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Help identifying unusual card in Beige G3 for sale.

Posted by: Powerbase on 2018-11-11 08:47:05 Hey, I was lurking through e bay when I noticed a run-of-the-mill Beige G3 with an unusually high level of bids on it.  I looked closer and I noticed an unusual video card (I assume) in it.  Since the seller couldn't be bothered to take any inside pictures (I can't stand that), I only have the ports at the back of the card to go by.  I thought it might be the port the SGI 1600 used but doesn't seem to be.  Mind you, I'm assuming its an actual Mac card and not a PC one someone just threw in there. I'm just interested because this must be what someone was bidding on.  I doubt they just really wanted a Beige G3.

Posted by: EvieSigma on 2018-11-11 13:33:48 I ended up winning the auction so I suppose I'll let you know what it is when the system gets here.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2018-11-11 17:46:30 Digital EFfects? Can't wait to see the pics, hoping a breakout box isn't missing to hang off that strange connector. What the heck do you call that thingamajig?

Posted by: Unknown_K on 2018-11-11 18:35:11 Almost looks like an old 68k network card dongle. Pretty sure it is a video card with some kind of video in/out or external tuner. PCI video cards for the Beige G3 and early B&W G3 era still had the old style Apple video connector not the VGA one. Either way without the dongle it will be kind of useless.

Posted by: Unknown_K on 2018-11-11 18:41:11 It does look upgraded with that special card, USB card, and a DVD drive instead of the 24x CDROM drive it came with so its no stock.

Posted by: EvieSigma on 2018-11-11 20:10:31 Yeah, I got it because my current beige G3 works but is in extremely rough shape due to being a battery bomb victim (rip original motherboard) and is otherwise just...yellowed and gross. So I plan to swap over the good stuff I have (Wings card, 40GB hard drive) to have a really nice beige G3.

Posted by: Unknown_K on 2018-11-11 20:40:10 Should have said something, I have a nice condition Beige  G3 desktop with a bad motherboard I could have sold you (or traded). Its a spare unit I never bothered to troubleshoot since I have a few working ones. Hope you get lucky and it has an upgraded G3 in it.

Posted by: EvieSigma on 2018-11-11 21:10:55 Me too, that would be pretty killer! Though if it's something really fast I probably would put it in my 350MHz B&W G3 instead, since I have a 300MHz beige CPU.

Posted by: Franklinstein on 2018-11-12 04:07:57 Before DVI existed, the only [consumer-oriented] way to connect your digital flat panel display to your computer was with the VESA Digital Flat Panel connector, which is what you see here. It wasn't terribly widespread and was fairly quickly supplanted by DVI, so most people aren't familiar with it. I have a handful of video cards with the connector, but no digital flat panel displays to go with them. You can get a DFP-to-DVI adapter if you want to use the feature with a newer display. Aside from natively controlling an old DFP-based display, I don't know why anybody would care about that card; it's likely a variant of the RAGE 3D or LT PRO, so it's nothing special outside of that DFP port. If somebody wants a decent PCI-based video card for a Mac they'd be better served with a RAGE 128 of some variety and last I checked, they were relatively common. Maybe somebody really wanted a beige G3 right now. Every now and then you'll see an auction where somebody just goes bananas on something that's usually ignored.

Posted by: trag on 2018-11-12 10:47:14 The connector, hardware-wise, looks like one of the Hirose DX series.    Connectors manufactured by Hirose whose part number starts with DX.

Posted by: waynestewart on 2018-11-12 11:05:24 It’s an ATI 3D Rage pro 8mb video card http://www.welovemacs.com/1095410000r.html

Posted by: LaPorta on 2018-11-12 12:06:21 I am pretty sure I have one of these (or similar) in my Power Tower Pro. Indeed, it is a Rage video card. They are awesome, as well.

Posted by: EvieSigma on 2018-11-12 12:55:42 8MB of VRAM isn't too bad at all. The onboard graphics only have 2MB after all.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2018-11-12 15:26:10 Depending on how it's set up, 8MB opens up resolutions higher than the 1600x1200 at 24bit that 4MB will do.

Posted by: Unknown_K on 2018-11-12 15:35:39 Onboard graphics can have the VRAM upgraded to 4 or 6MB depending on the chip used.

Posted by: EvieSigma on 2018-11-12 18:29:15 Well yeah, but those SGRAM modules probably aren't that easy to find. And I'm happy to have VGA without using an adapter.

Posted by: Cory5412 on 2018-11-14 18:02:57 I seem to recall seeing a bunch of the 4MB upgrade modules for Beige G3s online, but this card as good a way to get to a higher color depth or resolution. This card, or one like it, was also an option on the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White) - I believe that card had an Apple style "improved" S-Video port (with like 7 pins, some of which provided power) as the input. What I wonder is if this might be a version of that card, but with this as the input: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Terminal If so, it's likely a card that was originally sold into the Japanese market, or there's a version of that purple video input box running around with this cabling. Ultimately, you're not super likely to find anything here in the US that works with that unless the auction included the ATi TV/video box that connects to that port. Presuming, of course, that's what it is. That's all just a guess based on the only other ATi cards of that type I've ever seen, which had composite and s-video in, primarily for use in education, where 5x00/6x00 and Beige G3s might have had their a/v kits used.

Posted by: Cory5412 on 2018-11-14 18:06:15 one thought, this is the card I was thinking of initially: http://www.welovemacs.com/1094310000r.html Note the older DB15/Mac SVGA video connector. Helpfully, it also uses the SGRAM module to upgrade, although I believe I've heard you can upgrade them to 8MB? Maybe not.

Posted by: Cory5412 on 2018-11-14 18:13:15 Looking again, I don't think it is a D1 connector. Just did a bit of looking around for the above-mentioned DFP, and it looks like that's probably a winner. Though, you likely would want a bit of a better card to run an SGI 1600SW off of. I don't know off hand any other displays that used this standard.

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