Imagewriter II to Beige G3

I am trying to hook up an Imagewriter II to a Beige G3 with Mac OS 9.2.2. I tried using a direct 8 pin mini-din to 8 pin min-din with no luck. I also tried using the AppleTalk connectors: 8 pin mini-din from Imagewriter, then AppleTalk and then connecting to the G3. I also downloaded Imagewriter driver 7.0.1, for both Imagewriter and Imagewriter with AppleTalk. I see the image of the Imagewriter on my desktop, but it's not in the chooser and I can't print from it. Any ideas?

I remove those three desktop Printer extensions with Extensions Manager (a Control Panel) by unchecking their checkboxes.
If you have a standard printer (no LocalTalk option card) and a Mac Peripheral-8 cable as I described above, plug it into the Printer port on the computer and the serial port on the printer. Caveats here are that you may have a modem cable, but there are not nearly so many of those available -- most of them ended in a DB-9 or DB-25 at the modem end.
Open the Chooser and click on the ImageWriter Driver Icon in the left panel. If there is no ImageWriter Icon in the left panel, you have not properly placed the driver (a Chooser Extension) in the Extensions folder inside the "System Folder".
When you click on the Driver Icon in the left panel, the printer's name should appear in a quarter minute or less in the right panel. If it does not, you may not have Appletalk assigned to the correct port. To fix this, turn AppleTalk off in the Chooser panel and open AppleTalk Control Panel directly. Assign AppleTalk to the Printer port and make it active. Close the panel to save your changes. Then try selecting the Driver in the Chooser again.
How did you get this ImageWriter? Did it come with PhoneNet connectors? Do you think it has the LocalTalk option card installed?

Similar Messages

Wireless router and beige G3 question (OS 8.6 or 9?)

I've purchased a Netgear 54 mbps wireless router to network my Macs. For now, the G4 tower and the 266 beige G3 are going to be connected through two of the hardwired ports until I can get an Airport card for the G4. The G4 is running Panther 10.3.9 and connects via built-in Ethernet. The beige is running OS 8.6 and connects via an Ethernet PCI card (the built-in port is dead). The third machine is a laptop with an Airport card.
Should I upgrade the G3 to 9.2.2 before I set up the network or can I go ahead with things as they are now?
G3 beige (OS 8.6), G4 Sawtooth (OS 10.3.9), TiBook (OS 9.2.2 and OS 10), G5 Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier

don't like being different, but on a 266MHz G3 with maybe limited memory, OS8.6 will still fly, OS9.2 starts to slow down on certain tasks.
IMHO, OS8.6 was as good as it ever got for a stable and secure Mac OS.
But you may find the update to OS9, with IE v5 and QuickTime v5 may just be worth the slowdown. Depends what you're going to use it for, I removed OS9 on my old iMac 233MHz and put OS8.6 back on. It does everything I want it to, fast.

Update desktop (beige) G3 from OS 8.6 to 9.0 or higher

hello. please excuse if this sounds like a dumb question, but, here goes. i gave my sister my G3 desktop (beige) years and years ago. she's just starting to use it now. it is working on the OS 8.6 system. i think she should upgrade to a higher version of a mac OS, but, i am not sure how to go about doing this.
does she have to start by upgrading to OS 9.0, then, continue the steps to upgrading until she gets to OS 10.1 (or 10.2). i know that this computer model cannot go any higher that than OS 10.2. i am just not sure if i can jump from 8.6 directly to 10.0
oh, and, i see that just buying the OS 9.0 cds are expensive. around $45. at which point i am trying to convince her to buy a newer model of a mac, even if it is used...
thanks.
chelsea

Hi Chelsea, and a warm welcome to the forums!
You can go straight to OSX, even 10.4.11 with XPostFacto...
http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/
If it has enough RAM...
Tiger Requirements...
To use Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, your Macintosh needs:
* A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
* Built-in FireWire
* At least 256 MB of RAM (I recommend 1GB minimum)
* DVD drive (DVD-ROM), Combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) or SuperDrive (DVD-R) for installation
* At least 3 GB of free disk space; 4 GB if you install the XCode 2 Developer Tools (I recommend 20GB minimum)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1514
Trouble is finding the right Tiger Install Discs & the price.
See Tom's, (Texas Mac Man), great info on where/how to find/get Tiger...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9755670&#9755670
Or Ali Brown's great info on where/how to find/get Tiger...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10381710#10381710
PS. I love my Beiges, but a newer Mac would really suit today's uses better... sniff, sniff.

Follow up on Installing OS 9 on a Beige G3

Hello again,
Thanks to XPF, I now have Panther running on my Beige G3. It works fine and it will let me boot to 9.2.2, but when I try to reboot back into Panther it freezes and I'm stuck in 9 Any ideas?
Jer

>"when using the "start-up" disk utility it freezes."
If you mean the OS 9 Startup Disk Control Panel, be sure you have at least version 9.2.5 of that Control panel installed. "Classic" will install at least that version if you let it "Update your OS 9 software" or similar request. An acceptable version is available as an individual download:
106225- Mac OS X, Mac OS 9: Use Current Startup Disk Control Panel or Mac OS 9.2.2
Installing a later version of the Control panel should stop the crashing, but it will still not allow you to boot to the 10.3 CD. You cannot just use the Startup Disk Control panel to boot a beige G3 from the 10.3 CD. You must have XPostFacto running while the 10.3 CD is in the drive, and ask XPostFacto to boot you to the 10.3 CD.

