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Encyclopedia > Power Macintosh G3
Power Macintosh G3
(Beige)

The beige Power Macintosh G3 minitower
Type: Desktop
Developer: Apple Computer, Inc.
Released: November, 1997
Discontinued: January, 1999
Processor(s): PowerPC G3, 233 – 333 MHz

The Power Macintosh G3, commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases, is a series of personal computers that was designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from November 1997 to January 1999. It was the first Macintosh to use the PowerPC G3 (PPC750) microprocessor, and replaced a number of earlier Power Macintosh models, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models. It was succeeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which kept the name but introduced a radically different design. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (598x713, 87 KB) A Beige Apple Power Macintosh G3 (minitower case). ... Desktop computer with several common peripherals (Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, microphone and a printer) A desktop computer is a personal computer made for use on a desk in an office or home and is distinguished from portable computers such as laptops or PDAs. ... Apple Inc. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ... 300 MHz Motorola PowerPC 750 processor with off-die L2 cache on the CPU module of a PowerMac G3. ... Apple Inc. ... 300 MHz Motorola PowerPC 750 processor with off-die L2 cache on the CPU module of a PowerMac G3. ... A microprocessor is a programmable digital electronic component that incorporates the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) on a single semiconducting integrated circuit (IC). ... Power Macintosh, or Power Mac, is the name of a line of Apple Macintosh personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors. ... An open Power Macintosh G3 case, showing the logic board placement on the hinged door. ...


The Power Mac G3 introduced a fast and large Level 2 backside cache to Apple's product lineup, running at half processor speed. As a result, these machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed at launch, an assertion that was backed up by benchmarks performed by Byte Magazine,[1] which prompted Apple to create the "Snail" and "Toasted Bunnies" television commercials. Diagram of a CPU memory cache A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... December 1975 issue of Byte (Vol 1. ...


The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa/LC models and the six-PCI slot Power Macintosh 9600. A Macintosh Performa 5200, an all-in-one desktop similar to the iMac. ... Macintosh LC sans display, keyboard or mouse The Macintosh LC (meaning low-cost color) was Apple Computers product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. ...


Apple developed a prototype G3-based six-slot full tower to be designated the Power Macintosh 9700. Despite demand from high-end users for more PCI slots in a G3 powered computer, the prototype was never developed into a shipping product.

Contents

Hardware

Power Macintosh G3 desktop

The beige Power Macintosh G3 series came in three versions: an "Outrigger" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300; a minitower similar to (but shorter than) the Power Macintosh 8600 enclosure; and a version with a built in screen, the G3 All-In-One ("AIO"), that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, 333, or 366 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU from Motorola, these machines used a 66 MHz system bus and PC66 SDRAM, and standard ATA hard disk drives instead of the SCSI drives used in most previous Apple systems; however, they retained a legacy Fast SCSI chain (up to 5 MB/s, seven devices internal and external). Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x653, 130 KB) Summary Macintosh G3 Desktop. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x653, 130 KB) Summary Macintosh G3 Desktop. ... Unfolding an outrigger case The Outrigger is a style of Apple Macintosh desktop computercase designed for easy access. ... The Power Macintosh 7300 (Codename: Montana; also sold with server software as the Apple Workgroup Server 7350) is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computers Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. ... The Power Macintosh 8600 (Codename: Kansas) is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computers Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. ... Motorola Inc. ... PC66 is a computer memory standard used during the AMD K-6 period of processors. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

The All in One version

The G3 used Apple's new "Gossamer" motherboard, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. This was known as the "Yellowknife" project, which had sought to develop the first Apple RISC product — capable of running any OS that would support it, be it Mac OS or Windows. It was an effort by Apple to gain market share, by allowing their hardware to run industry-standard software, but still remaining Mac OS proprietary[citation needed]. The prototype had a ZIF-socket G3 processor, PCI and ISA slots, Mac and PC serial ports, onboard SCSI, PC and Mac floppy drive connectors, ATX power supplies, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, inserted into an ATX case[citation needed]. The project was scrapped by Steve Jobs, after his return to Apple, and his realization of the devastation of Apple's profits due to the clone makers[citation needed]. Remnants of this effort can be seen in production G3's form factor: the logic board's similarity to the PC ATX motherboard standard; solder points for a PC-type floppy drive; and the ability to use both proprietary Apple power supplies and industry-standard ATX power supplies. As a compact and versatile motherboard, the Gossamer board was originally designed to be able to support both the high-end PowerPC 604e and the new PowerPC G3, but when initial tests found that the cheaper G3 outperformed the 604e in many tests, this functionality was removed and Apple's 604e-based systems died a quiet death. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), is a microprocessor CPU design philosophy that favors a smaller and simpler set of instructions that all take about the same amount of time to execute. ... This article is about the computer case form factor. ...


