GB
(228 blocks of 512 bytes each). This limitation can be overcome by using an IDE or SATA PCI-compatible card (e.g. Acard or Sonnet) to allow the G3 to use a maximum of 2 drives over the 137 GB limit.
The ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drive can also be replaced with a CD-RW, DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive, although care must be taken while purchasing the upgrade as the Mac is incompatible with some drives and may refuse to boot at all if an incompatible drive is installed. Also, many third-party optical drives cannot be used as boot devices with the G3, though they work correctly for normal use, and burning on many third party CD-RW and DVD-RW drives requires either commercial drivers or is unsupported even though reading and booting from the drive may still work. It is also capable of taking SCSI storage devices, and with the presence of the right PCI cards, SATA, USB and FireWire storage devices.
The presence of an onboard SCSI controller (the SCSI controller is codenamed MESH -- Macintosh Enhanced SCSI Hardware) and connectors permits the use of Mac-enabled SCSI scanners and storage devices, though this runs at only 5 MB/s.
The G3 can support up to 768 MiB of SDRAM in any configuration (although incompatibility has been reported with some DIMM modules in certain configurations- for example, newer single-sided PC-133 RAM modules will not be detected correctly if they will be detected at all and if the machine can boot with them in place, and the desktop and all-in-one units required the use of low-profile RAM due to space constraints). It should be able to take 168-pin SDRAM of any speed, though it will run at PC66 speeds. The onboard video RAM can be upgraded from 2 MiB to 6 MiB with a 4 MiB SGRAM module (which runs at 83 MHz on Rev. A machines, and 100 MHz on Rev. B and C machines).
The G3 processor module (a PowerPC 750 plus L2 cache) can be easily changed to the faster model, i.e. 333 MHz and even 366 MHz or 375 MHz with an 83.3 MHz bus (uncommon). Consult a Clocking the Power Mac G3 article for more info.
The CPU can be upgraded as high as a 1.0 GHz G4 or 1.1 GHz G3 using ZIF upgrades from third party vendors, although the user would not see much practical difference in performance on chips faster than 733 MHz due to the system bus limitations, which runs at 66.83 MHz unless overclocked. However, G4 chips running over 533 MHz do not allow the system bus to run faster than 66 MHz, so you cannot overclock the bus if you wish to use one of these G4s. (G3s do allow it.)
The All-In-One can be modified to use a PCI video card with the internal monitor.
The G3 officially supports up to Mac OS X
10.2.8, although some devices will not work under Mac OS X, such as the floppy drive, the video features of the "Wings" personality card, and the 3D graphics
acceleration functions of the onboard ATI Rage series video. Support for newer versions is possible with the use of third party software solutions such as XPostFacto
, albeit with a few tradeoffs and catches—the biggest being the lack of support by Apple and the fact that a supported PCI video card must be present as support for the onboard ATI Rage series video was dropped completely as of Mac OS X 10.3 (although the most recent versions of XPostFacto also ships with kernel modules that supports the onboard ATI Rage series video, the module is known to still have a few minor bugs). Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be run only if a G4 processor upgrade is installed.
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from November 1997 to January 1999. It was the first Macintosh to use the PowerPC G3
PowerPC G3
The PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
(PPC750) microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, and replaced a number of earlier Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
models, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models. It was succeeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
The Power Macintosh G3 series was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. as part of their Power Macintosh line...
, which kept the name but introduced a radically different design. The introduction of the Desktop and Minitower G3 models coincided with Apple starting to sell user-configurable Macs directly from its web site in an online storehttp://web.archive.org/web/19980509035420/http://www.apple.com/, which was innovative for the time as Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
was the only other major manufacturer then doing this.
The Power Mac G3 introduced a fast and large Level 2 backside cache
CPU cache
A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations...
to Apple's product lineup, running at half processor speed. As a result, these machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed at launch, an assertion that was backed up by benchmarks performed by Byte Magazine
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
, which prompted Apple to create the "Snail" and "Toasted Bunnies" television commercials.