Beige G3 with Pro Tools Freezes Every Time I Use PT (why I have the G3)

Please, if anyone can help....
I GOT my beige G3 running which had died and refused to reboot when last I had tried running Pro Tools. I GOT Pro Tools 6.1 reinstalled and running... and then when I was back in Pro Tools again on my newly-running system, I tried to "Save Session Copy" (including saving audio files), it froze. It seems whenever I ask Pro Tools (specifically, haven't had this problem with ANY other memory-intensive program) to do something even mildly memory-intensive, it freezes. Not just the program freezes, the whole computer does. And once again, the computer then refused to reboot. I tried running First Aid and Repair Permissions and so forth booting from the OS X.2 CD. No dice. I erased the 7.8 gig section (the bootable section) of the hard drive. Tried to re-install the OS. It freezes mid-install every time now. Didn't used to freeze (though always bogged down a bit from time to time). Then I tried erasing the WHOLE 120 gig disk (while weeping bitterly) and re-partitioning the 3 sections (as a Mac-person-who-knows-more-than-me instructed me to do- - was the only thing that worked- - the first section being 7.8 gigs) and reinstalling the OS. Still freezes when I try to install. I have to move the mouse around frantically just to keep the computer from freezing while erasing the drive (this actually works- - moving the mouse around).
I tried putting the 3 sticks of ram in different order- - they worked fine before- -the 3 sticks of RAM collectively add up to 600-something- 1 stick of 128 and 2 of 256 or whatever that amount is- - the 2 were originally bought for a "stripped" blue and white I had bought, but the blue and white makes heinous buzz-beeping sounds when I tried to run it most recently, though it worked for a while before. Also, the beige worked fine before with these same sticks of RAM installed, but this seemed maybe memory-related so I thought I'd experiment...?
Anyway, I have A LOT of extras plugged into this thing. The one that acts the most buggy is the TDK DVD-R drive I installed a couple years ago. The model is "Indi" something or other as I recall. It has always consistently done this weird thing where, after booting the computer, if you eject one disk (it will only eject if you drag to the trash) and insert a second disk (since booting), it will not allow you to eject the 2nd disk until you reboot again. If you drag that 2nd disk to the trash, the CD icon disappears from the desktop as though it's been ejected, but the drive does not physically eject. I just put up with it, because I could deal and there had been so many other issues, and everything was working, this seemed like a non-issue by comparison.
I am also running a PC monitor via a small adapter (not a card). I have a USB PCI card going (which the mouse is plugged into)- never had a problem, but now sometimes the mouse freezes on startup too and won't move and I have to force-power-down with that button on the front as if it didn't boot properly. I have an Audio Media III PCI card in there (for Pro Tools). I have the monitor card in there, but don't need it for this machine. Was trying to test if it worked-- last I tested, it didn't-- I should obviously just pull it out.
Anyway, I'm having a ** of a time getting the OS back on there, and even if I do, once I put Pro Tools back on (the point of doing all of this and using the machine at all), it will likely freeze again and I'll be right back where I am right now. If I can even get there in the first place.
Please please please help...
Blue and White G3 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Conventional wisdom for installing 10.2 Jaguar is to strip the machine back to the minimum Apple might have shipped in it, Install the OS, then add your extras back in.
Memory seems to be a big issue -- I suggest you use the free DIMM First Aid under Mac OS 9 to scan your DIMMs and be sure they are OK for your Mac, and not too slow:
http://www.mactcp.org.nz/dimmfirstaid.html
I have found 10.3 Panther much simpler and more pleasant to install (even if you had to use XPostFacto 3.1 to do it) than 10.2 Jaguar ever was.

Dual monitor possible on G3 Beige 300?

I would like to be able to use a dual monitor set up, one for all my menus, and the other for workspace in each program. I am running OS 9.2 now but will be upgrading to OS X shortly after the holidays. Is this possible? What kind of hardware/software would I need. I already have 2 monitors, both 15 pin traditional PC monitors, one already being used by the G3. Any help would be great.

The Mac has been able to support multiple monitors arranged into an "Extended desktop" since the Mac-II days. Every well-behaved Mac Application can be used with it, and the monitors can be completely different and it still works great. The left half of a window can be shown on the left screen in 32-bit color, the right half can be on the right screen in Black-and-White. When you scroll it, they move together. There is no additional software needed.
Each display needs a Video card for its screen buffer. There is one built into the Beige G3 motherboard. Its 2 MB VRAM standard can be expanded to 6 MB VRAM. The built-in had a "two-row" connector -- you need a VGA adapter or Multiple Scan adapter to change to three-row "VGA" connector AND provide the right code so that the right resolutions can be supported.
Additional display adapters can be plugged into an available PCI slot. Mac-specific ATI cards with 16 MB VRAM or more and VGA connector are popular, and well-supported into Mac OS X. Allan Jones recommended a list on a post nearby:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=276937&tstart=3

I'm trying to make a poster and invert part of it but the black is coming out as a beige colour instead of white.

I can't figure out why this is happening - I've remade this document from scratch twice and each time it did this. I made a new adjustment layer with an invert mask on it, and instead of the black coming out as white, it came out as this beige colour. I tried to fix it myself, but was unable - I adjusted the colour profile, changed the colour, as well as fooled around in the menus trying to figure it out. I've inserted a screenshott of my workspace, as it was when the problem happened. Any help would be appreciated!

BOILERPLATE TEXT:
Note that this is boilerplate text.
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
such as your platform (Mac or Win),
exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CS6", but something like CS6v.13.0.6) and of Bridge,
your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
the type of file you were working on,
machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
what error message(s) you receive,
if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
etc.,
someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster).
a screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too.
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Beige G3 upgrade help needed

