I've got this aging old Cyan/White Powermac G3 which refuses to run Tiger, so I thought I'd put the outstandlingly nice cabinet to good use. I've got a fairly recent AMD-based computer with a standard-issue atx motherboard running ubuntu linux that I thought I'd try to get into the G3 case. My old, ugly PC cabinet looks horribly out of place in the same room as my shiny new G5

So, after googling and coming up with nothing other than old G3 and G4 cases where people have done the same, I'm turning to you guys...

I know it's probably going to be a lot of work, as to which I'm prepared for, but I was thinking a good idea is to ask if anyone has done anything similar to this in the past?

Links, comments and otherwise helpful insights will be warmly welcomed!

Cheers, Øivind

That box should be able to run tiger, (Its even on the "official" list) See how much ram it has. As for the PC MoBo, You'll want to use the PC's power supply (though plenty of people have adapted the B&W to run off an ATX supply, perhaps you could do the opposite, mod the B&W supply to run a PC?) and just go dremel crazy, I guess.... The back panel will be the hard part, the B&W has only 4 PCI slots, if your MoBO has more....

Alot of stock ATX supplies are the exact same size as the B&Ws. The only difference is that you will need an additional -5V line if you use the Apple PSU. I don't recall it being done before in a B&W case, but it has been done with a G4, which is essentially the same case. I think it was on XLR8yourmac.com. It was also possibly on themacaddress.com but that seems to be down at the moment.

Mord is right though, the hard bit will be lining up PCI cards. And it should run Tiger too. And its probably a RAM issue. Have you ever run OS X on it? X is really fussy on these with certain kinds of RAM. It likes it to match. Try installing with a single, fast stick of 256MB if you have one. Failing that, try to using matching sticks. Don't know what you mean by fairly recent, but if the AMD is running PC133 RAM, it should work in the G3. Faster RAM is better in these but PC133 is the fastest they'll take. Don't use less than PC100 in it. It has to have 8ns or 7.5ns rated RAM to run X (again matching is good). 10ns will cause errors.

And of course, if its a rev1, you might want to avoid the on-board ATA bus (for hard drives at least) if you can....

Your bring up a good point war. My guess its a Rev. 1 and the ata bus isnt working out. I wrote
an article about adding sata a while back which gives the g3 and big boost. I have never had
ram problems but then again, Im still runnin Panther.
-maestro

If you've had no RAM problems running Panther, you shouldn't have any running Tiger. Some rev. 1s have no issues at all. Some have problems which are all but insurmountable. If they're gonna play up though, they'll usuall start with Panther if not Jaguar. Pretty much any version of X will play up if any are going to. I had another rev. 1 at work which was rock solid with mixed RAM of all sorts of speeds. Ran Panther and then Tiger, installing both at the first attempt. And on a 30GB drive on the internal ATA bus. never gave me a single problem in the 3 months or so I ran it. Only retired it when we had a DA G4 available.

My home one took a grand total in excess of ten attempts to install Panther, the last three of which were after I reduced the RAM to a single PC133 256MB stick. (The last one worked)

It should mount a standard ATX style board no problem. It should just pop in and if something has to be Dremmeled™ it would be the existing motherboard posts. It uses an ATX-style power supply in the case, though it's not PC compliant, so you'll need a standard ATX P/S. It will mount in the case no problem.

You will need to rewire the front buttons so it will power on. The buttons are actually atatched to a circuit board that could be removed and have new buttons placed so you can power on/off the machine easily.

The back I/O cover will need some work. It may be easier to make a new one out of Styrene (which can be obtained at a hobby store, try the model railroad section) cut to fit your boards I/O's.