Has anyone looked into adding an AGP slot to older Macs, such as a B&W mini tower? I am not a great soldering gun guy and don't know of any driver cards or adapters out there. I want my quartz extreme! And unless I buy a new box I do not think I can get it.

The Pecker

It would be impossible to add an AGP slot on your motherboard if the motherboard was not designed to handle it. Also, I doubt that Mac OS X would recognize a rigged AGP slot anyways. Unfortunately PCI is too slow to handle the demands of Quartz so even the best PCI based graphics card would be incompatible. Wookpecker, I think you'd do better with a new computer.

Sadly that is true,
A new G5 may be too costly; I have been pondering a dual G4 (I like the extra drive bay's) The lack of drive bays in the G5 is kind of a turn off. With the G4 I could install my trusty old Zip drive and two 80 gig hard drives. Hmmmmm perhaps I need to keep an eye on my favorite computer outlet...E-bay for my next project.

The Pecker

Eh, your best bet for cheap is an AGP G4. I wish there was a way, but like it was said, it's just impossible. Well, unless you went out and purchased the board and put it into your machine, but you might as well get the G4. Godspeed my friend.

My first Mac was an IIsi back then no one even talked megahertz. It was a smoken hot little Mac with 3 megs of ram and a forty meg hard drive, sales people did not even talk about the processor peecees and Macs were talked about in terms like 2/20 4/40 and my little 3/40 was great! When CD's came along I was able to add an external drive. I later maxed out the ram and stuffed a massive 80 Meg hard drive in there. That was the last brand new Mac I ever bought. I am always a little behind Moore’s law and I will always mod and tinker with my hardware until it can no longer keep up.
I like my B&W mini tower and have added twin 80 gig drives, a Zip 100, a DVD-R, a Gig of RAM, Rage 128 video card, and a second Ethernet card for my Airport.
I am able to use my old laser printer (ADb) and my new ink jet (USb) as well as my old scanner (scsi) all in one box!
Quartz extreme may just be the end of the line for this workhorse. My son is already complaining that the old 9600 (G3 450) in his room is not fast enough for his games, maybe we both need an upgrade.

The Pecker

(Looking for a used Quicksilver)

Post edited by: woodpecker, at: 2004/06/12 12:01

the only thing you can do for your b|w G3 is to add a radeon PCI 7000. Then you can download PCI Extreme from here...http://pages.cthome.net/zacks/index2.html, or here http://www.macupdate.com.

That will enable you B|W to use Quartz.

'cept the PCI bus doesn't have enough oomph to do much. Its like coaxing BSD onto a 68k Yeah, you can do it, but its not much use.

Oh, i agree totally, but he is running a B|W with some sort of G4 zif. I have a G3 900MHz in my B|W and have a almost the same specs as him... full gig of ram, large drives, and with the 7000, some games do play pretty good! But, if i wanna play games i use my trusty ole sega genesis and play NHL 95 !! LOL

the G3 is still a keeper. I use it daily. I would however like to know more about flashing a PC 64MB 7000 to use in my B|W...

thanx

t o n y

oeo wrote:


I agree about the G3's, great little systems - but I'm not sinking too much money into mine. Just doesn't make sense.

As for the radeon flashing everything you should need is here

oeo wrote:


Thanks for the tip works like a bomb! Finder windows open much faster and now my family enjoys the fast user switching...ohhhh....ahhhh cool.

Many thanks for the tip
Long live the Blue and White Mini!!!

The Pecker