I recent have been upgrading my '97 Beige Powermac G3, more out of nostalgia than any particular practical reason. So far, a 400MHz G3 processor, Rage 128 (16MB VRAM, 100MHz clock) graphics card, Orangelink + USB / FireWire card and a Apple 10/100 Fast Ethernet card have been added, giving me a smoking-fast machine that can handle pretty much any Classic Mac OS game I throw at it, and rival many mid-high end (stock) B&W G3s. Despite all of this, there are still a few upgrades I want to add, and a few problems that have risen up from the upgrades I have added, that I thought I'd need to call on the LEM list about, so here I am.
1. After installing the Rage 128 and connecting my monitor to the card, not only are the built-in Rage II+ graphics disabled (as was expected), but the A/V "Wings" card refuses to give me any video output in the Apple Video Player. Connecting the monitor back to the built-in monitor port re-enables the Wings card, but disables the graphics acceleration from the Rage 128. I always that the Wings card was a killer selling point with the Beige G3s. Is there any way around this or will I be forced to pick the lesser of two evils? 2. What model DVD-ROM drive did the DVD-equipped Beige G3s ship with and what speed did it run at (2x? 5x?) 3. Given the fact that my Rage 128 is the same kind that shipped with some of the later B&W G3s, I noticed that it includes a connector for the B&W's DVD decoder card. Thus, could I add a DVD decoder card to the Rage 128 while it's in my Beige G3 for hardware-decoded DVD playback? 4. All of my PCI slots are now full, so I won't have any room for a faster IDE controller card. However, would I see a substantial performance improvement in using a newer, faster drive or does the stock drive pretty much already operate at the integrated controller's 16MB/s cap? Thanks for your help. That's all for now. :) --James Chapel -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
