I have a beige G3 with:
233mhz G3
128MB RAM
Voodoo 2 12MB
80GB HD
craptacular IDE CD drive
two USB cards
8MB VRAM
The thing has given me so many errors I can't believe it even runs.
Error -3, -199, crashes on booting a 9.2.2 CD, gives errors about various extensions upon trying to boot the CD, disk utility crashes.
I don't know what to do, I have never seen a computer behave this way. I tried lots of different RAM, so I don't think it's a RAM issue.
take out all the pci cards and try it again.
Hey,
My beige G3 is about to be retired and I feel your pain. It's a problematic machine. But, it wasn't designed to run 9.2.x and doesn't need it. Most of the code in the 9.2 updates had to do with living in a shared environment with OSX. Not all, but most. The beige G3 is an old world Mac and it won't take OS 9.2.x natively. One of the reasons that I didn't put it on mine. At least that's how I remember it. So start off by dropping back to OS 9.1 and your life should get easier. The beige G3 is one of those Macs that just can't handle change. Having fun with those neurotic PCI slots? I can't wait to retire mine. Has a G4 upgrade, a burner, ATA card and AV personality. I use it to watch VHS tapes off a VCR. Very cool for a while but now it's time to let it go . . .
William
www.williamahearn.com
Hey,
The beige G3 will run 9.2.x so I misremembered. Still, I think it's a pointless upgrade without OSX or a DVD player. Have you striped it to essentials and a single RAM chip? Those beige buggers can be a pain. Once when I replaced a dead pram battery it took all afternoon to get the video back.
Good luck,
William
www.williamahearn.com
Um, I believe the max onboard VRAM is 6mb, unless you've got some strange 6mb VRAM card in there. The VRAM cards for Beige G3's, iMacs, and Rage Pro PCI cards were 4mb. They all could use the same card.
Like William says, strip her down and put the clothing back on one piece at a time. Especially try it without the Voodoo card. Voodoo cards required an extension not in Mac OS. What do you mean by craptacular? In my experience, incompatible RAM in the Beige doesn't even get you to video output. I wonder if two USB cards at once could confuse things too? Never tried that myself.
Perhaps the 9.2 CD is machine specific. Is it gray?
Well from what I am told, 9.2.x is just not very compatible with old world machines like these. I am going to try 9.1.
The Voodoo card should probably not affect anything, it acts as just a pass through without any drivers. It has a cable to pass the video from the onboard through the Voodoo... It's kind of strange and I'm not good at explaining it, but if you have used one before you'll know what I mean.
ASP in tiger showed my AIO having 8mb vram when it really only had 6mb vram, in OS 9.2.2 ASP showed the correct 6mb vram. i never really had any issues with 9.2.2 on my Beige G3 AIO.
most of my Issues was locking up when booting OS 9.2.2 and some games when trying to go online would lock up (still playing music) for like 1 - 2 minutes then would unlock and continue playing.
Oh, that's right. The Voodoo 2 was the pass thru 2 SLI card. I've got a Voodoo 3 2000 in my daughter's Beige G3. Speedy little guy. That's interesting that the 2 requires no software.
What about DiskWarrior? Do you have it? Although, DiskWarrior 2 can't figure out 9.2, so maybe it'd make no difference anyway.
Install Jaguar on a second drive, run DiskWarrior 3...
Actually, I don't know. Will the DiskWarrior 3 CD boot on it's own on a Beige?
No wait. Maybe it was the pre-X version of Techtool that can't figure out 9.2, and DiskWarrior 2 has no problem. Sorry, my memory on the subject is fading and my mind is scrambling. I used to always run DiskWarrior, Techtool, and Norton (with Filesaver surgically removed) in succession for OS 9.