Power Macintosh G3
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{{Infobox Computer
|name = Power Macintosh G3
(Beige)
|developer = Apple Computer
|type = desktop
|photo = Image:Beige Power Macintosh G3 Minitower.jpg
|caption = The beige Power Macintosh G3 minitower
|first_release_date = November, 1997
|discontinuation_date = January, 1999
|processor = PowerPC G3, 233 – 333 MHz
}}
The Power Macintosh G3 (commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases) was a series of personal computers made by Apple from November 1997 to January 1999. It used the PowerPC G3 (PPC750) microprocessor, and succeeded the Power Macintosh line, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models; it was itself succeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which kept the name but was a totally new design.
A major leap forward was made in this model through the introduction of a fast, large Level 2 backside cache, running at half processor speed, which reduced data bottlenecks and allowed very efficient use by the computer of its bus speed; 512 KB on the 233 MHz and 266 MHz models, 1 MB on the 300 MHz, 333 MHz and later models. Because of this, at the time Power Macintosh G3 machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed.
The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa/LC models and the high-end Power Macintosh 8600 and 9600. During development, it quickly became evident that the G3 was a faster machine than the PPC604-based Macs, so the Power Macintosh G3 became the flagship instead, and the PPC60x architecture was dropped altogether from the desktop line.
Contents |
Hardware
The beige Power Macintosh G3 series came in three versions: an "Outrigger" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300; 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"), that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU from Motorola, these machines used a 66 MHz system bus and PC66 SDRAM (actual operating frequencies 66.83 MHz), and used standard ATA hard disk drives instead of the SCSI drives used in most previous Apple systems.
The Platinum G3s used Apple's new "Gossamer" motherboard, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. Remnants of this effort can be seen in the board's form factor, which is nearly identical to the PC ATX motherboard standard, in the board's solder points for a PC-type floppy drive, and in the board's ability to use both proprietary Apple power supplies and industry-standard ATX power supplies. 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.
The desktops ranged from 233 to 300 MHz, with the minitowers ranging from 233 to 333 MHz. 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. 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 tower, 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-T), though this was in the form of a PCI card, which occupied another PCI slot. Unlike its predecessor, the 300 MHz minitower, the 333 MHz model had only 6 MB VRAM, because the 300 MHz model shipped with a 128-bit iXMicro PCI video card with 8 MB VRAM. 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 drive, floppy drive, and the "Wings" personality card. Half of the AIO's case was translucent, suggesting what might come with the iMac; it is considered by many to be the precursor to the iMac.
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 doesn't accept PCI cards) for a "personality card" was populated with a "Whisper" personality card on regular versions, offering 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio with simultaneous I/O, or a "Wings" personality card, an AV version which included composite and S-Video capture and output. DVD-ROM drives were now an available option, and Zip drives 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 Rage IIc, later updated to Rage 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 MB RAM) rounded out the features.
Early Platinum 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. Platinum G3s with Revision B ROMs support slave devices on their IDE controllers, and had the onboard video upgraded to ATI Rage Pro. Platinum 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.
It should be noted that the Beige G3 had the largest ROM of any Macintosh to date — 4 MB. The trend of increasingly large ROMs ended, though, after the introduction of the New World ROM in the iMac, and then the B&W Power Macintosh G3.
Upgradeability
- 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 PowerMacs are FireWire cards, USB cards and FireWire/USB combo cards (especially after the release of the first generation iMac, which caused many vendors to start releasing FireWire and 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 or 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 Beige 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 Beige G3 is capable of supporting ATA hard disks of up to 137 GB (228 blocks of 512 bytes each).
- 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 if an incompatible drive is installed; many third-party optical drives cannot be used as boot devices with the Beige G3, though they work correctly for normal use. 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.
- For memory, the Beige G3 can support up to 768 MB of SDRAM in any configuration (although incompatibility has been reported with some DIMM modules in certain configurations). 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 MB to 6 MB with a 4 MB SGRAM module (which runs at 83 MHz on Rev. A machines, and 100 MHz on Rev. B and C machines).
- The CPU can be upgraded with a G4 processor of up to 1.0 GHz using upgrade kits 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 Beige G3 officially supports up to Mac OS X 10.2.8 (although some devices will not work or would work erratically under Mac OS X— for example, the floppy drive does not work [a third party solution was available to make the floppy work under OS X, although it takes much longer to read a disk] and graphics acceleration for the onboard ATI Rage series video is not supported under Mac OS X), but support for newer versions is possible with the use of third party solutions, albeit with a few tradeoffs and catches; for example, a supported PCI video card must be present in one of the PCI slots as the onboard ATI Rage series video is not supported by Mac OS X 10.3 and higher.