I don't know much about Macintosh but I'm pondering on buying a used PowerMac G3. I know that a lot of them don't come with much (233-300Mhz) processor. I just wanna know how much it can upgrade. I mean specs as far as RAM, etc. I don't know how it works, if it is like a PC (depending on mobo) or even if there are different manufacturers of macs. If someone could please tell me an upgrade for a PowerMac G3... TechQuest

There are several PowerMac G3s made my Apple. The newest is the Blue and White G3 which is housed in a case very similar to current G4 PowerMacs. Stock, they have processor speeds up to 450MHz. Third party upgrades can kick the processor up to at least a 1GHz G4, but at the price of the überupgrades you'd be better off buying a used G4. The Blue and White will support up to 1GB of RAM using PC100 RAM. It doesn't have an AGP slot, so you're stuck with PCI video cards. Also, the hard drive bus is pretty slow (ATA/33,) but again, third party PCI cards can give you up-to-date ATA buses. As far as I've heard, there were exceedingly few G3 clones, as their release was the time Apple cut them off. ----paxcirc.a-

To be honest there are 2 or 3 different Powermac G3s. The first is a Beige Desktop, The second is the Beige G3 Minitower and the last is the Blue and White. If you are talking about either of the Beige G3s they are really the same machine just different cases. I have 3 of them and you are able to upgrade the processor to a G4 450 and higher if you go with 3rd party upgrades like sonnet tech. I have 768M RAM PC 100 and have been running them nonstop for over a year.(one is my server) I have a Wired4DVD card so I can play DVDs and it ups my video memory an additional 2M, also a USB card and a Firewire card to fill up the 3 PCI slots. You can put whatever you want in them. And best of all you can get a built in Video capture card option and internal 56K modem.(Not the best but it gets the job done) It has built in Ethernet 10base (sorry not 100 but you can get a 10/100 for under 10.00)I recommend Realtek 8139 series. The video is the only bummer. It has built in 2M and expansion up to 6M (2M or 4M chip) Unfortunatly thats as high as you can go without a 3rd party PCI card. ATI has a couple for mac. It still uses the ADB ports (Apple Desktop Bus) and the printer and modem ports for external use. It was also the last desktop to use SCSI.(Internal and external) You can use either IDE HDs or SCSI which gives alot of room for expansion. The ONLY drawback is that it will only upgrade the OS to OS X Jaguar 10.2.6 and that is only by partitioning your HD and using just a 8gig for the OS X. Abit confusing but once you understand how the Beige G3 works its a piece of cake. The Blue and White is a different story. I have never really used or upgraded one but here are the specs from apple. Processor:G3, 350, 400, 450MHz Data Path:64-bit, 100 MHz L1 Cache:64K L2 Cache:512/1M Slots:4 PCI, one dedicated to video USB:2 yes ADB:1 Video:DB-15 Ethernet:10/100BaseT FireWire:2 Mic Type:PlainTalk AirPort Ready: RAM Slots:4, PC100 DIMM Min - Max RAM:64 MB - 1 GB Orig SSW:8.5.1 Mac OS Supported:8.5.1,8.6,9,X I think I got everything any other questions just ask