Power Macintosh G3

The Power Macintosh G3 Tower ( " Beige", codenamed " Gossamer " ) is a personal computer by Apple and is part of the Power Macintosh series.

Launched in November 1997, Power Macintosh G3 was at the time of its appearance the fastest Mac. He was equipped with the newly developed PPC 750 processor, which was developed in cooperation with IBM, Motorola. The 750 was the first processor with Level II cache, which significantly increased the speed of data transfer.

From the beige Power Mac G3, there were revisions A, B and C, which differ in the system ROM and the graphics chip. Only after the revision B a master / slave operation was (due to the newer ROM) possible to the IDE interface, ie there were four instead of the previous two devices supported. Revision A had an ATI Rage II graphics chip, from Revision B a Rage Pro was built with 3D acceleration. The Revision B has a failed constructed "Personality Card", which means that the image on the CRT monitor is dark and blurry.

The three revisions can be distinguished by the suffix of the ROM version number, eg read Utility " Apple System Profiler " under the tab " System Profile " - Production Information:

  • Revision A: 40F2
  • Revision B: 45F1
  • Revision C: 45F2

Since 1997/98 Iomega Zip drives were in great demand, the left slot could be fitted next to the CD drive with an internal ZIP100 drive. The revision A, the ZIP drive using SCSI (ID 5), connected in subsequent revisions per IDE bus ( in that in the revision A, the two available IDE channels through the system hard drive and the CD was due, -ROM drive were already occupied ).

1999/2000 it was the first time possible to install up to that designed only for Windows computers Voodoo graphics card " Voodoo3 2000" by the company 3Dfx Interactive Inc. in the G3. These cards were in the second half of the 90s as legendary in the resolution and specialized in games.

The IDE interfaces support the transfer mode Multi Word DMA with 16 Megabytes / s and a maximum disk size of 128 GiByte, corresponding to 137 GB. The G3 as so-called " Old- World - Mac " complies with all regulations for the operation of Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar", but with the proviso that at least 128 MB of memory available. The latest officially supported operating system version is 10.2.8. Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS X 10.4 but can be installed using the shareware XPostFacto. MacOS 10.5 can not be installed due to lack of G4 processor.

The housing is very accessible, and the various slots allowing a varied upgrading.

System profiles

Apple Power Macintosh G3 Tower ( " Beige" )

  • Construction period: November 1997 - January 1999
  • Main Processor: PowerPC G3 (PPC 750 )
  • Storage: SCSI disk, 24xCD -ROM drive, 3.5 "drive for 1.44 MB floppy, Zip drive may (2 x SCSI)
  • Level I - Cache: 32 KB
  • Level II cache: 1 MB
  • Bus rate: 66 MHz
  • Clock Speed: 120 MHz
  • Max Memory: max. 512 megabytes ( 4x168 pin DIMM memory banks )
  • ROM Size: 4 MB
  • GPU: ATI Rage II, Rage Pro later, soldered on motherboard
  • Video Memory: 2 MB installed, expandable to 6 MB
  • Graphic resolution: depending on the memory configuration
  • Sound: 16-bit stereo system
  • Connections: Personality Card, 3 PCI, SCSI: DB -25 Serial Ports: 2 ADB: 1
List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type
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