Today, after several weeks handling some of my most spam-laden
email accounts, Mail is finally starting to recognize a good
percentage of unwanted email messages a junk. It's too bad it's
taking so long, but it's really neat to see it at work.
Hello. I recently switched from the Windows platform to Mac
OS X, picking up a brand new 1 GHz
Titanium PowerBook. I loved it immediately and soon began to tell
friends using PCs how much easier Mac OS X worked in comparison
to XP or Win 2k. In fact, I loved it so much that I couldn't resist
the chance to buy an older Mac from a friend who wanted to get rid of
it. The computer in question was a Power
Mac G3 B&W Rev. 2 450 MHz, 9 GB SCSI, CD-ROM, 128
MB RAM. He also threw in the matching keyboard and mouse, a matching
USB hub, a matching USB floppy drive, and the matching 17" Apple
Studio Display.
After reading that you found an ad for a B&W G3 with a 16"
Monitor for $350 and was astounded by that price, I just had to brag
at the price I got my G3 for: $200. I haven't been in the Mac world
for too long, but I think that qualified as a pretty good deal.
It was as a matter of fact an OEM module, a Mercury OWC chip, if
I'm not mistaken. I already sold it to someone else on eBay
and although I offered no warranty of any kind I'm feeling a little
guilty...
I am a little disappointed in the firm that sold me the module.
They never bothered to mention the system bus incompatibility and
presented the chip as the ideal upgrade for a Beige G3 with a Rev. C
ROM, which I also bought (and am selling) in order to make the chip
work. Live and learn, I suppose.
Thanks again for your input. Maybe you could include that
incompatibility problem in one of your upgrade articles, if you
haven't already.
Good suggestion. I'm adding the following to the beige G3
profiles: "When buying a G4 upgrade for the beige G3, make sure it
is compatible with this model's 66 MHz bus. Pulled G4s from
Apple's "Yikes!" G4 and some OEM
G4s are specifically designed for a 100 MHz bus and will not work
properly in the beige G3."
The Upgrade Debate
Thomas J. Cook sent the following to Steve Watkins and me:
You guys argued the age old upgrade vs. newer computer in separate
articles yesterday (see The
Complete Mac Makeover: Updating an Older Power Mac or iMac for Under
$500 and Why Apple's Blue &
White G3 Is a Best Buy), and I have to say you both presented
very convincing arguments, even though you may not have even realized
that you were debating . . . in fact maybe we should
suggest this style for the next presidential debates - you can only
argue the pros of your position, and you can't even hear your
opponents answers . . . just a thought.
Back to the topic - I have a basement full of PCI PPC and older
Macs (9 running more or less full time and another 11 in various
states), and Steve's suggestions for upgrading seemed like a great
idea - until I read Dan's article on the reasons why the
B&W is so much better than the
beige G3, and consequently so so much better than even an
upgraded 6100, 7100,
or 6400. And this is always my
dilemma: Why upgrade any of my machines when I can get an entire new
machine with similar processor capability (and usually better overall
specs due to faster bus, etc.) for a similar price?
Wouldn't Dan's G3/300 128/6/CD-ROM, $312 be faster overall than
Steve's upgraded $280 6100/G3-500 128/9? And, as Steve's points out,
the 6100 still lacks USB and FireWire and could never run
OS X?
The upgraded 7500/G3-400 512/9 or 36.7 gig at $336 has USB,
FireWire, and OS X, but how does it compare to Dan's G3/400,
256/9/CD-ROM, SCSI, $398?
And then there is the issue of the 10 Mbps Ethernet max on the
6100/7500 machines compared to the B&W's 100 Mbps standard.
I always appreciate your articles on pushing my old Macs to their
limits, but each time I get ready to buy a G3 upgrade card (even on
eBay, where you can frequently find then for less than $100), I
always stop myself. I remember that these old machines are still
humming along nicely - and with just the G3 upgrade that still
leaves them hamstrung by their other limitations. When I add up all
of the suggested upgrades, that B&W G3 seems only about another
$50 away.
