Power Mac

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Tech Specs

Beige Power Mac G3 All-in-One

LEM Staff - 1998.04.03

The G3 All-in-One succeeded the Power Mac 5000 series for the education market. Key features include the G3 processor and a 15″ multiscan display (13.8″ viewable). The All-in-One was specifically designed for the education market, where less wires and parts to remove are a big plus.

Beige Power Mac G3 All-in-OneThe motherboard is on a slide-out tray for easier upgrade and service. A 4 GB EIDE hard drive, 24x CD-ROM player, and 10Base-T ethernet are standard. An internal Zip drive is optional.

Unfortunately, this machine was discontinued to make room for the iMac. A lot of users, especially educators, missed having an integrated Power Mac with PCI slots.

If you have a hard drive larger than 8 GB, you should partition is so that the first partition is under 8 GB in size (for simplicity, we suggest 7 GB). Failure to do this could eventually result in an unbootable computer, as all System files must be within the first 8 GB of drive space. These Macs can work successfully with larger drives for some time, but once a System file goes outside of the first 8 GB of space, you’ll have nothing but problems.

Mac OS X

side videw, G3 all-in-oneIf you have an IDE hard drive over 8 GB in size, you must partition it or you will not be able to install Mac OS X. If you are creating the partition within OS X, it must be smaller than 7.45 as reported by Disk Utility (because sometimes a GB is billion bytes and sometimes it’s 1,073,741,824 bytes); we suggest simply setting it at 7 GB to avoid having to redo the whole installation if the partition ends up bigger than specified (it happens). Mac OS X must be completely within the first 8 GB of space on your hard drive or you will not be able to run OS X.

You can only boot OS X from a “master” drive. This applies to hard drives and CD-ROM drives. If the CD-ROM is set to slave, you will not be able to install OS X. If the hard drive is set to slave, you will not be able to boot from it.

Power Mac G3 All-in-One Non-Apple upgrades and peripherals (such as unsupported USB devices, replacement drives, and third-party memory) may cause problems when installing or booting into Mac OS X.

Be sure to read and follow Apple’s “Read Before You Install” instructions to increase the likelihood of getting OS X installed and running on the first try.

The beige G3 is not officially supported under OS X 10.3 Panther or later, but it does work with 10.2.8 and earlier. Panther can be installed using XPostFacto 3, although built-in video is not currently supported.

Cautions

Data on the RAM Disk is lost during a restart, unlike earlier Macs. Apple also notes that the 100 MHz Pentium PC Compatibility card is incompatible, although this seems to be due to an audio cable problem. There are also reports that the G3 will not stay asleep.

Other compatibility issues:

  • GeoPort Modem not supported
  • QTC and AMC not supported
  • Must disconnect LocalTalk if using ethernet
  • Needs updated drivers for StyleWriter 4100 & 4500
  • Needs new ethernet driver for use on 10/100 autosensing hubs
  • LocalTalk printing slow on busy networks
  • Apple TokenRing card not supported

Some of these issues were addressed by later versions of the Mac OS.

When buying a G4 upgrade for the beige G3, make sure it is compatible with this model’s 66 MHz bus. Pulled G4s from Apple’s Yikes! G4 and some OEM G4s are specifically designed for a 100 MHz bus and will not work properly in the beige G3.

The beige G3 supports 256 MB DIMMs, but they must be built using 128 Mb chips. DIMMs built with 256 Mb chips will work, but the memory controller will only see the first 128 Mb of each chip. Compatible 256 MB DIMMs will have 16 memory chips, 8 on each side.

Details

  • introduced 1998.04.03; discontinued 1999.01.01
  • Supported Mac OS Versions
  • CPU: 233/266 MHz PPC 750
  • Bus: 66 MHz
  • L2 cache: 512 KB 2:1 backside cache
  • Performance: 4.5/5.0 (relative to 7500/100); 767/888, Macbench 4
  • RAM: 32 MB (expandable to 768MB, desktop version requires low profile DIMMs), uses 3.3V unbuffered 100 MHz 168-pin SDRAM, 3 sockets accept 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256MB DIMMS
  • VRAM: 2 MB SGRAM, expandable to 6 MB
  • Video: supports resolutions to 1024 x 768, uses ATI 2D/3D 64-bit accelerated chip set
  • Hard drive: 4 GB EIDE drive. Maximum IDE drive size is 128 GB without third-party support. See How Big a Hard Drive Can I Put in My iMac, eMac, Power Mac, PowerBook, or iBook? for three options.
  • CD-ROM: 24x maximum throughput
  • 3 PCI slots
  • 1 Personality Card slot (matches Comm Slot II, but only works with modems)
  • Microphone: standard 3.5mm minijack, compatible with line-level input including Apple’s PlainTalk microphone
  • ADB: 1 port for keyboard and mouse
  • serial: 2 DIN-8 GeoPorts on back of computer
  • SCSI: DB-25 connector on back of computer
  • 10Base-T ethernet connectors on back of computer
  • size (HxWxD): 19.9″ x 16.1″ x 18.0″
  • Weight: 59.5 lb.
  • Gestalt ID: 510
  • PRAM battery: 3.6V half-AA
  • upgrade path: G3 and G4 ZIF CPU upgrades (note that maximum CPU speed you can set using the J16 jumper block is 466 MHz – 7 times bus speed – unless the upgrade sets its own multiplier)

Accelerators & Upgrades

Online Resources

Cautions

  • Power Macs earlier than the Quicksilver models do not have built-in support for IDE hard drives with capacities over 128 GB. Without a third-party solution, larger drives can only be formatted to 128 GB in these models. There are three options:
  • Macs with IDE hard drive do not provide SCSI termination power, depending on external SCSI devices to provide it. For more details, see SCSI Termination Power.

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