Hello everybody.
I have a few questions about upgrading the G3 if anyone would be willing to help.
First of all, I must tell you that I am new to the apple world, having been for most of my life a PC/windows user.
The story so far:
I was given a beige G3 desktop by a friend who had upgraded to the G5. I decided to use the G3 as a web browser and general 'lifestyle' computer as I use my PC for business.
However the G3 was a little old and outdated as it was for my needs.
G3 266MHz
256MB RAM
6 MB VRAM
6GB HDD
Mac OS 8.6
I couldn't even get it online as the modem cable had been lost long ago (it had been connected to my friends office network)
I tried building a modem cable myself out of a printer cable and a PC modem cable and that, as you can imagine, failed in a major way.
I did a bit of research and found out that OSX can connect to a windows network so I set about getting a copy of jaguar.
Once I got hold of a copy of jaguar (from applerescue £28 inc delivery)
I installed it without a problem and connected to my windows network allowing me to utilise my existing broadband connection.
Excellent, thought I, but why stop there.
I have built and upgraded many pc's in my time and I had a few components hanging around. Will they work in the G3?
One way to find out.
The first problem I encountered was one of cables and space. As you all probably know the beige G3 does not have much room inside for extras.
I also found that the desktop case was not suited to the environment. It took up way too much space on my desk. I couldn't put the monitor on top of it as it is a big heavy 20inch crt (my friend is a graphic designer) and there is a shelf over my desk that prevents it. However there was a space under my desk which the case would fit in perfectly, if only it was on its side.
Merely putting the case on its side didn't help. The design of the case meant that the thing kept falling over. The cds would fall out too and I had no idea what damage it would do in the long term.
So, junior hacksaw and drill in hand, I set about a major conversion.
A day later I had sucessfully ripped all the components from the G3 case and fitted them in a standard ATX PC case. Now it fits under my desk perfectly.
I fitted the original apple PSU inside the case and fitted the ATX PSU on top.
I spent a little money online and got a 1GHz G3 upgrade from OWC.
(A brief word about OWC. Ordered Sunday evening, package delivered with no VAT or customs charges on Wednesday! Better delivery than a UK vendor and loads cheaper too!)
I used some PC100 RAM I had lying around from a previous PC build.
Standard crucial 184pin SDRAM. Worked no problem. I ordered an extra stick of RAM along with the CPU upgrade.
So I now have a G3 in a ATX tower case.
1GHz G3 CPU
768 MB RAM
Original 6 GB hard drive
Extra 17GB hard drive
Mac OS X
Loads of extra room inside for extras.
I run the hard drives and the motherboard plus a heatsink/fan on the CPU from the apple PSU and the optical drives and a few extra fans from the second PSU.
Sorry that was a long read but I tend to get carried away when I am talking about computers.
Here are some problems I am having which I hope you kind, clever people can help me with.
1. I have a missing hard drive.
I have two ATA hard drives on the internal IDE channel 0 which work fine-ish (see question 2)
I have the original apple CDROM as master on internal IDE 1 and a small 1GB hard drive as slave on internal IDE 1. The small hard drive doesn't show up on the desktop. I can see the drive in disk utility but I can't do anything with it. It is not greyed out but any erasing or partioning gets so far then just stops. However, opening disk utility during installation doesn't have the same problems. I can erase and partition the drive and it shows up with the second listing under the name of the disk. Once OS X is installed it shows up on the desktop perfectly functioning. Once I have restarted it is gone again.
I read somwhere that having a hard drive and CDROM on the same IDE channel can cause problems, is this what is happening here?
I have a yamaha CDRW on the internal SCSI bus, if I use that as my CD drive and remove the CDROM from the IDE channel will that help (I'll try that anyway)
2. The original apple hard drive works so much better than the extra drive I fitted. I installed a 17GB drive as master and have installed OS X on it but it is so slow. I know the drive is 4600rpm but I can't believe how much faster the apple hard drive is. I have installed OS X on both drives and the difference is stunning. With OSX installed on my 17GB drive it takes just over 14 minutes to boot up, with OSX installed on the apple 6GB drive it is more like 2 minutes. I know that the 17GB drive is old and slow but that is a big difference. Could it be a driver problem?
I have looked around online for drivers for the hard drive but, as I said before, being new to the apple side of computers I don't really know where to start looking.
3. I have installed an unsupported USB card. It seems to work fine. Everytime I boot up I get a message saying:
'over current warning - the usb device installed is drawing too much power, the hub it is attached to will be disabled.'
I click okay but the thing still works!
I have a wireless mouse plugged into it and it works fine even though it has been disabled.
Is this going to explode?
The words 'over current' sound scary.
4. Harking back to question 1. If I disconnect the CDROM on the internal channel to enable me to use my third hard drive, will I be able to boot from the SCSI CDRW?
5. Can anyone suggest a good system monitoring program? As mentioned I bought a CPU upgrade and I am a little suspicious about it. I want to know what speed it is running at. The docs that came with it say the the apple system profiler will not give the correct reading of CPU speed and I should use CPU director instead.
Call me cynical but is it possible that the CPU I bought is not what it says on the tin.
ASP says it is 333MHz and it should be 1GHz. CPU director does indeed say it is running at 1GHz but can I believe that? It is, in my opinion, possible to write a piece of software to give the wrong CPU speed thereby allowing someone to sell a 333MHz chip as a 1GHz chip and saying 'only our software can give correct readings'
I had the same thing with a broadband supplier recently. My connection was really slow for days. I ran several online speed checks to ascertain the speed. Out of the six speed checks only the suppliers own one said I was getting the connection speed I should have been, all the others gave really low speeds which reflected in the fact that it took an age for a web page to download, not something you should be getting on a 2Mbit connection.
On the phone to the suppliers customer services and they refused to take any speed check but theirs as true. I ran theirs and it always came up with the same number. 'Then your connection is working perfectly' they said. The five other speed checks and my own eyes told a different story but they wouldn't have any of it, instead telling me my PC was to blame, even going on to tell me to disable firewall and antivirus and run my PC in safe mode with no startup programs!! ********. Anyway, I want a third opinion about processor speeds so if anyone could tell me the name of a good program to do this (preferably free) I would be grateful.
Thanks for any help any of you can give me. I am learning more and more about apple hardware by the day and I am fast becoming one of the converted.
broddr

