On Jun 14, 2010, at 4:32 PM, James Chapel wrote:
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?
Yes, there is a work around. If you attach a Mac-to-VGA converter, the type that has adjustable settings for resolution, to the onboard monitor output, it will create a "phantom" monitor and the Wings card will be enabled for input/output (if you have the right extensions, in 9.2.2 you'll need to use the older versions of ATI Resource Manager & ATI Graphics Accelerator from OS 9.1 or below. You can alternately attach a real monitor to the onboard video to enable the Wings card. If you use the "phantom monitor" route you should setup the "phantom" in the Monitor Control Panel so that it only touches your real monitor Desktop on a corner, otherwise you'll loose the cursor off the edge into the phantom Desktop (if that makes any sense to you, the computer thinks the adapter is a real monitor and creates another Desktop for it that you can't see since there is no 2nd monitor). As a last resort, you can just use the onboard video. If you're using the Wings, since it shares VRAM with the onboard video, it's a really good idea to have the optional 4MB VRAM chip installed.
2. What model DVD-ROM drive did the DVD-equipped Beige G3s ship with and what speed did it run at (2x? 5x?)
It doesn't matter, these don't require a special Mac ROM to boot, and any modern DVD-RW is a million times better than any optical unit that shipped with the Beige, they were all flakey back then. Use the most modern optical drive you can get. Even freebie ones from recycled PCs are better than anything that shipped with a Beige. Make sure the firmware is up-to-date on you optical drive if you can BEFORE you buy since most optical drives require a Windows PC to update the firmware. I believe Pioneer drives may have a Mac firmware updater available, but I've never owned any optical drive that I could update the firmware on a Mac, so shop carefully if you only have a Mac available.
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?
Yes, but AFAIK every DVD card will be mounted in a video card already, there won't be any loose decoders floating around, and since EVERY Radeon card supports hardware DVD decoding, you're MUCH better off ditching the Rage 128 and getting a Radeon 7000.
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?
I didn't notice much difference when I used an ATA card in my Beige, I had an Acard model. It will be limited to ATA66 speeds even if it's an ATA100 or ATA133 card. I normally booted my Beige from modern external Firewire HDs using XPostFacto's "helper disk" boot process that enables booting from PCI Firewire cards for OS X only, I was using Tiger 10.4.11. Firewire is much faster than the onboard HD in my experience. If you're going to use an onboard ATA card, the fancy card to use is the Sonnet Tempo Trio with ATA/FW400/USB2 on one card. Then you can use the 2nd slot for a Radeon card, and have a free 3rd slot for wifi, or TV, or whatever you might need.
-- 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