The desktops ranged from 233 to 300 MHz, with the minitowers ranging from 233 to 366 MHz. The 233 and 266 MHz desktop models shipped with 4 GB hard drives, and the 300 MHz with a 6 GB drive, all at 5400 RPM. The 233 MHz minitower shipped with a 4 GB drive, the 266 MHz with a 6 GB drive, and the 300 MHz minitower shipped with two 4 GB drives in a RAID configuration; all models were 5400 RPM. The 300 MHz minitower was replaced by the 333 MHz and finally the 366 MHz towers, each of which shipped with a 9.1 GB 7200 RPM SCSI drive, attached to a SCSI/PCI card — this model also included 100BASE-TX Ethernet (as opposed to the other models' 10BASE-T), though this was in the form of a PCI card, which occupied another PCI slot. Unlike its predecessor, the 300 MHz minitower, the 333 and 366 MHz models had only 6 MiB VRAM, since the 300 MHz model shipped with a 128-bit iXMicro PCI video card with 8 MiB VRAM. The AIO shipped in two basic configurations: a 233 MHz version with a floppy drive and a 4 GB hard drive and a 266 MHz version with a built-in Zip drive, floppy drive, and the "Wings" personality card. Half of the AIO's case was translucent, suggesting what might come with the iMac; it is considered by many to be the precursor to the iMac. In computing, a redundant array of inexpensive disks, also later known as redundant array of independent disks (commonly abbreviated RAID) is a system which uses multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives. ... 100BASE-TX is the predominant form of Fast Ethernet, providing 100 Mbit/s Ethernet. ... 10BASE-T cable 10BASE-T plug 10BASE-T is an implementation of Ethernet which allows stations to be attached via twisted pair cable. ... The subject of this article may not satisfy the notability guideline or one of the following guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. ... Iomega ZIP-100 Drive Logo An internal Zip drive. ... The original iMac model The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ...


These machines had no audio circuitry on the logic board; instead, a PERCH slot (a dedicated 182-pin microchannel connector; a superset of the PCI spec, but does not accept PCI cards) for a "personality card" was populated with a "Whisper" personality card on regular versions, offering 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio with simultaneous I/O, or a "Wings" personality card, an AV version which included composite and S-Video capture and output. DVD-ROM drives were now an available option, and Zip drives continued to be available as well. Composite video is the format of an analog television (picture only) signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. ... S-Video (also known as Y/C) is a baseband analog video format offering a higher quality signal than composite video, but a lower quality than RGB and component video. ... DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... Iomega ZIP-100 Drive Logo An internal Zip drive. ...


These machines had onboard and external SCSI (from the custom MESH IC), ADB, 10BASE-T Ethernet, two MiniDin-8 serial ports, and onboard ATI graphics (originally Rage IIc, later updated to Rage Pro and then Rage Pro Turbo) with a slot for VRAM upgrade. Three full-length PCI slots and one internal modem slot, as well as three SDRAM slots (for up to 768 MiB RAM) rounded out the features. Integrated circuit of Atmel Diopsis 740 System on Chip showing memory blocks, logic and input/output pads around the periphery Microchips with a transparent window, showing the integrated circuit inside. ... Early ADB device Apple Desktop Bus (or ADB) is an obsolete bit-serial bus for connecting low-speed devices to computers. ... Ethernet is a large, diverse family of frame-based computer networking technologies that operates at many speeds for local area networks (LANs). ... The current version of the article or section is written like a magazine article instead of the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia. ... VRAM an acronym for Video RAM. Generally a term used in computers to describe RAM dedicated to the purpose of displaying bitmap graphics in raster graphics hardware. ... A modem (from modulate and demodulate) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. ...


The G3 was the last Macintosh to include built-in serial ports. A male DE-9 connector used for a serial port on a PC style computer. ...


Early G3s with Revision A ROMs do not support slave devices on their IDE controllers, limiting them to one device per bus (normally one optical drive and one hard disk). Additionally, they came with onboard ATI Rage II+ video. G3s with Revision B ROMs support slave devices on their IDE controllers, and had the onboard video upgraded to ATI Rage Pro. G3s with Revision C ROMs also support slave devices on their IDE controllers, but the most significant technical differences are the newer Open Firmware version than the previous two models (2.4 vs. 2.0f1) and another onboard video upgrade, this time to ATI Rage Pro Turbo. ATA cables: 40 wire ribbon cable top, 80 wire ribbon cable bottom Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a standard interface for connecting storage devices such as hard disks and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers. ... The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. ... Open Firmware (also, OpenBoot) is a hardware-independent firmware (computer software which loads the operating system), developed by Mitch Bradley at Sun Microsystems, and used in post-NuBus PowerPC-based Apple Macintosh computers, Sun Microsystems SPARC based workstations and servers, IBM POWER systems, Pegasos systems, and the laptop designed by...


The G3 had the largest ROM of any Macintosh to date — 4 MiB. The trend of increasingly large ROMs ended, though, after the introduction of the New World ROM in the iMac, and then the B&W Power Macintosh G3. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... An open Power Macintosh G3 case, showing the logic board placement on the hinged door. ...