Hey guys,
thanks for answering so soon.
To answer the questions asked:
The motherboard is either a rev b or c. I remember checking this when I first had the idea of upgrading the cpu. I am not sure if it is a b or c but it is definately not rev a.
I think the cpu upgrade is working fine.
As Frank mentioned, it seems most of the cpu speed utilities use ASP for their information and give exactly the same speed reading.
I went a little more basic.
I ran CPU director and put the cpu speed at 333MHz and timed how long it took a few apps to open, then used CPU director to put the speed up to 1000MHz and timed the same programs again.
The speed difference was more than noticeable so from this I can only assume the CPU is running at 1GHz.
I have installed 9.2 on a seperate partition but it seems to be a weird version.
It came with a freinds G5 software for his iMac and is labelled 'additional software'
I installed it on a whim (because I am like that) and it gave me 'classic support'
I can now run classic apps in OSX and I have, on occasion, been able to boot into the 9.2 system. Only occasionally though.
Once booted into the 9.2 system there is no optical drive support and hardly any of the options I remember from OS8.6.
From this I am assuming that it is a cut down version of 9.2 bundled with new iMacs to enable users to use classic apps.
That doesn't explain why sometimes I can boot into it though.
Any of you heard of something like that.
I am planning to purchase a full copy of 9.2 when funds allow.
I have disconnected the CDROM which is on the same IDE channel as my third hard drive and used the cuda button to force the motherboard to recheck its hardware. Upon boot though the only difference it made is that I didn't have a CDROM. The third hard drive was still awol.
The SCSI yamaha CDRW is bootable but that makes little difference as disconnecting my IDE CDROM makes no difference on whether or not I can see the third hard drive.
I do know about the 8GB partition and OSX is sitting on the first partition which is 7.95GB.
I tried using xpostfacto to get around this which kind of worked. It did allow me to put OSX on a larger partition but caused no end of problems at boot so I cleared NVRAM and erased all the hard disks and started afesh.
The 17GB hard drive is in fact 15.91 GB, sorry about that. It came in a PC I bought which was (incorrectly) labelled as having a 17GB hard drive and since then I have just called it the '17GB hard drive'.
Since I last wrote I have done a little more research on the hard drives and found that the 6GB original apple drive and the 15GB drive are both 5400rpm so that cannot be the problem.
Here is some more accurate information on the drives:
IDE 0-
Master - 15.91GB Fujitsu MPE3170AT - seems to work fine apart from the aforementioned slowness - first partition is 7.95GB with OSX installed.
Slave - 6GB Maxtor 90651U2 - works fine
IDE 1-
Master - Matshita CR57 CDROM - works fine and is bootable.
Slave - 1.19GB WDC AC21200H - this is the one I just cannot use or see.
SCSI internal - Yamaha CDRW - works fine and is bootable.
Could the problem be that I have overloaded the internal bus by having four devices on the IDE and a SCSI device?
I have since used a program called disk warrior which states that the 1GB WDC disk is of an unrecognisable format.
I have sucessfully used disk utility to zero it out but it makes no difference.
I think it may just be trashed.
The USB card is still a puzzle.
I am, right now, using a mouse plugged into the USB card which is, according to OSX, disabled.
Scratching of head.
Maybe it is still functioning because the apple PSU has lots spare to give because I have a second PSU taking a lot of the strain? I just don't know.
This whole boot time thing is puzzling to the extreme.
As I said before. I have installed OSX on the 6GB Maxtor drive and the machine starts up in under 2 minutes so I can only assume that there is no hardware problem elsewhere.
When I use the Fujitsu drive its 10 - 14 minutes. So from that it is logical to assume it is the hard drive. Maybe it has a really small cache or something. Or maybe the apple just doesn't like it much.
Once the machine is up and running it runs just fine. A few programs like entourage are a little slow to boot.
I don't know what the benchmark is as I have never used an Apple except this one.
For instance safari takes around 2 seconds for the icon to stop bouncing and about 5 seconds in total to be up and have loaded the home page. Is that about normal?
Another question I have to ask you fine fellows.
Can you move some of OSX's built in applications and utilities to a seperate partition and still have them function properly?
I would like to use the apple hard drive as the OSX installation disk but at 6GB, once I have installed the OS there ain't much room left for anything else.
I have already installed MS office and Appleworks and a few other apps to a separate partition and they work fine.
I suppose though that if I did that and the problem is slow access to the fujitsu disk, once I installed OSX to the apple disk and installed apps to the fujitsu disk I would still have problems accessing those apps.
i don't know really. I think I am going to have to take the machine apart again and experiment until I can find the problem.
Another quick question.
Could it be RAM? Surely either RAM works or it doesn't right?
My system is correctly identifying the 768megs of RAM, if there was a problem with the 512MB of PC100 RAM I installed it just wouldn't show up.
Anyway, thanks for all your help so far,
I think I am going to save some cash and buy a new Apple machine - any suggestions which?
Broddr.
Beige G3 Desktop Mac OS X (10.2.x)

No audio on Beige G3

Hi,
The audio is no longer works on my Beige G3.
I’m running 10.3.8 on it over a year and it has been rock solid. In December I decided to buy bought a DVD for the Beige. I was hoping to get a copy of Tiger and install it on the Beige.
I initially bought a Lite-on Drive and I had issues with it since it the Beige would hang if there was no disk in the drive. It worked fine if there was a disk in the drive at startup. I returned the drive and got a Pioneer 110D DVD. It worked find for a while then it the same problems as the Liteon start occurring with the DVD as well.
To make a long story short in an attempt to make it the DVD work I screwed something in my system so bad it took a week to recover and to reinstall everything. However, I have not been able to recover it to the original state that it was before I introduced the DVD.
I’ve managed to load 10.3.9 again. I have to use 9.1 to do it. But when I attempt to install OS 9.2 I get bus errors. and the system crashes at startup. Also, in order to get 10.3.9 installed I had to temporary remove my SCSI card otherwise 10.3.9 would not install.
During the process my audio stopped working. I get no chimes at startup and no sound at all on the system. When I checked they system profile it indicates that the Appleonboardaudio extension is not loaded. I’ve reset the card just in case it got loose as I move the Beige around. I’ve reset the pram but I don’t think the four finger pram resetting is working properly. And I’ve done the reset button on the motherboard.
Did I so how fry the audio card or simply that the Beige has run it’s course and it’s time to move on. I was hoping to keep it going for a couple of more months when I’ll be in a better position to get a new Mac.
Thanks
Beige G3 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 768 mg ram, 80 gig HD, Radeon 7000