Just my rambling thoughts. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for letting me rant.
Thanks for your thoughts. I wrote the four articles on the
Power Mac G3s and G4s on Monday, the same day I edited Watkin's
article. The merits and demerits of upgrades have always been
debated and will always be debated. At times I've gone one way; at
other times, the other way.
For instance, I paid nothing but income tax on my first Mac, a
Mac Plus that I earned in
an Apple sales competition. A friend donated a second floppy. I
spent about $300 on four 1 MB SIMMs, buying a pair at a time
as funds allowed. I bought a $400+ 40 MB hard drive, although
there were cheaper ones on the market. (The drive lasted about 8
years.) And I invested $200 in a Brainstorm 16 MHz upgrade. Add in
a printer cable, drivers, and some software, and that came to
about $1,000. But not all at once. And it's still a nice computer
to play with.
After a few years of use, I sold that for $750, picked up a
Centris 610 for about
$1,350, and began upgrading it. Increase VRAM. Drop in another
4 MB or 8 MB of RAM. Save up for a 270 MB hard drive.
Work out a deal for a 56k modem. Dream of a QuadDoubler, a CD-ROM
drive, more memory, and a still bigger hard drive.
Then SuperMac left the clone business, the last company to do so.
For $800 - about the cost of a QuadDoubler, big hard drive, and
maxing out RAM on the Centris - I could get a 180 MHz 604e
powerhouse. I sold the C-610 to one of my sons to help finance the
purchase of a SuperMac
J700. That machine's still in use today.
It, too, was upgraded with memory, a G3/250 processor, more
memory, an IDE controller and hard drive, a better video card, a
G3/333 processor, an ixTV card, 10/100 ethernet, and eventually a
stripped S900 - and with
all the old leftover parts, the J700 was rebuilt as a slower
alternative to the S900. Another of my sons uses the S900 these
days.
There are always three options when upgrading - Is it more
economical to make a few upgrades? Am I better of with a new Mac?
Or is there something in between what I have and what's new that
might be the best investment?
I also look at expansion potential. The b&w G3 has phenomenal
expansion potential; a Power Mac 6100 has very little. I'd have a
hard time justifying a big hard drive, lots of memory, and a CPU
upgrade all at once - but a bit here, another bit there, and it
sometimes fits the budget better to upgrade a little at a
time.
There is no right answer. There is only your right answer. In my
last job, I got to work with almost everything from the Mac Plus
through the Sawtooth G4s,
including about 40% of the PowerBooks. I had to know enough to
help my employer make the right decisions about new purchases and
upgrades. And, of course, I've been making the same choices with
my own money for over a decade.
It's always the value equation, and that's the whole reason we
share our expertise on older Macs. Without knowledge, it's hard to
measure value. we have steered some people away from some
Road Apples. We have
steered others toward our Best
Buys.
Best Version of Mac OS 9
Coming back to the Mac after a few years away, Brad Browne
wonders:
I'm a fan of your Low End Mac site, as I have a closet full of
legacy systems. I left the Mac world in 1998 when I was working as a
full-time network engineer and the Apple/NeXT/Rhapsody fiasco was at
its height. I had a 68K Performa
636 and didn't want to spend the cash on one of those
mid-generation PowerPCs. My mistake back then, But I came back Mac
last year.
My question is this:
Since I was out of the Mac World for all of OS 8 and 9, I have a
Cube I want to run as a Mac OS 9.x
machine. What are the differences between the different version of 9,
and what would you recommend for my Cube? I've got an MDD Mac and
TiBook for Jaguar, so this will be strictly an OS 9 machine.
Welcome back. Although Steve Jobs held a funeral for it, Mac
OS 9 remains a great operating system. I only switched from
it to using OS X full-time two months ago. Just as there are
people using System 6 and 7 today, I suspect we'll have people
using Mac OS 9 five years from now.
Mac OS 9 represents the culmination of nearly two decades of
operating system evolution. From the early days of the Macintosh
project in the early 1980s until last summer, Apple kept tweaking
it. Sometimes making it more efficient. Almost always making it
more friendly. Sometimes making it a bit less stable, then putting
the stability back with the next revision.
