Beige G3 desktop Mod

[roto31]

I have 4 beige G3 Macs. Two are in pristine condition the other two are in so so condition. One is the Minitower model and the other is a desktop model. I've been thinking of turning one or both of them into an upgraded version. I am thinking if I can I'd follow build for a Mini to keep from having to use an additional GPU on the board if I were to do the desktop model. If I were to do the Minitower route there was actually more room in them than the Sawtooth G4. If I did either of them I'd complete the retro look by using the beige Apple Pro keyboard and switch it over to USB. Now, if there were only a way to put an LCD screen into a vintage beige monitor that looked like it is supposed to be there. Any thoughts???

 

[miv79]

Nice idea! Those beige era Macs were amazingly solid and well engineered bits of kit compared to the majority of their PC counterparts! I was a former Performa 6200 owner before I made the jump to the (awesome) blue and white G3 tower...

Not much I can really say about the case mod idea but I would think the mac mini style build would fit without much problem.

Anyway, getting (slowly) to the point, several years ago I tried fitting a 15" LCD screen into an empty iMac case. (original Bondi Blue).

I had a 15" (4:3 ratio) LCD display going spare so after a bit of cutting and bodging on the inside of the iMacs screen bezel I got the LCD to fit surprisingly well, except for 1 issue.... the curved front/face of the iMacs bezel which was designed to fit around a non-flat CRT display.

At the left and right edges of the screen it was a nice tight fit between the screen and the bezel but towards the centre of the display/bezel there was a gap of about 10-15mm (from what I recall). It basically looked a bit messy and I couldn't think of a neat way to fill the gap with the tools/materials available to me at the time.

This image kind of illustrates the the non-flat display: http://www.mactechnology.co.uk/ekmp...able-drawer-loading-cd-drive-complete-5-p.jpg

I suspect you would have a similar issue with your old Apple display as I think most CRT's had slightly curved glass. Maybe you got lucky though and its a Trinitron style display with much flatter screen/bezel?

What actually led to me abandoning my mod was the fact my LCD only had a resolution of 1024 x 760. To get a high res 15" screen at the time was expensive, especially just for a 'fun project'.

At least LCD's are a hell of a lot cheaper nowadays so it might still be worth you investigating whats out there and seeing if there is a size, ratio and resolution that would work well with your old display case.

Have fun!

 

[doctorevil30564]

I had one of the Beige AIO units that Apple primarily only sold to Schools and Educational facilities.

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/power-mac-g3-all-in-one.html

I remember that it had a slide out motherboard tray that could probably be adapted to hold a PC motherboard without too much issue. I'm wondering though how hard it would be to connect the old CRT monitor though, or if it would require3 swapping that out to a LCD screen like I've seen done on the older colored G3 Imacs.

 

[Flybye]

Do it! I've been wanting to see a 90s tower get modded up.

 

[roto31]

I thought about using the "Molar" AIO G3 too but getting past the screen would be the toughest part. After looking at my beige Minitower I could build one of the more powerful "Mac Pro" style machines because of the style of the case. It probably take removing where the CD-ROM, Zip Drive and floppy drive went though to make room for cooling. The Mini tower is almost like how the B&W G3 and later cases were designed except the hinge is on the internal and the power supply is on the hinged part instead of being internal to the computer. So again I am at the same issues I had with my Sawtooth build and needing a extension from the PSU. It's another challenge I'm up for. More research to be done though before it's attempted. The research I did for my Sawtooth build paid off.