Francesco,
"But when I attempt to install OS 9.2 I get bus errors. and the system crashes at startup."
The last time I got these errors was after I installed processor upgrade. The problem ended up being an improperly seated ZIF card and/or a weak PRAM battery. Later discussion of the issue around here led us to conclude that it was a battery issue.
If you are having continuing start-up issues, the first thing to try is replace the PRAM battery. This page shows the correct battery. They are also available from Radio Shack stores as part number 23-026, but are more expensive.
You should do the CUDA reset you mentioned after removing the old battery but before installing the new one. The computer should be unplugged from the wall during the reset, and you need to hold the little botton for 20-30 seconds to insurea complete job.
Keep us posted on your progress.
A

Beige G3 Tower no longer boots

Hi, I took a look through this forum and found a few people with the same problem, but unfortunately their solution didn't work for me. I was wondering if anyone could help.
I have a Beige G3 266Mhz PowerMac that no longer wants to boot. No post, no beeps, no video, no power light on the front - just a hum of the fan. The memory is 3x128MB DIMMs, I've upgraded the VRAM to 6MB. I believe the ROM is "$77.40F2" (which is "A" I believe?). I can't confirm the ROM since I can no longer get it up and running. Everything else is stock (6GB hard drive, personality card, zip drive, CD-ROM).
The problem:
When I hit the power on the keyboard or on the front of the Mac I can hear a fan startup (power supply fan), but nothing else.
I have tried the following:
resetting the CUDA
bought a new battery
did the PRAM trick
reseated all the cards, memory
reseated all cables
removed upgrades (VRAM and memory)
tried a different power supply
No luck. I'd like to get this box up and running again if possible, but I'm running out of ideas. I thought I'd post it here to get some advice on the problem.
Thanks in advance,
Steve
Beige G3 266Mhz Mac OS 9.1.x

Do you know if a faulty "voltage regulator" would produce these symptoms?
Steve, you can't rule it out now that you seem to have arrested and released the usual suspects. The voltage regulator modules (VRM) that were in question were those marked "Royal." The reported trouble happened when you installed a processor upgrade, a G4 I think. However, if a VRM didn't have the moxie to handle an upgrade, it could say something about its ability to "age gracefully."
< href="http://www.macgurus.com/products/motherboards/mbppcg3mini.php">This diagram shows where to find the VRM. You can look to see if yours is marked "Royal."
Also, make sure the personality card in the PERCH slot is fully seated and square to the logic board. If it tips up slightly, it can cause a dead computer.
A

Trying to update beige G3 to OSX 10.2 without DVD drive

I have a beige 233 mhz G3 that my elderly mom is using with a dial-up modem. It has OS 9.2, and just keeps chugging along nicely. I wanted to try upgrading it to OS X 10.2 so my mom would have some of the advantages of X, but without success.
Problem is, the OS X disks are DVDs and the G3 only has a Cd-rom.
I tried burning the installer to CDs using Toast, but it didn't work (wasn't bootable, apparently). After wasting about 10 Cds on this effort (tried various suggestions on the internet for making bootable copies of OS X installers--nothing worked), out of desperation I tried this:
So, I took out the 20 GB hard drive I wanted to use in the G3, and installed it as a slave in my own G4 desktop. Then I reformatted & partitioned the 20GB drive, and installed OS 10.2 on the 7.9 GB partition. Rebooted, and it worked. Then I took it out, reset its jumpers as a Master, and put it back in the beige G3.
No joy. The G3 booted from the original 4 GB drive on OS 9 (even
though I had set the jumpers as a slave). So I took out the 4GB drive, but it kept giving "can't open" error messages across the top of a white screen and kept restarting but wouldn't boot.
Can anyone tell me if this can be done without spending more money, or should I abandon the effort?

I do not know of any "Full Retail" discs containing 10.2 on DVDs. My Impression was that a few 10.3 Panther discs were DVDs, and all "store-bought" "Full Retail" discs for 10.4 Tiger were DVDs, but there were CD exchange programs available for legitimate (e.g., non-eBay) purchases. 10.4 Tiger DVDs other than "Full Retail" all appear to be computer-model specific.
If you are trying to install anything other than 10.2 Jaguar, the following does not apply.
What you have described should work for Mac OS X 10.2, but there are a few places it could get derailed. First, your PRAM backup battery must be strong to maintain the parameters while you are experimenting. Unless you have changed it recently, it is likely to be dead.
Some drives have different strap settings for Master with Slave present and Master without Slave. The make and model of the drive would help determine whether your drive is such a drive. Early models of the beige G3 do not support Master/Slave on one cable, but they shipped with cables for single drives. Are these the original everything including cables?
If you could boot to the Mac OS X 10.2 Install CD (which you said you cannot) you could choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu rather than Installing. This would allow you to check the Hard Drive for Integrity AND set the Startup Disk using Mac OS X.
If you can boot Mac OS 9 with both drives present, you could Set Startup to the Hard Drive and System with Mac OS X on it. (This requires 9.2.1 or a downloaded Startup Disk Control panel -- older versions of Startup Disk Control panel do not know anything about Mac OS X). You could also use OS 9 Disk First Aid to do a cursory check of the drive. Mac OS X extends the OS 9 directory organization with additional data structures, but gross errors on the Hard Drive could be detected.

Beige G3 for school use?

