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Beige Desktop G3 - System Software Requirements?
Posted by: LaPorta on 2019-08-24 19:53:24
Hello everyone,

A good friend of mine has a desktop G3 system he just rescued from his parents house. The HD has failed, and, since his birthday is coming up, I am surprising him with a IDE to SD adapter to replace it. My question is: what System can I reliably place on this? I am looking at OS 8 or 9 something, but what I didn't know is if there is a certain version that it requires, or a type of enabler or something. I don't think that software ROM appeared until the iMac, but I was not certain if these used it as well. Any help is appreciated.
Posted by: jessenator on 2019-08-24 20:39:34
I went through the various discs for the Power Macintosh G3, and finally discovered the base CD install is dependent on ROM ver. just so you're aware.

As far as performance, here are my MacBench 4 scores on my G3 (300MHz, and the scores with the Sonnet 500MHz ZIF):


The gains are minimal for the most part. 8.0/8.1 is what shipped with the first G3s. I didn't bother with 8.5/8.6. I have 9.2 now while I'm figuring out USB support on my OrangeMicro PCI card.
Posted by: omidimo on 2019-08-24 20:54:11
Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal (on Garden) should work just fine. 

have 9.2 now while I'm figuring out USB support on my OrangeMicro PCI card.
Should be easy install. Drivers, set it and forget get it. 
Posted by: LaPorta on 2019-08-25 04:11:56
I may look to install a version of 8 as well on a separate partition to make sure his games will work well. Anyone know if plain Jane 8.6 will work on it, too?
Posted by: jessenator on 2019-08-25 07:40:39
Should be easy install. Drivers, set it and forget get it. 
Yeah, I just have to get my switch setup again... too many AC adapters for my current strips.

Anyone know if plain Jane 8.6 will work on it, too?
Should—look for a universal or retail version I reckon. I posted a thread about this not too long ago and I got a "it's not the best" response. Don't know where it is atm—buried somewhere :lol:  It was something to effect of it's a RAM hog without the added benefits of 9.x. What those are I don't recall.
Posted by: LaPorta on 2019-08-25 08:19:13
Fair enough, all I know is there are a raft of games that work better under 8.x and have compatibility issues with 9. Seeing as that's all he will be doing, it's pretty important.
Posted by: omidimo on 2019-08-25 10:18:56
too many AC adapters for my current strips
This is what you need: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040723AO/
Posted by: Cory5412 on 2019-08-26 14:02:20
8.6 will work, but:

What those are I don't recall.
That was probably me. This is a fairly unpopular opinion, but 8.6 weighs almost as much as 9 and has fewer features and reliability/stability updates.

Multiple users, voiceprint passwords, Sherlock version 2 (which added Internet search capabilities), iTools integration, a couple other things. Most of these things were more important in 1999 than they are today, but a few of them are nice quality of life things.

I've never found 8.5/8.6 to be meaningfully trimmer than 9, so I generally do just run 9, unless I'm on a system with few enough resources where 7.6.1 or 8.1 makes sense.

My recommendation for a Beige G3 is is 9.2.2 (and, I'd use the eMac 2003 installation CD(1), rather than the "Universal" CD, in my experience the eMac'03 installs and runs on everything the Universal CD is claimed to be needed for, even the QS'02. If you were running, like, a stock /233 with 32 megs fo RAM, 8.1 might be worth it.

You can trim a lot of the fat off of any Classic Mac OS installation, but by and large, the bug fixes on 9.2.2 are worth it whenever you can run it.

(1) I had one of these working and was going to image it but I put it in an iMac with a weak ejection mechanism and it got badly damaged before I could, and I haven't been able to recreate and reimage this disk, so if anyone has one please contact me. The image on Mac Garden is broken.
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