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Beige G3 models, model numbers and identifying characteristics on logic boards?

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2024-07-20 10:09:36

I'm sure someone knows this stuff in and out. It's be nice to have it all laid out for myself short term and the gang here over the long haul.

Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-07-20 12:30:10

as I recall from somewhere quite some time ago, I don't know if it was a firmware and/or physical board thinge but a logic board marked as rev.a had a limited ide controller (compared to rev.b/newer marked boards) .. forgot if this was about was masters-only drives and/or 128gb limit btw

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-07-20 13:53:24

There are different revisions of the logic board but people get confused between this and the ROM DIMM which also had three revisions. When we talk about onboard IDE master/slave support this is relevant to the ROM version not the logic board. Rev. A ROMs did not support slave drives but you can upgrade to a Rev. B or C ROM to get this feature. It’s less important now with the ease of flashing SATA PCI cards. Also the Rev B ROM is the most desirable to have as the C broke some things like Sonnet Tempo Trio support.

My current logic board which came with a Rev C ROM is labelled 820-0991-A. My previous logic board which came with a Rev A ROM was labelled 820-0864-B. As far as I know the only difference between them was whether they had a Rage II+DVD or a Rage Pro chip fitted.

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-07-20 16:32:32

Another uniquely defining feature of the Beige G3 is its Personality card. There were three types (Whisper, Wings and Bordeaux) with different features relating to sound and video. You could see it almost as an extension of the logic board itself as the machine (at least under OS 9.2.2) requires it installed to boot. There were a couple of different revisions of at least the former two types I listed.

What else? Well I guess the machines originally launched as a 233MHz Desktop and a 266MHz Minitower, faster speeds of 300 and 333MHz followed also with more backside L2 cache. There was also an all-in-one though this was not sold outside the US education sector as far as I know.

Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-07-21 03:15:10

ah hm thanks @croissantking sure sounds a bit more confusing than it should be regarding the two different rev's in any combinations

either way re the personality card, although this is more for a diy someone than a "just set up computer and go" someone i'm needless wondering if 'different revisions of at least' also applied to the basic a/v version that could be reworked to accept the tv tuner option etc originally provided to the performa boards

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-07-21 03:20:20

ah hm thanks @croissantking sure sounds a bit more confusing than it should be regarding the two different rev's in any combinations

either way re the personality card, although this is more for a diy someone than a "just set up computer and go" someone i'm needless wondering if 'different revisions of at least' also applied to the basic a/v version that could be reworked to accept the tv tuner option etc originally provided to the performa boards

See the discussion here:

Pin slot on G3 Whisper Perch?

What's the pin connector that looks like a floppy connector on the Whisper Perch card for?

68kmla.org

You can add USB to the later version of the Personality cards, not sure what other functional differences there were between the early and late revisions.

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-07-21 03:23:42

ah hm thanks @croissantking sure sounds a bit more confusing than it should be regarding the two different rev's in any combinations

Just keep in mind that the ROM version A, B or C is what matters most, there is really not any difference between logic board versions except early boards came with a Rage II and later ones came with a Rage Pro.

Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2024-07-21 08:15:09

I printed out everymac's data pages on the seven baseline iterations of this series. My eyes had glazed over after looking at those pages on and off in downtime at work last night. Same thing happened in the past, which is why I posted this thread.

It looks like we'll have to go ahead and develop a timeline of the many features in this series?

The thing of most interest to me would be the graphics controllers which changed across build dates of five of the six models. The 300MHz models sport three different controllers depending upon build date. But only the last version of the MiniTower at 333MHz has ATI Rage Pro Turbo controller acceleration and (presumably) a RAMDAC upgrade finally kicking maximum resolution up to the 1600x1200 level. Same controller available on some 300MHz variants, but resolution limited to the 1024x768 level of every preceding variant.

Pictures of the three different graphics chipsets would be helpful in sorting that out.

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-07-21 09:05:21

But only the last version of the MiniTower at 333MHz has ATI Rage Pro Turbo controller acceleration and (presumably) a RAMDAC upgrade finally kicking maximum resolution up to the 1600x1200 level.

This is not true. Be careful about taking Everymac's data as gospel, as there are many errors on their site. Back in 1998 my family bought one of the very first PowerMac G3s, a Rev A 266MHz Minitower with Rage II+DVD chip with 6MB VRAM, and we used to drive an AppleVision 850AV Display at 1280x960. It could drive it perfectly fine at 1600x1200@75Hz too, although I think only in thousands of colours. The main benefit of going from Rage II to Rage Pro was 3D acceleration, which was a joke on the Rage II, and much improved on the Rage Pro (but still pretty awful even for the time). Also I think that there is no difference between the Rage Pro PCI and the Rage Pro Turbo, it was a marketing con. AFAIK the Turbo came with new drivers that were optimised for benchmarking apps on the Windows side, but real world gaming performance was the same.

We could use this table, taken from Wikipedia, as a starting point. It's bound to have errors but it does seem like much of the work is already done. Some of it might seem wrong to me as well as I'm UK based and this relates to North America.

Posted by: croissantking on 2024-08-04 09:41:21

Thread gone quiet - did I ruin the fun?

Posted by: croissantking on 2025-06-15 10:31:33

@Trash80toHP_Mini I believe you would find the following developer note interesting:
Developer Note - Power Macintosh G3 Computers

Here are a couple of relevant snippets along with my comments:

But only the last version of the MiniTower at 333MHz has ATI Rage Pro Turbo controller acceleration and (presumably) a RAMDAC upgrade finally kicking maximum resolution up to the 1600x1200 level.

Seems you were right about the faster RAMDAC, but the extra resolution offered was 1920x1080:

The dev note groups the two logic board revisions by ROM revision, which is a bit misleading since the ROMs are removeable and interchangeable:

The logic boards are better identified by their part numbers:

Logic Board Part No	Version	Graphics Chip	Maximum Resolution	ROM DIMM fitted
820-0864-B	1	Rage II+DVD	1600x1200	4.0 F2 (Rev A)
820-0991-A	2	Rage Pro or Rage Pro Turbo	1920x1080	4.5 F1 (Rev B) or 4.5 F2 (Rev C)

Posted by: croissantking on 2025-06-15 11:33:35

Huh, Googling around it looks like there are also both 820-0864-A and 820-0991-B versions in existence - so at least 4 in total.