Heylo
Kinda long post. My mum works as a teacher in a primary school for reception class (im not sure what this is in america but its the first year of school). They have these ancient RM's running windows 98. Their hardware spec is around say, within the 200-300 mhz range. These are old celeron processors that came out around 5 years ago, and the most ram i have seen in one is 64mb. in addition, they have itsy bitsy little 5gb harddrives and on them is windows 98 with RM software managing user accounts. So you have the teachers account, the admins account and the kids account. Because microsoft obviously didnt do a good enough job with restricted accounts. If you log on as admin, you get the normal windows 98 desktop. When you log on as a child, there is no password and you get a very restricted desktop with different windows holding links to applications. there is no way they can change any settings on these machines.
Now regarding reliability. i dont think the machines have had the OS wiped and reinstalled. ever. they have had a few problems where sound stops working, colour goes to 256 etc. But biggest problem of all is printing. First, these are not network printers, but instead inkjets with print servers attached to them. There are 3 machines in her class room and she says they all have problems printing. Im not exactly sure what she says goes wrong, but they somehow cant find or send data to the printer on the network. I have been over several times, having to remove and reinstall the printer and it gets very annoying when other small problems like this occour and i have to come out and sort them. I also feel that these problems shouldnt occour in the first place, because i simply dont understand how it can happen when most of the time the restricted accounts are used. The machines dont have any spyware or adware.
They are really beginning to show their age now. over the years i have had to change cd-roms and floppy drives but recently, a computer in one of the other classrooms had a major breakdown and in the end needed the motherboard replacing. Before i did the repair, they were thinking of buying a new machine. They were quoted £445 for a new computer (im hoping that included a mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers) but i then reluctantly said they could get a dell cheaper. But they are so low on money, after i offered a second hand motherboard replacement for £20 (500mhz celeron or pentium) they immediatley went for that.
Now onto the main feature.
My dad bought a second hand Beige G3 mac from a shop somewhere in london for £10. Its exact specs were: G3 266mhz processor, 192mb of ram, 4GB harddrive, Cd-rom, floppy drive and zip 100 drive. My mum has this software the kids use, its dead simple mainly flashed based stuff. The thing that really stood out, is that these games are also macintosh compatible. The recommended requirements were: G3 233mhz, 128mb of ram, and 10.2 or later.
I have no use for this machine. Overall we have at least 5 macs in the house!! I would love to give this away and replace one of the aging machines. I have shoved in it a USB card, put in a bigger 40GB drive and have managed to install OS 9 on it.
Now looking up information on this computer, it seems it'll take up to Mac OS 10.2. Currently i dont have a copy, but i know i could find one on ebay for cheap. point is, would this make a good machine for these simple educational flash games. I think OS X's interface is also ideal as its so simple and easy to use, and i find it to be of better reliability. Currently i cant think of any disadvantages except for this machine might be a little too slow and fustrating. I am curious as to how the old onboard graphics will cope with the animations and graphics of OS X.
oh and whether the whole thing is a good idea! dont wont to give them something worse.

i dont think it would be worse than those PC's. you can buy a G3 450 zif cpu for cheap and it would blow all the other pc's away. in order to run OS X and not be dog slow it to upgrade the ram to at least 256mb ram ( USEING the propper 256mb ram from the link below). you can also upgrade the onboard vram with a 4mb sodimm upgrade wich makes the total of 6mb vram onboard and you would get better video proformance than just with the stock 2mb vram.
the 256mb pc100 here is the type you need for the Beige G3 this is also what i use in mine and i couldent be happier.
http://www.datamem.com/memoryselect_frame.asp_Q_C_E_1318-G3BW300
but you could also buy a ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition pci video card for cheap and would be a better upgrade than the Vram upgrade and it would run way faster than useing the onboard video with the vram upgrade ever would. it would be compatable with the monitors there at school not requireing a converter to go from a Mac to a VGA monitor. i bought my ATI Radeon 7000 ME PCI for around $30 USD shipped about 6 month's ago so it prolly would be cheaper now.
but if you buy the Radeon 7000 Mac edition make shure it say's Mac Edition PCI. if you get a G3 450mhz zif cpu out of a B&W, and the Radeon 7000 Mac Edition and say 256mb Ram it would run great in OS X 10.2.8.
BTW what kind of Beige G3 is it, a DT = desktop, MT = mini tower, or a AIO = ALL IN ONE.
But yea the RAM is a bit low to run OS X at a good speed you will run into hiccup's with the ammount of ram you have now. the G3 450mhz CPU i bought off ebay was arrount $50 USD with shipping and that was about 4 month's ago but it results with a nice speed boost with the ATI Radeon 7000 ME PCI video card.

Beige G3 drives making me nuts

This is absolutely infuriating. I have a bunch of Beiges that I've been imaging. I have a number of 6GB and 8GB drives. I built a drive image with 9.2.2 and 10.3.9 with XPostFacto onboard. I've imaged several Beiges with it using NetRestore and a firewire enclosure. I found that I have to format the drive on the Beige, then image it in a Firewire enclosure (trying to format it in the enclosure makes it unreadable in OS 9, even with the box checked in Disk Utility), and then drop it back in the Beige, boot from an OS 9 CD, set the 9.2.2 system folder to start, then reboot, run XPostFacto, and the thing works just fine in OS X. No problems. Until now.
Now, I have an issue that is ticking me off because there is no friggin' reason for it. Nothing has changed. All these Beiges are 266mhz Rev A. No difference. However, all of a sudden, images have stopped working. First thing was that my OS 9.2.1 boot disk stopped recognizing them and asked to initialize at startup...even though they'd been formatted on that very startup CD and had not been reformatted. When I pulled the CD out and left the hard drive, it would try to spin up, click, then spin down ad infinitum. I booted from an 8.1 CD, and it recognized the drive just fine, but setting it to boot produced the same clicking. I figured it was due to 8.1 not being able to set the right system folder.
Okay, so I spent more time than I should have getting a 9.1 CD. I boot up, it recognizes the drive (dunno what the heck was wrong with that 9.2.1 CD) and sees both system folders as bootable. So I set the 9.2.2 system folder to boot as usual...and get the same **** clicking and spindown at startup. It's done this with several working drives. I reformatted it and installed 9.1. The drive booted with no trouble. I reformatted, imaged (no reformat in the image) and put it back...same clicking issue. Several Beiges have been doing this for no reason, and I cannot fathom why. I also don't see why that 9.2.1 CD stopped reading the drives. It's really, really ******* me off. I've tried PRAM resets, NVRAM resets, battery pulls...nothing. The hard drive is on the separate channel as master, no slave drives. The configuration between the already imaged Beiges and the ones with clicking drives are friggin' identical. No difference.
I also noticed that sometimes the Beige takes a little longer to output video. When it does this, the drive spins up and stays up until the system scans it for a boot folder. THEN it clicks and spins down again. When I boot from a CD, I get the click and spindown, but it spins up and mounts when it gets to the desktop. I know these drives are fine, and 9.1 booted off of it...so why in the heck wont they boot from a working image?? I'm seriously at a loss here.