In my experience, I can't say that any version of OS 9 is
clearly better than any other. I can't see any reason not to
recommend 9.2.2, the final version of the classic Mac OS.
Best Portable?
After reading my thoughts on the best Power Macs, Brian asks:
I enjoyed your article but have a question...
What would you say is the equivalent "best buy in a portable?
I don't know yet. I've been debating doing a series on that in
the next week or two. I'm never quite sure what my conclusions
will be until I've finished writing.
Three Slots or Four?
Continuing the discussion from Four
PCI Slots, Al Shep writes:
I did not mean to offend. I only wanted to note that some took
issue when Apple said the machine had 4 PCI slots when one was
dedicated to video.
You might also note that a SCSI PCI card was a very common build
to order option, since the Blue and White did not have onboard SCSI.
This left only 2 PCI slots open.
Your point that upgrading the video is much more efficient with
the Blue and White is quite valid, but I would argue that upgrading
the video is not as common as you might think. Many Mac users do not
view a gaming video card as essential or even recognize the
importance of a fast video card, especially since Photoshop
acceleration is no longer selling point for video cards.
No offense taken. I tend to write a quickly and briefly as
possible so I can get close to caught up on email (I'm currently a
day behind).
I guess I'm kind of simple. If there are four PCI slots inside the
box, that's the way I call 'em. Nobody questioned whether the
Mac II had six slots or the
IIcx had three. Yes, each one
really needed a video card to be much good, but you there was no
debating how many NuBus slots were inside the computer.
It would have been disingenuous of Apple to call the Mac
IIci a four slot machine, although if you added the processor
direct slot, it was a four slot computer. Either way, with onboard
video, those three slots provided more expansion options than
three slots did on the IIcx.
It is disingenuous of Apple to claim some Macs have 5 USB ports
when two of them are on the keyboard - and one must be occupied
by the keyboard's USB cable in order for those two to function. It
is also disingenuous of Apple to say the more
recent G4 Power Macs have five slots without additional
qualification, since one of the slots (the AGP slot) is not
compatible with the others. (Yes, it's equally misleading when PC
vendors do it, and I realize Apple is only following their
lead.)
Until I actually used a beige G3, confronted its limitations
(especially in OS X), and saw the real world solutions, I
would have considered three PCI slots plenty for almost any user.
To get good OS X performance, which was an important
consideration in this series of articles, you really want an
Ultra66 drive controller and a better video card. The remaining
slot could hold a USB/FireWire card, and 802.11g wireless
networking cards, a 10/100 ethernet card, or something else - but
that's the only slot left.
A blue & white G3 would not be so limited. It starts with very
good video, very good Ultra33 drive support, FireWire and USB on
the motherboard, 10/100 ethernet, and three empty PCI slots. As
has generally been true of Power Macs, there are more empty slots
than almost any user will ever need on the b&w G3 and the G4s
that followed it.
In its day, that was true of the PCI Power Macs and beige G3 as
well, but the video demands of OS X make it increasingly
likely that users will want better video and will drop in a PCI
video card. Today's hard drives also seem quite sluggish on a 16.7
MBps system bus - another important factor with an operating
system where virtual memory cannot be disabled - making a good
IDE controller another good addition.
And suddenly the beige G3 isn't any less expensive than the blue
& white, which offers pretty good performance in comparison
without the expense of two or three PCI cards.
But more important than the number of PCI cards is how necessary
they are. In retrospect, the beige G3 would have been far more
flexible and viable as an OS X platform with four slots -
and coming up with enough reasons to fill three slots in the
b&w G3 would be a challenge to most of us. It's not only
faster (bus, CPU speed, IDE, etc.), it's also more flexible, which
is why I call it a best buy.
The Anti-G4 Firmware Update
After reading about the b&w G3 and its upgrade potential, Doug
Arnott asks:
Hey Dan. Long time listener, first time caller with a quick
question.
