Apple Power Mac G3 - PPC G3 300 MHz > Reviews > Basic cheap computer - readily upgradeable.

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Design	Good
Manufacturer Support	Satisfactory
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Cheap to buy and massively upgradeable .
Disadvantages:	Not as compact as an iMac .  Limited bus speed .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Power Macs have always been the flagship of the Apple Macintosh range. Aimed at the commercial sector or the high-end home user who has money to burn and mates to impress. Fortunately for us, the price of old computers tumbles with time and these late 90's computers can be found on eBay for around £50 plus postage. This does reflect their near obsolescence, but the great news is: they can be very easily upgraded with parts from the same source (eBay)! If you simply want a Mac for cheap home computing, then this will do the job out of the box, but you're probably much better off with an iMac of some description. If you are after a small project, then this is a great way to get a high-end computer by starting low and building up. Most of this review will be somewhat technical in nature, so if you struggle to bother, then you might take that as a sign this computer isn't for you.

Design:
The computer is a tower design with handles in all four corners. It comes in blue and white only, which is how it is most often referred to by the users (blue and white, or B&W - G3). It was codenamed is Yosemite on its release, and heralded the introduction of a design that lasted until the advent of the G5 - although strong similarities are still evident between Apple's latest PowerMac and this one. Borrowing the trendy translucent colour look from the iMac, the B&W PowerMac is a commercial computer that still looks right at home - in the home. Its most rewarding design feature is the side panel that drops down to allow easy access to the upgradeable parts of the computer. This makes it an extremely pleasant machine to work on. The CD/DVD-ROM drive is hidden behind an integrated plastic door on the front, and all of the sockets for connectivity are behind the machine.

Specs:
The CPU is a 300, 350, 400, or 450 MHz G3 chip with a 1MB L2 backside cache running at 2:1 (512K on 300 MHz model). RAM in second user machines is variable, but with the number of web and graphics companies moving to G5s it's not uncommon to see machines with 320MB on the market. It can be expanded to a gigabyte of RAM with four 250MB modules. Video is via a PCI ATI Rage 128 card with 16MB RAM. Hard-drives were a standard IDE 6GB drive. There are four PCI slots (one for video), to accept any number of simple upgrades. The machine has 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, 2 400 Mbps fire-wire port, 2 12 Mbps USB ports, and an ADB port for legacy keyboards and mice (from older beige machines). When buying a blue & white G3, you are better off with a Rev 2 motherboard. These had an upgraded hard drive controller to support multiple drives.

Upgrade path:
Because these machines have zero insertion force CPU chips (ZIF CPU), there are a number of CPU upgrades available from several third parties. You could either opt for an ultra-fast 1.1 GHz G3 chip, or decide to get a more modest 500 MHz G4 chip and join the next generation in computing. The process of pulling the old CPU and fitting the new one is extremely easy, and the companies that sell the upgrade cards mostly give great user support. The decision to choose G4 over G3 is largely personal preference, with G4 having the added advantage of the Altivec software engine that enhances some programs (Adobe Photoshop, for example). The pros and cons of chip upgrade is probably the subject of other reviews, suffice to say - you're not stuck with the chip in the machine.

Big volume hard drives are getting very cheap on eBay, with 40 GB drives often around £30, and larger ones slightly more. If you have a rev 1 board and require more than one drive, then a cheap PCI ATA controller card will allow you to add more drives.

Faster video is readily available in the form of Radeon 7200 and 9600 cards, which can either, replace the original or complement it to allow multiple monitors. The ForMac Proformer cards are best avoided, as they are not supported past OS 10.2 (Jaguar). As the PowerMac supports VGA, any monitor from a PC will also work. This is a great step forward from the previous beige G3's which still had the Apple DB15 connection.

There is no on-board SCSI on these machines, but it too can be added by inserting a PCI SCISI card, which might also be the basis of fast SCSI RAID if you wanted to investigate that possibility.

The standard optical drive is a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM combo. So some sort of CD or CD/DVD writer is probably desirable. The options are somewhat limited as you need Apple ROM onboard in order to boot from CDs or DVDs. A good work-around is probably a combo drive in a firewire enclosure, allowing a cheaper third party burner and maintaining the original for booting from optical media.

Software:
The B&W G3 is supported right up to the latest OS 10.4 (Tiger). They are also capable of booting into OS 9, a feature not incorporated into PowerMacs after the mirror disk drive G4s. So they will allow you run all of the old "classic" software, as well as the newer OS X software.

Verdict:
A great basic machine that sells for next to no money. With due caution and research it can be upgraded to rival many later machines for less outlay. More than that, it is a machine that allows you to learn loads about computer components, and appeals to anyone who wants to boast that they built it themselves. Start looking into the possibilities, and you will find many hours slip past as you contemplate how the ultimate machine can be cobbled together from eBay bargains.

PS. This model is not the iMac all-in-one that people are familiar with. Rather a tower model that requires a seperate screen. Don't be confused by Sexy-Young-Gods daft comments to the contrary.