I just picked up a beige G3 desktop for a good price. I'm going to add a few things on to bring it up to spec for OS X, let me know what you all think of this config. I don't need it to play games and do graphics work...I just want to learn about OS X and the UNIX underpinnings.
Power Mac G3 (beige) 266MHz
640MB RAM
20GB HD
CD-ROM & Zip drives
Radeon 7000 64MB graphics card
It currently has only 128MB of RAM and the low-end Rage II graphics card. Is the bump to 640MB of RAM ($60) and the addition of a Radeon 7000 ($70) decent? Or is that overkill for the basics?
Totally forgot...should I stick with Jaguar, or pay a little extra and get Panther? (are they both compatible with my machine?)
Panther is the last supported OS on the beige.
128 MB RAM is way to little so a bit more to 256 or more is good.
The problem is that even if you got the G3 for free using 130 dollars for uppgrades will cost you as much as a B&W G3 that is a better computer. So I would 128 or at the most 256 MB RAM and keep the original GPU. For learning OS X and UNIX that is plenty.
I hope that you know that you have to on the Beige G3 to have the OS X installed on the first 4 GB of the HD. So you have to partition the HD.
No, Jag was the last suported os for the beige. You are going to need to use XpostFacto to use panther. The os needs to be partitioned in the first 8 GB of your hard drive.