kpmg3: Adding USB ports to Beige G3

Question
I want to add USB capabilities to my Mac, so that I can use modern peripherals. How can I do that and which products do I have to look for? Also, what OS best supports USB ports?

Answer
USB ports can be added to the PowerMac Beige G3 through PCI expansion cards.

Beige G3 machines come with 3 PCI slots and one PERCH slot on the PCI bus.
The PERCH slot is already fitted with the 'personality' card and, thus, it cannot take a PCI expansion card.

Due to the limited number of free PCI slots available, it is advisable to make the most out of each one. Thankfully, most vendors of USB expansion PCI cards offer such products with the combination of FireWire ports aswell.

FireWire ports are also useful for connecting to the Mac external peripherals such as:
* Video cameras.
* External CD-ROM/R/RW - DVD-ROM/R Combo drives
* External Hard Disks.
* External removable media (Tape drives, DAT drives, etc.).
* External scanners.

Thus, the possibility of combining such FireWire ports on the same PCI expansion card, will allow the use of such additional peripherals together with the USB ones (mouse, trackballs, printers, etc...).

USB/FireWire Combo PCI cards
If you plan to use cameras or even video cameras, these modern gadgets normally come with a USB connection (cameras) or with a FireWire one (video cameras).
You definetively will be needing one of those cards.
All such cards will come with a USB v. 2.0 compliant ports, but they will be backward compatable to the USB v. 1.1 standard; thus, you will be able to use them under OS 8.6, 9.0.x, 9.1.x and 9.2.x.
In case OS 10.2.x is installed, such new operating system will allow you to use those cards with the USB 2.0 standard.
Make sure the card you choose comes with an OHCI standard chipset on it; it will allow you full plug & play compatability with your Macintosh: no need to install additional extensions/drivers to make them work.
Good combo cards to look at are:
* KEYSPAN's USB2+FireWire Card.
* MACALLY's PCIFireWire/USB Card.
* ORANGE MICRO's OrangeLink+ USB2.0/FireWire PCI.
* SONNET's Tango FireWire/USB.

Belkin's cards have been reported on these forums to be VERY problematic; I wouldn't reccomend their use.

However, for troublefree installation and usage, I would advise to upgrade your OS to ver. 9.2.1. Many card Vendors require the presence of OS 9.x for full compatability with their products, anyway. In fact, such OS comes with in-built all the most adjurned Apple's extensions and drivers to run properly such combo cards under the "Classic" environment.

For those users who don't forsee to implement FireWire devices with their machine's normal use, all above Vendors offer PCI expansion cards with the sole USB ports, bearing the OHCI standard chipset.

Hope the above helps.

Costa