Combo (USB) Cards

The Power Macintosh G3 (commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases) was a series of personal computers made by Apple from November 1997 to January 1999. more...

It used the PowerPC G3 (PPC750) microprocessor, and succeeded the Power Macintosh line, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models; it was itself succeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which kept the name but was a totally new design.

A major leap forward was made in this model through the introduction of a fast, large Level 2 backside cache, running at half processor speed, which reduced data bottlenecks and allowed very efficient use by the computer of its bus speed; 512 KB on the 233 MHz and 266 MHz models, 1 MB on the 300 MHz, 333 MHz and later models. Because of this, at the time Power Macintosh G3 machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed.

The Power Macintosh G3 was originally intended to be a midrange series, between the low-end Performa/LC models and the high-end Power Macintosh 8600 and 9600. During development, it quickly became evident that the G3 was a faster machine than the PPC604-based Macs, so the Power Macintosh G3 became the flagship instead, and the PPC60x architecture was dropped altogether from the desktop line.

Hardware

The beige Power Macintosh G3 series came in three versions: an "Outrigger" desktop enclosure inherited directly from the Power Macintosh 7300; a minitower similar to (but shorter than) the Power Mac 8600 enclosure; and a version with a built in screen, the G3 All-In-One ("AIO"), that was made available only to educational markets. Equipped with a 233, 266, 300, or 333 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU from Motorola, these machines used a 66 MHz system bus and PC66 SDRAM (actual operating frequencies 66.83 MHz), and used standard ATA hard disk drives instead of the SCSI drives used in most previous Apple systems.

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