OK you all have my attention now about the B&W being a really nice thing (thanks especially to Gene). Reading up on it, and from what I have gathered so far, everything I have in my G3 Tower can be put into a B&W, the Sonnet Crescendo ZIF G4 800 mhz upgrade card, the RAM, and all the IDE drives and even my SCSI drive.
Some thoughts about what can (and should/should not) be moved from beige to B&W:
1) Personally, I wouldn't put the Sonnet G4/800 into a B&W. It drops the system bus from 100 to 66 MHz, and IMO should only be used in a beige for that reason. You can get a G4 ZIF that runs @ 500-600 MHz without dropping the bus speed, giving you roughly the same performance as Sonnet's 800. I'd sell the 800 (or do a cash + swap deal via Swaplist) and get either a G4/550 ZIF (easily clockable to 600) or a PowerLogix 800 Mhz+ G3 ZIF. Either way you'd probably wind up with a few extra $ when the deal's done. I have both G4/550 and G3/800 PowerLogix ZIFs available, and I'm still having trouble deciding which one goes in which machine. G4 power's only really necessary for AltiVec-intensive stuff like audio and video apps, heavy Photoshop filter work, 3D renders, etc. Go with the best deal for your uses/needs.
2) Beige G3 RAM specs call for PC66 or PC100. The B&W requires PC100. If you're lucky some or all of the RAM currently in your Beige Tower is PC100, but no guarantees....
3) It should be fairly simple to transfer all your hard drives as long as the B&W has enough drive sleds. Try to find out about this little detail before you buy.
Have read about the Rev 1 caveats, and ebay mostly has Rev 1s for dirt cheap. Seems like the best way around that is a PCI IDE card.
Or an UltraSCSI card. ATTO ExpressPCI cards are readily available via fleabay or the Swaplist for $20-25 - much cheaper than ATA/133 controllers. I guess it largely depends on what drives you have available; if your total storage is roughly equal between IDE and SCSI, I'd get an ATTO. Another factor in which type of drive controller to choose is if one flavor of your drives is significantly faster/bigger than the other.
Reason for this train of thought is the absolute hell I have been going through trying to install OSX on this damned Tower!!
I find the unpredictability of OS X compatibility among Beige G3's maddening!
Good luck finding an affordable New World G3 that meets your needs.
Peace, Gene
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