Katana VentraIP

Power Macintosh G3

The Power Macintosh G3 (also sold with additional software as the Macintosh Server G3) is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from November 1997 to August 1999. It represented Apple's first step towards eliminating redundancy and complexity in the product line by replacing eight Power Macintosh models (and the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh) with three: Desktop and Mini Tower models for professional and home use, and an all-in-one model for education. The introduction of the Desktop and Mini Tower models coincided with Apple starting to sell build-to-order Macs directly from its web site in an online store,[1][2] which was unusual for the time as Dell was the only major computer manufacturer doing this. Apple's move to build-to-order sales of the Power Macintosh G3 also coincided with the acquisition of Power Computing Corporation, which had been providing telephone sales of Macintosh clones for more than two years.

Developer

November 10, 1997 (1997-11-10)

November 10, 1997-August 31, 1999 (1 year and 287 days)

$1599

August 31, 1999 (1999-08-31)

PowerPC G3,
233 – 333 MHz; 300 – 450 MHz

iMac G3 (All-In-One)
Power Mac G4 (Mini Tower)
Power Mac G4 Cube (Desktop)

The Power Macintosh G3 is named for its third-generation PowerPC chip, and introduced a super fast and large Level 2 backside CPU cache, running at half processor speed. As a result, these machines benchmarked significantly faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed at launch,[3] which prompted Apple to create the "Snail" and "Toasted Bunnies" television commercials.[4][5][6][7] Magazine benchmarks showed the G3/266 CPU outperforming the 350 MHz PowerPC 604ev chip in the Power Macintosh 9600 as well.[8]


Two generations of the Power Macintosh G3 were released. The first generation, known colloquially as "Beige"[9] was introduced at a special event on November 10, 1997. The second generation, known officially as "Blue and White", was introduced at MacWorld San Francisco on January 5, 1999. Its replacement, the Power Mac G4, was introduced in August of the same year.

Good: 233 MHz, 512 L2 cache, 64 MiB SDRAM, 6 GB IDE HDD. $2,919.

KiB

Better: 266 MHz, 512 KiB L2 cache, 64 MiB SDRAM, 4 GB Ultra/Wide SCSI. $3,609.

Best: 300 MHz, 1 MiB L2 cache, 128 MiB SDRAM, Two 4 GB Ultra/Wide SCSI. $4,969.

Whisper was the personality card of the regular versions, providing the Screamer sound (with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio capabilities with simultaneous I/O) and no video facilities.

ASIC

Wings or Audio/Video Input/Output Card was an A/V "personality card" which, in addition to the audio I/O, included and S-Video capture and output.

composite

Bordeaux or DVD-Video and Audio/Video Card differed from the Wings card in that it did not include a DAV slot, used the Burgundy sound (which provided improved sound performance), incorporated a higher performance video capture IC, and included additional circuitry (C-Cube MPEG decoder chip) to support the playback of DVD movies. The All-In-One does not support the Bordeaux card, as it lacks the connectors for the AIO's front panel and RGB video cables.[27]

ASIC

Apple's developer note, describing internals like chip set etc.

Archived September 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine is possible while still using integrated monitor of the Apple G3 All-In-One (AIO).

Upgrading the onboard video card