The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa
Macintosh Performa
The Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers sold through department stores and mass-market retailers from 1992 until 1997, when it was superseded by the Power Macintosh 5x00 series...
/LC
Macintosh LC
The Macintosh LC was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and Apple II compatibility the LC was adopted...
models and the six-PCI slot Power Macintosh 9600
Power Macintosh 9600
The Power Macintosh 9600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...
. It is the earliest Old World ROM
Old World ROM
Old World ROM Macintosh computers are the Macintosh models that use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, usually in a socket . All Macs prior to the iMac use Old World ROM, while the iMac and all subsequent models until the introduction of the Intel-based EFI Models are New World ROM machines...
Macintosh model officially able to boot into Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and one of only two Old World ROM models able to boot into Mac OS X, the other model being the early PowerBook G3
PowerBook G3
The PowerBook G3 is a line of laptop Macintosh computers made by Apple Computer between 1997 and 2000. It was the first laptop to use the PowerPC G3 series of microprocessors...
.
Apple developed a prototype G3-based six-slot full tower to be designated the Power Macintosh 9700. Despite demand from high-end users for more PCI slots in a G3 powered computer, Apple decided not to develop the prototype (dubbed "Power Express") into a shipping product, leaving the 9600
Power Macintosh 9600
The Power Macintosh 9600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...
as the last six-slot Mac Apple would ever make.
Hardware
Outrigger Macintosh
The Outrigger is a style of Apple Macintosh desktop computercase designed for easy access. Outrigger cases were used on the Power Macintosh 7200, 7300, 7500, 7600 and Power Macintosh G3 Desktop computers from August 1995 to December 1998....
" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300
Power Macintosh 7300
The Power Macintosh 7300 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...
(and ultimately derived from the Macintosh IIvx
Macintosh IIvx
The Macintosh IIvx was the last of the Macintosh II series of Macintosh computers from Apple. The IIvx included either a 40, 80, 160 or 400 MB hard drive, three NuBus slots, and a Processor Direct Slot. It was the first Macintosh to have a metal case and the first case design of any personal...
); a minitower similar to (but shorter than) the Power Macintosh 8600
Power Macintosh 8600
The Power Macintosh 8600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced at a processor speed of 200 MHz in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and the Power Macintosh 9600. It replaced the Power Macintosh...
enclosure;
and a version with a built in screen, the G3 All-In-One ("AIO"), sometimes nicknamed the "Molar Mac" due to its resemlance to a tooth
Tooth
Teeth are small, calcified, whitish structures found in the jaws of many vertebrates that are used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also use teeth for hunting or for defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are embedded in the Mandible bone or the Maxillary bone and are...
, that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) CPU from Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, these machines used a 66.83 MHz system bus and PC66
PC66
PC66 refers to internal removable computer memory standard defined by the JEDEC. PC66 is Synchronous DRAM operating at a clock frequency of 66.66 MHz, on a 64-bit bus, at a voltage of 3.3 V. PC66 is available in 168 pin DIMM and 144 pin SO-DIMM form factors. The theoretical bandwidth is...
SDRAM
SDRAM
Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs...
, and standard ATA hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
drives instead of the SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
drives used in most previous Apple systems; however, they retained a legacy Fast SCSI internal bus (up to 10 MB/s) along with the then-standard DB-25 external SCSI bus which had a top speed of 5 MB/s.http://www.transintl.com/technotes/mac_g3memstor.htmhttp://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/stats/powermac_g3_233_mt.html Each bus could support a maximum of 7 devices.
