Upgrading a 7500 in 2006 (?)

Question

ok, so I've decided to research a cpu upgrade card for the old 7500. have checked some sites (so many posts on upgrade cards have last entry from 1998 and tons of broken links) and have a few ?'s for the forum:
system now has 80mb ram, no video card, just 2mb vram. I'm assuming that, for economics, will be buying used stuff--willing to spend maybe up to $100, but would prefer less
*is it still the case that a G3 400 is about as fast a card I can put in? (i.e. is g4 out, even at higher prices? are faster cards limited by other system components like bus speed?)
*don't know if I have val4 or not--will it matter?
not looking for heavy numbers or video crunching -- simple kids-type games will be most common so there will be some video demands.
*are there any cards that were particulary good or bad fits with the 7500? (have read about some on xlrate, on bus rates, etc--were these issues cleaned up after the first couple of iterations so I could expect any not-too-old card to be ok?
*as an aside--just for fun, can a pci tv tuner work in this old fella? any experiences on that? many thanks for real-world successful system upgrade experiences or failures. I could leave it as is (and would not spend a dime, saving up for a new system)
*--also a possibility is to run it as a little server. is it possible for it to be a "dumb terminal" networked to a G5 and/or run as print server for adb-classic printer
or should I just throw the poor old guy up on ebay for a better home (any suggestions for used equipment sites other than ebay welcome too!) thanks!

Answer 1

I would simply keep the 7500 as a backup and to run what you already have which works on it just fine. Especially since floppy drives don't come on the new models, if any old files on floppies are going to be read, it is nice to have a machine handy. I keep my old MacPlus handy for doing the rare 400K disk which still surfaces! As an economic factor, these old machines don't have enough value other than to gift them to someone who can use them, if you don't keep them yourself.
Unless you acquire it for essentially no cost and want a hobby Mac, I also wouldn't spend today any money on getting a 604e/233 processor, as the technology is getting just too old. The newer websites, for example, seem to be built with the idea that everyone has broadband and a superfast computer; hence, browing speeds are effectively reduced on older machines.
The beige G3 (what is the actual Apple model name for a so-called "beige" G3, by the way?) does provide a lot of backward and forward compatibility, so that even if one acquires a brand new Mac, having a beige machine handy would still be worthwhile for when one had to use older scsi drives, floppies, CDs, serial printers, etc.
If one wants a hobby Mac for fun without cost being a particular factor, then the PM9600 Mac is one of the best, as it can be tricked out more than probably any other Mac out there and is super-easy to get inside. It is far more suitable to trick out than is the 7500, were you not going to get a native G3. Its main drawback is that its bus speed is only 47Mh.
What you ultimately do all boils down to cost and what hardware and software you have that you want to continue to use, and to thinking about the future which is all USB/Firewire, OS X-oriented, not now to mention the new Intel Macs!