...and I need to know some specs for it. I'm relatively new to Mac's, the last one I owned was a PowerPC 7500 iirc. It's long gone and I miss it. What processor speed does the Blue have?? Or ranges? Does it take a specific monitor? I'm only getting the Box itself and a keyboard and mouse. It's factory, so what hdd's came in it? I have a copy of OSX, will it run it? Is there a page I can look at for this info? Thanks for any and ALL help!!
Nathan
Forgot to add, it's a blue tower, not the all-in-one type. Has what looks like handles on top and G3 emblazoned on the side.
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g3c.shtml
There's other sites that have similar info, with more and less details, including Apple itself.
i dont know what your paying for it, but if you intend for it to be very useful, it wont be... amd as far as upgrades... ny the time you spend all the money you can to max it out, it wont be anywhere near as good as something newer, and it will cost alot more. my advice is that unless your paying $65.00 or less for this machine you should save up and buy a G4 sawtooth or newer.
bill
That's exactly why I left a B&W at Surplus Exchange yesterday. It was priced at $125, and it did have a SCSI card. I didn't look at anything else because the asking price seemed almost double what I'd be willing to pay for it. I mean, they had just had a dozen G4 towers a month or so ago for $100-150 each...
While I agree that there is a point in which it's not a very good value for the money, the B&W is still perfectly useful for stuff. I currently have mine (a rev 2 with 350MHz G3 overclocked to 400MHz and 768MB RAM) running Tiger Server, and it's plenty responsive. In fact, the only thing I don't like about it is the fact you can't boot the machine from a FireWire drive or into FW Disk Mode. True, it won't be encoding H.264 video at anywhere near real time, but it still runs OS X like a champ.
ill chime in and say ive got my B&W upgraded with G4 500mhz and its by no means a speed demon. it struggles to do what i do and thats web browsing, ichat, itunes and iphoto. its a steady running machine but not fast enough for me... the newer G4's would be a much better machine.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58226
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58226
Il est compatible avec OSX 10.3
you take that back.
I bought mine for $60 inc. shipping, and it is VERY useful and VERY fast. concidering I came off a LC III, that my be part of it, but it's stock 350mhz G3, which I over clocked to 400 is perfect.
I guess it depends on the person.
-digital
alright, true... it depends on the person. it may be just fine for some, and if i still had one, i wouldnt put it out on the curb... but.... its not really the best investment either....
B+W examples that ive runn across as of late....
1. was given to me... clocked up to 400, which is common... as most of you have mentioned... and i was also running 768MB of ram. tried using it as a basic desktop... browsing, itunes, etc.... for me, wasnt up to par and too cludgy. gave it away.
2. My friend bought one because he needed a "NEW" mac... as his last was a G3 Minitower (which in some respects, i prefer to the B+W.... i actually prefer the 9500/9600 series over either, as upgrades are much less expensive for those machines)
(wish i could afford one too... its pretty sexy) his investment $465.00 for a not so good machine.
his results... paid $150 for the machine... paid $65.00 for a DVD burner drive... paid $250.00 for a G4 sonnet upgrade... had trouble with firrmware and booting and such... still wasnt very happy with the machine... kept it ttwo months... sold it on ebay and bought a G5 iMac... he's happy now
3. not a blue and white... but an example of different options. myGF wanted a Mac (she got a little envious after i bought my 1st gen Mac Mini) I picked up a 400MHz Sawtooth that already had an upgraded Radeon 64MB card in it for $25.00 (it had 512MB on it when i got it) hit up the spare parts drawer and installed a 128Gig HD i had, and another 512MB of ram i had.. (cost $0) installed a new pioneer DVD burner (cost $55), bought a 733MHz G4 processor from a digital audio tower on ebay for $70.00, built an extension board for the Secondary IDE connector, moved a resistor on the processor module to accomadate the 100MHz bus, and used the dremel to remove excess case bits. net result 800MHz G4 with 16x dual layer dvd burner, 128Gig hard drive, good video card and 1GB of ram for $150.00 (we will be addind a USB2 card soon, so that will increase the cost a bit)
Im just saying, dont commit to the G3 yet, unless its for an insanley good price... if you look a bit harder you may do alot better. but, if it meets your expected needs, and its cheap enough... get it!!
P.S. I took tons of photos of the Sawtooth mods and plan to post a buildup/how-to on the fritter sometime next week when i get some freetime.
Bill
I think the guy is going to basically give it to me for the price of shipping, if I don't go and pick it up myself. He's a computer recycler and he told me that he trips over them, that there are so many. It won't be a high end machine whatever I do, adn I don't really need it to be. I'm also a Linux/Unix user and have a copy of Ubuntu for Macs that I am itching to try out. I had an offer for a Bondi Blue (all-in-one model) for $100, all working with one of the older os's on it. Regardless, I am gonna try a dual boot on whatever I get. I also am a vintage user, so limitations mean very little to me. Instead of buying parts, I can trade for them. Too easy! If everything goes well, I'll be getting the tower.
awesome! go with the b+w over the iMac though... or get both!
my old tray loader is really showing its age though, and i did find the b+w more useful when i had it, but the price was right on my imac (mines a grape... 333MHz, as opposed to 233 bondi. i traded one of my 5 PS2's for it. also, as a side note, I had a hell of a time getting Ubuntu on my tray load iMac, (translation, it never really worked right for me on my particular machine) But it worked pretty well on my B+W... however, they both have some pretty weird partitioning requirements... which you can find plenty of info about on here. 
Good Luck and enjoy. 
bill
For $100 a tray-loader ought to be fairly loaded too. I know I can pick up a stock 333MHz trayloader (64MB RAM 6.4GB HDD, CD-RM) for $20-50 if they have any in stock at Surplus Exchange. They generally sell slot-loaders for $50-100. The slot-loader iMac is easier to upgrade as it takes more common PC-100 DIMMs over the SO-DIMMs of the trayloaders. Plus, most slotloaders will have FireWire (the 350MHz slotloaders won't though)
What ever model of Mac you get, download its Service Manual at http://www.whoopis.com/computer_repair/
Cheers, Tom
Mac Troubleshooting, Maintenance & Tips
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/MacTroubleshoot.html
well for one if the B&W has the stock video card in it yea it will be slow in tiger. if you bought a orignal radeon or a 7000 or a 9200 it would run circles around a B&W with the stock rage 128. my friend has a B&W rev 1 and rev 2 the rev 1 has a G3 400mhz cpu and the rev 2 B&W has a G3 400mhz cpu the rev 1 has the video card out of the rev 2 B&W and the rev 2 has the radeon 7000 and the rev 2 runs almost double in games than the rev 1 with the stock video card.
its not just the B&W itself the mashine is only as fast as the slowest part. so upgrading the video card will almost double the video proformance. maxing out the ram will also speed up the proformance allot in tiger. and even ditching the stock IDE ribbon cables and replace them with ultra ATA/133 80 wire ide ribbon cables will provide a bit of a speed up when messing with load times and files.
a faster hdd will boost proformance. granted it wont profprm faster than a GBE Mac but it will be close. granted you can buy a faster cpu than a B&W can take but you can still be happy with its proformance. a B&W can take a G3 1.1 ghz cpu or a G4 1ghz cpu but with the bus speed downclocked to 66mhz, so its better to get the G3 1.1 ghz cpu if you want to go all out, the system is not worth over $65 USD tho to buy