komodo

The 350 MHz Rev. A blue and white Power Macintosh G3 is picky about its ATA configuration.

Specs

Model ID

PowerMac1,1

CPU

PowerPC 750 @ 350 MHz

L2 Cache

1 MiB

Bus Speed

100 MHz

Boot ROM Version

1.1.1f4

Storage

12.76 GB Quantum Fireball CX13.6A

Optical Drive

Matshita CR-587

Zip Drive

Iomega Zip 100

FireWire

400

GPU

ATI Rage 128 (ATY,Rage128)

VRAM

16 MiB

RAM

1024 MiB (4x 256 MiB)

Quirks

• The fan may or may not rattle loudly.
• Because this is a Rev. A model, "newer" ATA drives exhibit data corruption. Even the stock 6 GB drive from a tray-loading iMac G3 is "too new". Classic Mac OS will pretend to install just fine, but Mac OS X will abort the installation because it knows something is wrong.
• Open Firmware can't boot from hard disks connected to the CD-ROM drive and Zip drive's ATA cable, even though it can boot from CD-ROM drives on that cable just fine.
• When installing prerelease versions of Mac OS X, temporarily remove RAM until total RAM is 512 MiB.

History

• 2020-07-06: The computer arrives at my parents' place from an eBay seller. One handle on the back bottom is broken. The hard disk is dead.
• 2020-07-06: ⚠️ A bit of plastic from the clock battery holder is chipped away when removing the clock battery.
• 2020-07-06: Attempts at using different hard disks I have on hand fail due to the data corruption issue.
• 2020-07-10: 📈 The RAM the computer came with is replaced with four 256 MiB sticks (256 -> 1024).
• 2020-07-17: 📈 I replace the dead hard disk with a period-correct 13.6 GB Quantum Fireball. No data corruption is observed.
• 2021-12-27: The CD-ROM drive might be dying?