Mac question: how good are G4 upgrade cards?

[dpopiz]

I'm thinking about buying this "Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One"
specs here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43122

It's been upgraded with a G4 500MHz card. I'm just wondering how those compare to a real G4 500MHz. Is it good enough to barely run OSX 10.3 (Panther)?

Oh yeah, and does anybody know if you can stick any sort of graphics card in there with hardware OpenGL acceleration? ...so I could make use of Quartz Extreme?

 

[Childs]

I've run Panther on a G3-500. I wouldn't spend too much money on this system. You would need a video card with a Mac bios. You can flash one yourself if you have a PC.

 

[gwag]

its just as good as any G4 but any G4 500 has an AGP slot, the all in one is a hulk of a computer, and a real pain to use the display with a PCI card thin you will need a wide DB15? extension cable to reacg the PCI card and then an adapter to the standard VGA). you can run quartz exptrem on a radeon class PCI card with hacks, works ok but really saturates (when in action and hacks are diabled in 10.3.x i forget "x"what) the PCI bus so can slow down HD, CD writes when doing stuff on the destop. how much does it cost? you may be better off getting a desktop or mini tower version $35-50 on ebay. also 10.3 is not supported on these computer but can be used using xpostfacto. in any case the built in video is either ATI rage 2c (rare on all in one) or rage Pro which does get much support from OS X so even a rage 128 PCI card is a decent upgrade.

 

[BukkY]

Quartz Extreme is nice but completely unnecessary. It doesn't give you all that much of a boost, and probably no boost for most tasks. But a Mac that old and an All-in-one unit at that will have many limitations to performance and expansion. I'm almost positive that OS X does not support that model officialy. I think you will need a special free-ware program just to load X on it, once configured it will run. It will probably be reliable and functional albiet slow even with the g4 500 and a new gfx card but I would look for a different model Mac is I were you.

Tip: Beige color on a Mac means it's pre-OS X, for the most part.

 

[TerryMathews]

Don't buy the AIO. It's a waste of money if you're wanting to run OS X. It's based on the Beige G3s, which are 66MHz FSB models. Do yourself a favor, and look at AGP G4s as a minimum.

B&W G3s (in my opinion) just don't cut the mustard anymore. Not to mention that the cost of a PCI Radeon Mac Edition will pay for the difference between a G3 and a G4 AGP, and cover a Mac-flashed AGP card as well. I know there are flashers available for GF2 MX400s and Radeon 8500s.

 

[halfadder]

The AIO "Mac Molar" is almost a year older than the first iMac. Even if you can live with the oldschool specs (ugh!), there's a good chance it's CRT is close to the end of its life.

It's not just based on the beige G3, it's based on the original rev.A G3, which means 16.7 MB/sec EIDE. Among other limitations. This is pre-steve-jobs-second-coming Apple. The dark days of Apple...

For those who haven't seen one of these in person:
http://www.wap.org/journal/molarmac/aioside.jpeg
http://www.wap.org/journal/molarmac/aiofront.jpeg
http://www.wap.org/journal/molarmac/aioback.jpeg

 

[dpopiz]

well, according to the mac specs site, it was released in '99, AFTER the imac

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: dpopiz
well, according to the mac specs site, it was released in '99, AFTER the imac

I know for a fact that's incorrect. I remember first hearing about it in November or December 1997 and I remember seeing them pop up in schools in the spring of 1998, months before the iMac was even announced and almost a year before iMacs started showing up in schools. LowEndMac claims it was introduced in April 1998, but I seem to think it was a few months before that.

The goofiest thing about the AIO "Mac Molar" is that it was created for the educational market only. If you weren't affiliated with a school, you couldn't even buy one. They had the specs buried deep within the Apple website too. It wasn't a secret project or a marketing storm, it was just supposed to be a way to drop the entry price for the G3 for schools.

A few of the things that stick out the most in my mind about the Molar is that it was originally talked up to have DVD support, but when they started selling them in early 1998, they only offered CD-ROM. There were also a bunch of compatibility problems, most of which were odd and made little sense. The motherboard was from the original revision of the first 233 and 266 MHz beige G3's, which meant all sorts of limitions. And even with the full 6 MB of SGRAM, the onboard Rage II+ and the built-in 15" monitor could still only do 1024x768. The IDE controller also has some annoying limitations.

The iMac was a welcome sight, if for no other reason than for clearing the slate. No floppy drive meant it was time for a nice file server and/or email. USB ports meant it was time to replace those serial peripherals from the Reagan administration with some nice new USB peripherals.

 

[hopejr]

That AIO is ugly as hell. You prolly can't run OS X on it because I doubt you can get a firmware update for it. Apple only released those updates for computers they wanted OS X to run on AFAIK, so if it doesn't have one, then you can't run OS X on it (i.e. the firmware won't know how to boot it).