I have seen similar problems in working with a number of beige G3's. I have almost always been working with XPostFacto and 10.3, so I can't really tell whether the problem is an XPostFacto problem or a Mac OS X problem. I found 10.2 Jaguar without XPostFacto much harder to get installed than 10.3 Panther with XpostFacto.
Let me make some broad statements and see whether others can corroborate, or have have different views of the situation:
This does not seem to be a Hardware problem.
OS X, especially before 10.3, had a strong tendency to mangle Mac OS 9 boot data, especially when both 9 and X were on the same partition. It is much less frequent in 10.3, and much less frequent if 9 and X are on separate partitions. I decided to keep separate partitions, one for X and one for Mac OS 9/Classic, and have had much less trouble since.
XPostFacto [or is it Mac OS X?] seems to [ ? accidentally? ] do something to the boot information such that if it can't boot X, it can't boot at all, and gets stuck in a loop like the one you described -- light up the screen, maybe the smiling Mac, then reset and do it again ad infinitum. Other times the screen lights up, then screen goes dark, and rather than coming up in 6 seconds with the grey apple, just stays dark and never comes back.
One working solution is to use XPostFacto (which runs in X and 9) to change to 9 and back, or boot from a 9 CD and run XPostFacto to get its house in order and set XPostFacto to re-enable booting from the drive you really want. Sometimes a de-install and re-install of extensions etc. inside XPostFacto sets it right.
Sometimes you have to reset the PRAM to get a 9 CD to boot.

Beige G3 boot from **** problem; open firmware issues; bad motherboard?

Dear all,
I'm having huge boot/startup problems with my beige G3 that had been happily running OSX 10.3.9, but for purposes of this discussion we can (mostly) revert to OS 9. Originally, the machine was a G3 @300; was upgraded more than a year ago to a ZIF G4 @500.
To make a long story short, it won't boot from any hard drives, will not boot from any OS X CD, and will only occasionally boot from a 9.x startup CD (whether Apple or Norton Utilities). I think it's an open firmware issue, possibly caused by a bad motherboard (rev. 2).
All this started happening after I used techtool pro, but I think that's coincidence (even though I acknowledge that, for cops and computer users, there are no coincidences.) Also, as discussed below, I'm having the same problems with an HD that wasn't even in the computer when all these things began.
Here are some of the things I've done.
--repeatedly reset PRAM, both with key combinations and removing battery. The only time it will boot from a 9.x CD is after resetting PRAM.
--removed all add-on PCI cards.
--removed additional VRAM
--removed all memory cards and tried replacing one at a time.
--disconnected both existing hard drives and replaced with an older OS 9.x hard drive (approx 60 mb) that I'd used before. Also tried different ribbon cables.
--unplugged floppy drive
--disconnected PCI ATA disk controller that I'd been using for running a large (1.8 gb) hard drive.
--regarding open firmware: readenv usually shows totally normal default AND installed settings. Using reset-all works fine -- at least it makes the machine reboot, but doesn't solve the problem. reset-nvram does NOT work -- says it's an "unknown word."
--using startup keys like holding down the option key, or shift key, or X key or cmd-option plus two others I can't remember, has no effect. Again, after I've tried any kind of reboot, the ONLY way to get the C-key at startup to boot the CD is by resetting the pram (key combination). Otherwise, the usual result of these experiments is a dark screen on startup -- nothing at all (and the LCD monitor tells me "no input.")
--regarding OSX: sometimes (and I emphasize sometimes) I can get the machine to start booting from an OSX 10.2 CD, but it won't complete the process. Sometimes I get a "prohibited" (as in no-parking, no-smoking) icon; sometimes it will start booting (grey screen, OS X Apple icon), then crash (horizontal grey and white jagged bars); sometimes it will show the OS 9 start icon (the tiny smiling Mac SE), but not boot at all.
--when I get the mac successfully booted with an OS 9.x CD (again, this works sometimes, but not always), the old hard drive with two partitions does show on the desktop and can be accessed. Using either disk repair or Norton Utilities shows the 9.2 system partition on the hard drive to be fine. But if I go to the startup disk control panel, confidently set the 9.2 partition as my startup disk, then reboot, there's no change. It won't boot and I'm back at square one.
--even when I do get successfully booted with 9.x, the machine will still occasionally crash for no reason -- ie when I'm moving a Window.
--the only thing I haven't done is slowed down the processor. It's a ZIF G4 bought more than a year ago from XLR8 your Mac. I'm running at the default 500 mhz, and it's never given me any trouble.
So I think it's a bad motherboard or ROM. Thoughts?
Thanks.