The G3 used Apple's new "Gossamer" logic board, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. This was known as the "Yellowknife" project, which had sought to develop the first Apple RISC product -- capable of running any OS that would support it, be it Mac OS or Windows. It was an effort by Apple to gain market share, by allowing their hardware to run industry-standard software, but still remaining Mac OS proprietary . The prototype had a ZIF-socket G3 processor, PCI and ISA slots, Mac and PC serial ports, onboard SCSI, PC and Mac floppy drive connectors, ATX power supplies, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, inserted into an ATX case . The project was scrapped by Steve Jobs, after his return to Apple, and his realization of the devastation of Apple's profits due to the Clone makers . Remnants of this effort can be seen in the form factor of the production G3: the logic board's similarity to the PC ATX
ATX
ATX is a motherboard form factor specification developed by Intel in 1995 to improve on previous de facto standards like the AT form factor. It was the first big change in computer case, motherboard, and power supply design in many years, improving standardization and interchangeability of parts...
motherboard standard; solder points for a PC-type floppy drive; and the ability to use both proprietary Apple power supplies and industry-standard ATX power supplies. As a compact and versatile motherboard, the Gossamer board was originally designed to be able to support both the high-end PowerPC 604e and the new PowerPC G3, but when initial tests found that the cheaper G3 outperformed the 604e in many tests, this functionality was removed and Apple's 604e-based systems died a quiet death.
These machines had no audio circuitry on the logic board; instead, a PERCH slot (a dedicated 182-pin microchannel connector; a superset of the PCI spec, but which does not accept PCI cards) was populated with a "personality card" which provided the audio circuitry. Several "personality cards" were available:
- Whisper was the personality card of the regular versions, providing the Screamer sound ASICASICASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...
(with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio capabilities with simultaneous I/O) and no video facilities. - Wings or Audio/Video Input/Output Card was an A/V "personality card" which, in addition to the audio I/O, included compositeComposite videoComposite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. In contrast to component video it contains all required video information, including colors in a single line-level signal...
and S-VideoS-VideoSeparate Video, more commonly known as S-Video and Y/C, is often referred to by JVC as both an S-VHS connector and as Super Video. It is an analog video transmission scheme, in which video information is encoded on two channels: luma and chroma...
capture and output. - Bordeaux or DVD-Video and Audio/Video Card differed from the Wings card in that it did not include a DAV slot, used the Burgundy sound ASICASICASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...
(which provided improved sound performance), incorporated a higher performance video capture IC, and included additional circuitry to support the playback of DVDDVD-VideoDVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder...
movies. http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G3/PowerMac_G3/PowerMac_G3.pdf
DVD-ROM drives were now an available option, and Zip drive
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB....
s continued to be available as well.
These machines had onboard and external SCSI (from the custom MESH IC
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
), ADB
Apple Desktop Bus
Apple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
, 10BASE-T Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
, two MiniDIN
Mini-DIN connector
The mini-DIN connectors are a family of multi-pin electrical connectors used in a variety of applications. Mini-DIN is similar to the larger, older DIN connector...
-8 serial ports, and onboard ATI
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
graphics (originally IIc, later updated to Pro and then Rage Pro Turbo) with a slot for VRAM upgrade. Three full-length PCI slots and one internal modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
slot, as well as three SDRAM slots (for up to 768 MiB RAM) rounded out the features.
The G3 was the last desktop Macintosh to include built-in external serial port
Serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...
s.
Early G3s with Revision A ROMs do not support slave devices on their IDE controllers, limiting them to one device per bus (normally one optical drive and one hard disk). Additionally, they came with onboard ATI Rage II+
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
video. G3s with Revision B ROMs support slave devices on their IDE controllers, and had the onboard video upgraded to ATI Rage Pro. G3s with Revision C ROMs also support slave devices on their IDE controllers, but the most significant technical differences are the newer Open Firmware
Open Firmware
Open Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It originated at Sun, and has been used by Sun, Apple, IBM, and most other non-x86 PCI chipset...
version than the previous two models (2.4 vs. 2.0f1) and another onboard video upgrade, this time to ATI Rage Pro Turbo.