In you article you briefly mention processor upgrades for the Blue
& Whites. Wasn't there a Apple Firmware update that, among other
things, prevented you from upgrading the processor? I remember a huge
furor about it at the time, mostly due to the fact that Apple didn't
bother to mention that their update would hamstring the machine's
future upgrade options.
Am I imagining things here?
No, you are not imaging things. The b&w G3 was originally
capable of supporting a G4 processor, although none were shipping
when the computer was first released. In May 1999, Apple released
a firware update (ROM Version 1.1) for the b&w G3 that
explicitly disabled support for the G4 processor, a preemptive
move to prevent the upgrade industry from offering G4
upgrades.
It didn't work. It did and perhaps still does prevent b&w G3
owners from installing and using Apple branded G4 modules from the
"Yikes!" G4, but all of the upgrade makers found a workaround to
Apple's ROM block. Apple ended up with egg on their face, and you
can read my take on the whole mess in Why
the G4 Uproar?
More on USB Bandwidth
Andrew Prosnik
USB 1.x bandwidth is actually crappier than you're aware of. I
can't find any direct links since the stupid USB website changed
their FAQ, but...
USB 1.x (I don't know about 2.0) allows one device to only ever
have 8 Mbps total bandwidth out of the 12 Mbps. So from 1.5 MBps (12
Mbps) theoretical bandwidth you instantly drop to 1.0 MBps (8 Mbps)
theoretical usable bandwidth. That's why they refer to 900
KBps as a real-world transfer rate.
They used to make it easy and just tell you that in the FAQ but
the only thing I have that can somewhat back up my claim now is:
"The 12Mb/s full speed (FS) bandwidth of USB allows the creation
of very exciting low to medium speed devices. USB is intended for
devices in the 8Mb/s and below range. USB also provides a lower cost,
reduced feature mode of operation for low speed devices. This mode
uses an 1/8th speed clock resulting in a 1.5Mb/s low speed (LS)
bandwidth."
If I cared enough, I would post on the USB forum and see if
someone could confirm my assertion. However, I'm about 90% sure I'm
right in my recollection that one USB device can only use 8 Mbps max,
theoretical, out of the total 12 Mbps. And then again I don't know
how USB devices contend for bandwidth . . . is it the same
as ethernet broadcasting or does the USB controller/hub tell each
device when to send data? Maybe that's the case and the reason why
we're magically losing 4 Mbps for some unknown reason.
Anyway, more fuel for the fire. I have no idea about USB 2.0's
per-device bandwidth allocation or any of the overhead involved
there.
I love having an informed readership, because sometimes the
teacher gets to become the student. (Okay, I'm always learning,
but that should be true of all teachers.) I was not aware of the
inner workings of USB. This explains why very few USB 1.1
benchmarks have ever passed the 800 kbps level.
From the head-to-head comparisons I've seen with FireWire and USB
2.0, although FireWire is "only" rated at 400 Mbps and USB 2.0
should be faster at a maximum of 480 Mbps, the FireWire drives
almost always win the benchmark tests. I suspect this is because
FireWire is related to SCSI and uses smarter peripherals, but I'm
far from an expert on connectivity.
Thanks for the education.
Well, that wraps it up for this week. It's almost 3:30 in the
afternoon, and I haven't had lunch yet. We'll get to more emails over
the weekend and post another mailbag on Monday.
Letters sent may be published at our discretion. Email addresses will
not be published unless requested. If you prefer that your message
not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be
edited for length, context, and to match house
style.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
Mac of the Day: Clamshell iBook G3/300 MHz, Sep. 1999 - innovative, rugged, heavy, clamshell laptop introduced AirPort and was a huge hit.
Group of the Day: Mac Pro List is for those using a Mac Pro.
November 20 in LEM history: 85: Windows 1.0 - 00: Mac dreams - 01: Stop the upgrade insanity - Good people, good software, good business - The digital lifestyle: Text - 06: To AppleCare or not? - One year with my 'free' Mac mini - 07: Why you want to avoid integrated graphics - Problem with Leopard on a MDD
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