Old G3 from a school system Help??

[fixingforfreddi]

Hello,

We recently were given an old G3 that used used in a local school system.
Though grateful. As our G4 died a horrid death after many months of suffering (it's and
ours) this G3 is odd.
It is running 8.6 and yet the system is not quite what I am familiar with. I'm not a Mac expert
but I have owned them since the system 7 days and I thought I knew my way around the
system pretty well.
My questions are ..
1.Is anyone familiar with operating systems set up for school use?
2. Can I reformat this Power Macintosg G3 all in one and put in a different OS?
I have OS9 and OS 8.5 on CD's. But I don't know if this machine will allow me to jump
up one or down one OS. It tried to use Tech Tool Pro 3 and got just a little confused.
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.

 

[joker2]

You should easily be able to boot from your OS 9 CD and reformat the drive and install OS 9. (Be sure to get the updates from 9.0 to 9.0.4 to 9.1. Last version of OS 9 is 9.2.2, but most of those are for "Classic" compatibility with OS X) Mac OS 9 Support Page

 

[mklos]

1. All schools have different setups to fit their needs. So its hard to say what setup you have.

2. You can reformat the HD on that and put any OS you want on it. Even Mac OS X will run on it with enough RAM installed (256MB Minimum). You'll need to put a USB PCI Card in it as ADB isn't supported in OS X. That system should have 3 PCI slots. I would use 1 for a 4-Port USB Card, another for a 4-Port FireWire Card, and maybe the other for a better PCI Video Card (ATI Radeon 7500?)

3. If you erase the HD, you can put OS 8.6, 9, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0-10.3 (not sure about 10.4). Just make sure there is at least 256MB of RAM installed for OS X.

I know this will run Mac OS X because a friend of mine used to have an AIO G3 and it ran OS X fine before he got rid of it for an iMac G4.

 

[im_to_hyper]

1
2. You can reformat the HD on that and put any OS you want on it. Even Mac OS X will run on it with enough RAM installed (256MB Minimum). You'll need to put a USB PCI Card in it as ADB isn't supported in OS X. That system should have 3 PCI slots. I would use 1 for a 4-Port USB Card, another for a 4-Port FireWire Card, and maybe the other for a better PCI Video Card (ATI Radeon 7500?)

Actually, I do not recall any problems with ADB keyboards while running OS X 10.2 on this type of machine. In addition, since this is based on the same architecture as the beige G3 only 10.0-10.2 are supported natively. Use of 10.3 or 10.4 is possible using XPostFacto.

Also, when you install RAM, be sure it is a newer chip guaranteed to work with OS X... otherwise you will get some major instability issues.

 

[prostuff1]

A while back i got an AIO G3 from my school and they are great computers. I got mine free and it was great. I upgrade quite a few diffent things in it.

My suggestion is to get a PCI card that has USB and Firewire on it. Also get a bigger HD to put in. I went with a 40 GB but you should be able to go bigger. If you go with the bigger HD make sure to partition it with the first section less then 8 GB, then install OS 9 on the bigger partition and OS X on the "inner" 8GB partition. The older computer had a problem with having more then 8GB as the startup volume.

ADB keyboards work just fine with OS X.

If you want anymore information on upgrading the machine let me know.

What are the original specs by the way?? I did quite a few things to my AIO and they mac great computers. the only reason i got rid of mine was cause i convinced the parents to get a shiny new iMac G5

Hope that helps a little

 

[madmax_2069]

yea im running 10.2 on the first partition and 9.2.2 on the second partition on the beige G3 AIO in my sig. the cpu is stock 266mhz G3, 224mb pc100 sdram, I got my hdd back i had to send the new 80gig hdd back cause it was doa and got a 100gig back insted of a relacement 80gig im very happy lol. Got a dvdr/dvdrw dl cdr/cdrw combo drive works good but cant play dvd movies till i get a better videocard somthing like a ati radion 9200 128mb pci videocard.

You can install OS X tiger on it with the help of xpostfacto4 but i herd tiger has problems with the onboard video.

 

[prostuff1]

yea im running 10.2 on the first partition and 9.2.2 on the second partition on the beige G3 AIO in my sig. the cpu is stock 266mhz G3, 224mb pc100 sdram, I got my hdd back i had to send the new 80gig hdd back cause it was doa and got a 100gig back insted of a relacement 80gig im very happy lol. Got a dvdr/dvdrw dl cdr/cdrw combo drive works good but cant play dvd movies till i get a better videocard somthing like a ati radion 9200 128mb pci videocard.

You can install OS X tiger on it with the help of xpostfacto4 but i herd tiger has problems with the onboard video.

That is the exact one i had before the iMac. I was considering getting an upgrade card for mine to get it to go faster but never did. Instead i switched some of the jumpers around inside and got mine to run stable at, if i remember correctly, 315Mhz. I think the next step up was 333 Mhz and the machine would boot but would only go to blue screen so i backed it down and it worked fine. I recently gave it to my cousin who uses it almost every day for school stuff. All be it not for anything very intensive.

The beige G3 AIO were some of the best that Apple made. Very expandable with the PCI slots.

to OP: If you need any help getting stuff going feel free to PM me or post here.

 

[madmax_2069]

prolly better to post any questions here cause i have found out allot about this beige G3 AIO had one hell of a time tring to install OS X 10.2 on it all it was was the jummper on the hdd was set wrong and had to be taken out now it works flawlesly. No crashes or any bad behavor yet. I was given 2 of these they both have a wing's A/V personality card in them. and i got my floppy drive working in OS X