The beige Mac is now operating happily again. My original tentative diagnosis remains the same (although still tentative): corrupted PRAM from bad battery, compounded by bad cables that wrote corrupted data to hard drives, and also (possibly) allowing Tech Tool Pro (a utility that I now regard with deep suspicion) to create a "virtual" startup partition.
A few things I've learned along the way that hopefully may be useful:
--remember that the Ex Post Facto utility can be used to help OS X startup, not just installation. This applies to hard drives, emergency CDs, installation CDs, etc. If you can boot into any working hard drive partition (OS 9 or a backup OS 10), then run Ex Post Facto (same program runs on either OS 9 or X -- don't ask me how) and tell it what system you want to start up from. Also, the utility has sometimes told me that the startup extensions on the disc that I wanted to boot up from were bad, and offered to fix them (which works).
--at least on my Mac (beige, v. 2 motherboard), resetting the CUDA button, resetting the PRAM, resetting Open Firmware and "draining" the memory by unplugging the computer and disconnecting the battery for several hours ALL DO DIFFERENT THINGS.
Specifically, if I'm having trouble booting (from a hard drive or a CD), the FIRST thing I do is restart and resetting the PRAM on the fly -- holding down command, option, P and R at startup, and waiting for the chimes (preferably at least 3-4 times).
If I do that and DON'T hear the chimes, that's my cue for my SECOND action -- restarting into open firmware (command, option O and F keys on startup). That should bring up the black text on white background open firmware screen. View other posts or apple support for details, but if you do PRINTENV and see a bunch of weird gibberish after the default/installed lists, you know that it was messed up and you need to clear it through reset nvram and reset all commands. Be aware some of these commands do or do not work depending upon what version of Open Firmware you have.
After I've rebooted with Open Firmware, then on restart I should be able to reset the PRAM on the fly. If that works, then either let the machine run and see what happens, or hold down the C command and see if it will boot from the CD
Usually, if I've fixed everything as above, the machine will boot into whatever version of OS 9 it finds on a hard drive. That's fine with me -- at that point, use Ex Post Facto to reboot into your OS X. (Before I forget: I used the shareware startup CD creator program BootCD to make an emergency boot CD based on OS 10.2.8 (which theoretically will support a beige mac in native fashion) and Disk Warrior, the god of disk repair utilities. Even though the CD should boot just by holding down the C key on startup, it doesn't -- but if I use Ex Post Facto to boot it, no problems (although the process is very slow -- be patient). Then I can fix almost anything using Disk Warrior.)
If none of the above works, then I'll try resetting the CUDA (on my beige minitower, it's a very small black button inconveniently located between a PCI slot and the side of the computer housing). Hold it down for 15 seconds. That should REALLY clear the PRAM. I know this does something different from the previous steps because this is the only action (except the battery disconnect -- next) that clears the date and time from the memory.
If all else fails, I will unplug the computer and disconnect the battery, then push the CUDA button for 15 seconds and let the machine sit overnight.
One final finding -- I thought I'd fixed everything, but both my hard drives suddenly quit working, I discovered that during all this repeated connect/disconnect of things, one of the male pins inside one of the connectors on my Acard ATA PCI card had broken off. Not good. Fortunately, the card had a second connector, which works fine. And I did some extensive shaking of the computer to make sure (I hope) that the broken pin hadn't landed on a circuit board.
All this took more than two weeks, and the advice of this board was much appreciated. Now I'm on to my next adventure -- trying to figure out why a combo Firewire/USB PCI card won't mount an external drive on Firewire, but will on USB. I've tried two cards with same result -- but a Firewire-only card works just fine.)
Regards to all,
Graham

Beige G3 boot problems.

Hello everyone,
I have a Beige G3 MT with the following specs:
541 MHz G4 processor
83 MHz System Bus
384 MB PC133 SDRAM (2x128 MB, 1x 256 MB Single-sided)
ATI Radeon Mac Edition with 32 MB VRAM
Keyspan PCI USB 1.1 card (OPTi)
80 GB 5400 RPM Samsung HD on the onboard IDE
Apple CDRW unit pulled from a Quicksilver G4
Inactive SCSI
Original PRAM Battery (but apparently still in good state)
Oh, and an AV personality card.
The Hard Drive is partitioned into three sections:
-One 7.9 GB Partition for OS X (Jaguar)
-One 2.5 GB Partition for OS 9.1
-And another partition for all the rest
I have transfered the mobo to a PC ATX case, which involved removing the DB-15 port. The default video output is set to the Radeon thanks to XPF.
Everything worked fine for a few months (Both Jaguar and 9.1 took an eternity to boot, but that seems normal). Recently Jaguar became very unstable, and often froze. After a few restarts, I would run into a kernel panic at each startup, right before the desktop appears.
Now, when I power up the machine, I get the chime, run into the Open Firmware screen, with the message 'can't OPEN' repeating itself. The ADB keyboard still works, and the computer boots into the standard Open Firmware screen ( with the boot options) when the Command, Option, O and F keys are held down. When I try to boot into Jaguar, I get the same 'can't OPEN' message, and when I attempt to boot into OS 9, it freezes. Booting with CMD-Opt-P-R makes the computer reboot as usual, but when I let it boot normally into OS 9 after the third chime, it freezes.
I cannot boot from a CD, as I presume that the problem occurs before boot options are considered. At any rate, inserting an OS 9 or OS X CD and holding down the C key has no effect whatsoever.
I am now out of solutions and theories, and any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Macinnerd.

Thank you all very much for your quick, helpful and abundant answers.
Dan- The G3 sets the default output to the built-in RagePro (it's Pro indeed, thanks for the correction) graphics system, anything during the boot before the blue OS X screen is displayed through the default output. As I have removed the DB15 port (large cracks were appearing in the original case...), the ragePro is completely useless, and I need to set the Radeon as default output in order to see any messages or screens during the initial bits of the startup process.
The CDRW pulled from the G4 is a genuine Apple device, and I have booted OS CDs from it before, so there are no problems there.
AllanGlenHW- Yes, the Beige has spent a few months unplugged before being put back to use a few years ago. As I said, the battery is the original one, so it really needs to be changed, I guess.
Are there any other devices (cameras?...) that use the same battery so that I may go find it in some photo store or something?
Mauro-
The BEige was having difficulties installing Jaguar on its own so I decided to use XPostFAcTo. Obviously that has good sides ans bad sides, as you pointed out.
The question is: is there a way to effectively remove it (and all extensions) from the System?
The problems started approximately two months after the relocation. I don't think that the relocation is the culprit, though...
Grant-
When attempting to get the Beige to reset PRAM, I sometimes get a freeze after two chimes and sometimes it goes long as long as I hold down the keys.
It's an interestins (and most likely useful) piece of advice. Thanks.
Patrick+Frank-
Yes, the 256 stick is a single sided 8 chip one, and the system has always detected only 384 MB. It was already like this when I got the machine.
Thanks for all the advice. But I have a question about finding the batteries:
Are there any other devices (cameras?...) that use the same battery so that I may go find it in some photo store or something?
I live in France (not French, mind you), and can't find any similar PRAM batteries in any of the big computing sites.

Imagewriter II to Beige G3

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