The G3 was the last Power Macintosh with a 4 MB ROM. The trend of increasingly large ROMs ended after the introduction of the New World ROM
New World ROM
New World ROM computers are Macintosh models that do not use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM on the logic board. Due to Mac OS X not requiring the availability of the Toolbox, this allowed ROM sizes to shrink dramatically , and facilitated the use of Flash memory for system firmware instead of the now more...
in the iMac, and then the B&W Power Macintosh G3
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
The Power Macintosh G3 series was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. as part of their Power Macintosh line...
.
| Component | Power Macintosh G3 (Outrigger) | Power Macintosh G3 (Minitower) | Power Macintosh G3 (All-In-One) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codename | "Gossamer" | "Artemis" | |
| Display Display device A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form... |
N/A | 15 inches (38.1 cm) RGB Multiple scan CRT Cathode ray tube The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and... display, 1024 × 768 pixel resolution |
|
| Processor Central processing unit The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in... |
233, 266, or 300 MHz PowerPC G3 (750) | 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC G3 (750) | 233 or 266 MHz PowerPC G3 (750) |
| Cache Cache In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere... |
64 KB L1, 512 KB or 1 MB backside (1:2) L2 | 64 KB L1, 512 KB (1:2) L2 | |
| Graphics Computer graphics Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware.... |
ATI 3D Rage II+, ATI 3D Rage Pro, or ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo with 2 MB of 83 MHz SGRAM Expandable to 6 MB SGRAM memory |
ATI 3D Rage II+ or ATI 3D Rage Pro with 2 MB of 100 MHz SGRAM Expandable to 6 MB SGRAM memory |
|
| Front side bus Front side bus A front-side bus is a computer communication interface often used in computers during the 1990s and 2000s.It typically carries data between the central processing unit and a memory controller hub, known as the northbridge.... |
66.83 MHz (Configurable to 70 MHz, 75 MHz or 83.3 MHz) | ||
| Memory | 32 or 64 MB Low Profile PC66 SDRAM Expandable to 768 MB |
64 or 128 MB PC66 SDRAM Expandable to 768 MB |
32 MB Low Profile PC66 SDRAM Expandable to 768 MB |
| Hard drive (Up to 128 GB Supported) |
4 or 6 GB | 4, 6, 8, or 9 GB | 4 or 6 GB |
| Expansion Slots | 3 - PCI, 1 - PERCH: Either "Whisper", "Wings A/V", or "Bordeaux." | 3 - PCI, 1 - PERCH: Either "Whisper" or "Wings A/V" | |
| Expansion Bays | 2 - for 3.5-inch SCSI devices | Addition of 5.25 or 3.5-inch SCSI or ATA devices supported | N/A |
| Media | 24x CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Optional Zip | 24x CD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Optional Zip | |
| Standard Features | 1 ADB Apple Desktop Bus Apple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999.... port, 2 × mini-DIN-8 RS-422 serial port Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time... (printer/modem Geoport GeoPort GeoPort was a serial data system used on some models of the Apple Macintosh. GeoPort slightly modified the existing Mac serial port pins to allow the computer's internal sound hardware to emulate various devices such as modems and fax machines. GeoPort could be found on late-model m68k-based... , AppleTalk AppleTalk AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, but is now unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009 in favor of TCP/IP networking... ), 1 DB-25 SCSI SCSI Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it... port, Built-in mono speaker, 16-bit audio input with optional RCA jacks, 16-bit audio output with optional RCA jacks, 10BASE-T Ethernet, Optional 56k modem, DB-15 Video display port. |
1 ADB Apple Desktop Bus Apple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999.... port, 2 × mini-DIN-8 RS-422 serial port Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time... (printer/modem Geoport GeoPort GeoPort was a serial data system used on some models of the Apple Macintosh. GeoPort slightly modified the existing Mac serial port pins to allow the computer's internal sound hardware to emulate various devices such as modems and fax machines. GeoPort could be found on late-model m68k-based... , AppleTalk AppleTalk AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, but is now unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009 in favor of TCP/IP networking... ), 1 DB-25 SCSI SCSI Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it... port, Built-in stereo speakers, Built-in microphone, 1 - 16-bit audio input, 3 - 16-bit audio output, 10BASE-T Ethernet, Optional 56k modem, External DB-15 Video display port. |
