Got a free Mac Blue/White G3 and...

[Steven]

as far as I can tell, the "Best" ATI card I can get for it is a Radeon 7500.

The Mac G3 B/W does have a 66Mhz PCI slot I can use for a video card.

My question is, is the 7500 the best I can do with this Mac?

A. I use Macs AND PCs at home and at work, Win2K, OS9, and OSX.
B. I know the B/W G3 is old. It was given to me free and I'm going to buy a
1Ghz G4 ZIF for it.

Any response is appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
-Steve

 

[Kai Robinson]

Right - the ONLY cards that work in the Smurf towers, are the Radeon PCI,
and the Radeon 7000 - the PC PCI versions DO NOT WORK. They use a totally
different rom. There has been some success with altering the Mac rom to make
a PCI 9100 and 9000 work - but its not worth the hassle. Also - best to get
a 900Mhz G3, or 600Mhz G4, the 1ghz modules knock the system to 66Mhz FSB,
slowing down the Ram too.

Best to add an original Radeon PCI (Mac Edition) than the 7000 - the 7000
has no T&L - basically, its a Rage 128 on crack.

Kai

 

[Steven]

Thanks for the response!
This is info I needed to know, but couldn't easily find out from ATI's
website.
And I'll definitely try to find a 900GHz G4 module, I didn't even think
about how a new proc would affect the memory speed.
I -WAS- thinking about attempting to use OSX, but I read that Apple has
REFUSED to write updated drivers for the ATI cards their older Macs use,
thus FORCING their users to have to upgrade hardware. What a bunch a crap
that is.

-Steve

 

[Kai Robinson]

DONT get a G4 module for the B&W - the 60x Bus cant really take advantage of
it the same way the MPX bus on sawtooth models can. Unless you're using
heavy Altivec-enabled apps, stick with the G3 - the 900Mhz Powerlogix G3 is
more than powerful enough. Hell, my 450 is clocked to 500, and with 512mb
mem - its still plenty fast enough. Waiting for the official ATI response on
the Radeon 9000 PCI / 9100 PCI for Macs. If you get hold of a visiontek PCI
Radeon 9100 - most people have been able to flash it with the hacked 8500
AGP/7000 PCI mergedrom thingy. Also - there are reports that the nVidia
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra's are now flashable.

HTH.

drop by #macintosh-adults on Undernet IRC if you need to know more.

Kai