Upgradeability

  • The Gossamer logic board has three full-length (12") PCI slots, making it capable of taking any PCI cards that have Macintosh drivers available for them (for example, some RealTek-based network adapters, a lot of USB, ATA/IDE [or SATA] and FireWire cards). The most common PCI card upgrades normally added to Beige G3 Power Macs are FireWire cards, USB cards and FireWire/USB combo cards (especially after the release of the first generation iMac, which caused many vendors to start releasing FireWire and USB peripherals for the Macintosh), 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T (gigabit ethernet) network adapter (for those who need faster than the onboard 10BASE-T), video cards (ATI Radeon 7000 and 9200 cards are a popular choice), ATA/EIDE, Serial ATA and Ultra SCSI cards. Television tuner and radio cards are also often chosen to supplement the AV features on a Wings personality card, or to provide A/V input for models with the Whisper personality card.
  • Some users have upgraded the Whisper personality card in their Beige G3s with a "Wings" Personality card (which is plugged into the same PERCH slot), and some have upgraded the ROM on their Beige G3s to a newer version (Revision A boards to Revision B or Revision C boards).
  • For storage, the G3 is capable of taking any ATAPI/IDE hard disks, provided that the drive's size is within the 28-bit LBA limit. This means a G3 is capable of supporting ATA hard disks of up to 137 GB (228 blocks of 512 bytes each). This limitation can be overcome by using a IDE or SATA PCI-compatible card (e.g. Acard or Sonnet) to allow the G3 to use a maximum of 2 drives over the 137 GB limit.
  • The ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drive can also be replaced with a CD-RW, DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive, although care must be taken while purchasing the upgrade as the Mac is incompatible with some drives and may refuse to boot at all if an incompatible drive is installed. Also, many third-party optical drives cannot be used as boot devices with the G3, though they work correctly for normal use. It is also capable of taking SCSI storage devices, and with the presence of the right PCI cards, SATA, USB and FireWire storage devices.
  • The presence of an onboard SCSI controller (the SCSI controller is codenamed MESH — Macintosh Enhanced SCSI Hardware) and connectors permits the use of Mac-enabled SCSI scanners and storage devices, though this runs at only 5 MB/s.
  • The G3 can support up to 768 MiB of SDRAM in any configuration (although incompatibility has been reported with some DIMM modules in certain configurations). It should be able to take 168-pin SDRAM of any speed, though it will run at PC66 speeds. The onboard video RAM can be upgraded from 2 MiB to 6 MiB with a 4 MiB SGRAM module (which runs at 83 MHz on Rev. A machines, and 100 MHz on Rev. B and C machines).
  • The G3 processor module (a PowerPC 750 plus L2 cache) can be easily changed to the faster model, i.e. 333 MHz and even 366 MHz (rare). Consult a Clocking the Power Mac G3 article for more info.
  • The CPU can be upgraded with a G4 processor of up to 1.0 GHz using upgrade kits from third party vendors, although the user would not see much practical difference in performance on chips faster than 733 MHz due to the system bus limitations, which runs at 66.83 MHz unless overclocked. However, G4 chips running over 533 MHz do not allow the system bus to run faster than 66 MHz, so you cannot overclock the bus if you wish to use one of these G4s. (G3s do allow it.)
  • The G3 officially supports up to Mac OS X 10.2.8, although some devices will not work under Mac OS X, such as the floppy drive, the video features of the "Wings" personality card, and the 3D graphics acceleration functions of the onboard ATI Rage series video. Support for newer versions is possible with the use of third party solutions such as XPostFacto, albeit with a few tradeoffs and catches -- the biggest being the lack of support by Apple and the fact that a supported PCI video card must be present as support for the onboard ATI Rage series video was dropped completely as of Mac OS X 10.3.

The 6-pin and 4-pin FireWire Connectors FireWire is Apple Inc. ... Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard to interface devices. ... Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet packets at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the IEEE 802. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix giga-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one billion (short scale) bytes or 230 bytes (1024 mebibytes)[1]. It is commonly abbreviated GB (not to be confused with Gb, which is used for gigabits). ... 300 MHz Motorola PowerPC 750 processor with off-die L2 cache on the CPU module of a PowerMac G3. ... Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... 3D computer graphics are different from 2D computer graphics in that a three-dimensional representation of geometric data is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images. ... XPostFacto is an open-source utility that enables the installation of versions of Mac OS X on some Apple Macintosh systems that are not officially supported for them by Apple. ...

Sources

References

  1. ^ Andy Mesa (1998). Power Macintosh G3. The Apple Museum.

External links

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  Results from FactBites:
 
Power Macintosh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (765 words)
Power Macintosh, or Power Mac, is a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that was developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Computer from March 1994 until August 2006.
The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, and 8100, which offered speeds ranging from 60 to 110 MHz.
The Intel-based successor of the Power Macintosh is named the Mac Pro, in line with the renaming of their professional notebooks from PowerBook to MacBook Pro.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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