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| Minimum Operating System | Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems... |
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| Maximum Operating System | Mac OS X 10.2.8 Mac OS X v10.2 Mac OS X version 10.2 "Jaguar" is the third major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.1 code name Puma and preceded Mac OS X Panther... "Jaguar" and Mac OS 9.2.2 Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as... ^* ^*Unofficially possible to install up to Mac OS 10.4.11 "Tiger" on these systems with help of third-party software, or Mac OS X 10.5.8 "Leopard" if a G4 processor upgrade is also installed. See "Upgradability" below. |
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| Weight | 22.0 lbs. (10 kg) | 33.1 lbs. (15 kg) | 59.5 lbs. (26.8 kg) |
Outriggers
The 233 and 266 MHz desktop models shipped with 4 GB hard drives, and the 300 MHz with a 6 GB drive, all at 5400 RPM.Minitowers
The 233 MHz minitower shipped with a 4 GB drive, the 266 MHz with a 6 GB drive, and the 300 MHz minitower shipped with two 4 GB drives in a RAID configuration; all models were 5400 RPM. The 300 MHz minitower was replaced by the 333 MHz and finally the 366 MHz towers, each of which shipped with a 9.1 GB 7200 RPM SCSI drive, attached to a SCSI/PCI card—this model also included 100BASE-TX Ethernet (as opposed to the other models' 10BASE-T10BASE-T
Ethernet over twisted pair technologies use twisted-pair cables for the physical layer of an Ethernet computer network. Other Ethernet cable standards employ coaxial cable or optical fiber. Early versions developed in the 1980s included StarLAN followed by 10BASE-T. By the 1990s, fast, inexpensive...
), though this was in the form of a PCI card, which occupied another PCI slot. The 333 and the (canceled) 366 MHz model had only 6 MiB VRAM; the 300 MHz model shipped with a 128-bit iXMicro
Integrated Micro Solutions
Integrated Micro Solutions San Jose, California, later iXMicro, a privately held company, was a graphics chipsets and video card manufacturer. Christopher Knight was a vice president of graphics marketing for IXMICRO...
PCI video card with 8 MiB VRAM.
All-In-One
The AIO shipped in two basic configurations: a 233 MHz version with a floppy drive and a 4 GB hard drive and a 266 MHz version with a built-in Zip driveZip drive
The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB....
, floppy drive, and the "Wings" personality card. Half of the AIO's case was translucent, suggesting what was to come with the iMac
IMac G3
The iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
.
Upgradability
The Gossamer logic board has three full-length (12") PCI slots, making it capable of taking any PCI cards that have Macintosh drivers available for them (for example, some RealTek-based network adapters, a lot of USB, ATA/IDE [or SATA] and FireWire cards). The most common PCI card upgrades normally added to Beige G3 Power Macs are FireWire cards, USBUniversal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
cards and FireWire/USB combo cards (especially after the release of the first generation iMac, which caused many vendors to start releasing USB peripherals for the Macintosh), 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T (gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...
) network adapter (for those who need faster than the onboard 10BASE-T), video cards (ATI Radeon 7000 and 9200 cards are a popular choice), ATA/EIDE, Serial ATA
Serial ATA
Serial ATA is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives...
and Ultra SCSI cards. Television tuner and radio cards are also often chosen to supplement the AV features on a Wings personality card, or to provide A/V input for models with the Whisper personality card.
Some users have upgraded the Whisper personality card in their Beige G3s with a "Wings" Personality card (which is plugged into the same PERCH slot), and some have upgraded the ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
on their Beige G3s to a newer version (Revision A boards to Revision B or Revision C boards).
For storage, the G3 is capable of taking any ATAPI/IDE hard disks, provided that the drive's size is within the 28-bit LBA limit. This means a G3 is capable of supporting ATA hard disks of up to 137 GB
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
(228 blocks of 512 bytes each). This limitation can be overcome by using an IDE or SATA PCI-compatible card (e.g. Acard or Sonnet) to allow the G3 to use a maximum of 2 drives over the 137 GB limit.
The ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drive can also be replaced with a CD-RW, DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive, although care must be taken while purchasing the upgrade as the Mac is incompatible with some drives and may refuse to boot at all if an incompatible drive is installed. Also, many third-party optical drives cannot be used as boot devices with the G3, though they work correctly for normal use, and burning on many third party CD-RW and DVD-RW drives requires either commercial drivers or is unsupported even though reading and booting from the drive may still work. It is also capable of taking SCSI storage devices, and with the presence of the right PCI cards, SATA, USB and FireWire storage devices.
The presence of an onboard SCSI controller (the SCSI controller is codenamed MESH -- Macintosh Enhanced SCSI Hardware) and connectors permits the use of Mac-enabled SCSI scanners and storage devices, though this runs at only 5 MB/s.
The G3 can support up to 768 MiB of SDRAM in any configuration (although incompatibility has been reported with some DIMM modules in certain configurations- for example, newer single-sided PC-133 RAM modules will not be detected correctly if they will be detected at all and if the machine can boot with them in place, and the desktop and all-in-one units required the use of low-profile RAM due to space constraints). It should be able to take 168-pin SDRAM of any speed, though it will run at PC66 speeds. The onboard video RAM can be upgraded from 2 MiB to 6 MiB with a 4 MiB SGRAM module (which runs at 83 MHz on Rev. A machines, and 100 MHz on Rev. B and C machines).
The G3 processor module (a PowerPC 750 plus L2 cache) can be easily changed to the faster model, i.e. 333 MHz and even 366 MHz or 375 MHz with an 83.3 MHz bus (uncommon). Consult a Clocking the Power Mac G3 article for more info.
The CPU can be upgraded as high as a 1.0 GHz G4 or 1.1 GHz G3 using ZIF upgrades from third party vendors, although the user would not see much practical difference in performance on chips faster than 733 MHz due to the system bus limitations, which runs at 66.83 MHz unless overclocked. However, G4 chips running over 533 MHz do not allow the system bus to run faster than 66 MHz, so you cannot overclock the bus if you wish to use one of these G4s. (G3s do allow it.)
The All-In-One can be modified to use a PCI video card with the internal monitor.
The G3 officially supports up to Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
10.2.8, although some devices will not work under Mac OS X, such as the floppy drive, the video features of the "Wings" personality card, and the 3D graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
acceleration functions of the onboard ATI Rage series video. Support for newer versions is possible with the use of third party software solutions such as XPostFacto
XPostFacto
XPostFacto is an open source utility that enables the installation of PowerPC versions of Mac OS X up to Mac OS 10.4 , and Darwin on some PowerPC-based Apple Macintosh systems that are not officially supported for them by Apple....
, albeit with a few tradeoffs and catches—the biggest being the lack of support by Apple and the fact that a supported PCI video card must be present as support for the onboard ATI Rage series video was dropped completely as of Mac OS X 10.3 (although the most recent versions of XPostFacto also ships with kernel modules that supports the onboard ATI Rage series video, the module is known to still have a few minor bugs). Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be run only if a G4 processor upgrade is installed.
External links
- Power Macintosh G3 Desktop, Mini Tower and All-In-One specifications at AppleSpec
- Apple History
- Power Mac Do-It-Yourself Repairs & Upgrades
- Apple's developer note, describing internals like chip set etc.
- Power Macintosh G3 Specs
- NetBSD/macppc Frequently Asked Questions
- Yellow Dog LinuxYellow Dog LinuxYellow Dog Linux, also known as YDL, is a free and open source operating system for high performance computing on multicore architectures. It focuses on GPU systems and computers using the Power Architecture . YDL is currently developed by Fixstars...
v3.0 had official support for the Power Mac G3 (beige) - Upgrading the onboard video card is possible while still using integrated monitor of the Apple G3 All-In-One (AIO).