I have a Desktop PowerPC G3 which I would like to turn on its side to fit into a tower space in a computer desk. Is this permissible? There are two Western Digital 80 GB disks mounted internally. Does a hard disk drive spinning on its edge run reliably? Would its MTBR be affected?
Thanks!
---- Bill Strohm
PowerMac, Mac OS 9.2.x, Original Desktop PPC PowerMac G3
You can orient it any way you want. The main concern should be you don't cover any cooling vents.
You can orient it any way you want. The main concern should be you don't cover any cooling vents.
Thank you, Kappy! Western Digital also confirmed your answer.
If oriented vertically, the desktop model shouldn't be placed on the left side, where the PCI slots are located. The power supply's cooling fan is on the underside of the drive bay sub-chassis. It's designed to draw air in through the vent holes on the left side, across the motherboard, and then exhaust the warmed air through the rear of the computer. For symmetrical styling of the case cover, both sides have vent slots running from front to rear, but the fan's intake is below those slots on the right side. More air (and it's not the greatest design for effective cooling) is pulled in through the holes on the left side of the chassis wall, located behind those vent slots on the left side of the case. Cooling a PCI graphics card would also be another reason to keep the computer's left side oriented upward.
Jeff,
Thanks, I will make a point of setting the case on its right side. Would there be a significant improvement in overall air flow if I put rubber "feet" on the right side, lifting it slightly above the mounting surface?
Bill,
the cooling issues due to the G3DT design Jeff mentions are exacerbated when you have two hard drives. "Back in the day" when the Beige G3 was fast 'n furious, we always cautioned people with the desktop version about watching temps when the extra bay was occupied. One recommendation was to substitute round ATA/IDE drive cables for the ribbon-type to help air flow. The case design was critical enough with heat issues that the round cable thing actually helped.
So, regardless of orientation, you are starting with a case form factor that has a history of needing to be "babied" to avoid heat problems.
By comparison, the spacious mini-tower model had few cooling issues plus had available mounting points for up to two extra 60MM fans to better cool the PCI array. I wish the DT versions had that flexibility.
So it would be a good idea to lift the lower surface (the right side of the case) up with some "feet," for more airflow? This computer also has 768 MB of RAM, an ATA-66 PCI board driving the two WD hard drives, an EVGA graphics card, and a 1 GHz CPU.
You've got a very capably-upgraded G3 desktop. I think it would be a good idea to block up the right side about an inch or so. I did that for a Power Mac 6100 that I had, because of its floor-mounted PSU fan that was positioned only ½" above the desk's surface (a terrible design). The extra height under it enabled the exhausted air to better escape. I've got both style G3 models and agree with Allan - the mini-tower was far superior in terms of cooling design. The main problem with sliding the mini-tower into an enclosed compartment (like so many computer desks have) is that its air slots on the left side would be blocked. Then the desk would need a slight modification, to permit air flow to that side of the computer. I'm curious as to which EVGA PCI graphics card you installed. I settled for ATI Radeon 7000s in mine, with a mixture of 32 MB and 64 MB ATI-manufactured cards that I flashed in one of my PCs.
the stock CD drive tray does not have those little tabs that you can pull out to secure an optical disc when mounted vertically. Some of the replacement optical drive models may have that capability. have you ever upgraded the internal optical drive? If you don't have a tray with those extendable disc retainers then you can not load a disc in the vertical orientation, the disc will fall out of the tray.
when I had a G3 desktop with a g4 cpu upgrade and extra hard drives, it would overheat. I always used external speakers, so I removed the internal speaker and mounted a little Vantec stealth fan in that space to help blow air from the front of the case into the cpu heat sink area, it seemed to help. The stock G3 cpu might not run as hot. also, fresh thermal paste between the heat sink and cpu helps keep the heat sink working.
Jeff,
Thanks for your input. I also have the ATI Radeon 7000 graphics card, not EVGA as I wrote above (was lucky to find the Mac edition, didn't have to flash). So far I have removed the rubber feet from the bottom of the chassis and moved them to the right side on new double-sided sticky rubber bases. However, the clearance from the mounting surface to the computer is only about 1/2 inch. The computer will be mounted in a tower location that is open on the front, right side (computer top), top (computer left side), and back. Clearance on the left side (computer bottom) will be about 1.5". The computer desk (Sauder) has been shipped but not received yet. Thanks again for reading!
Glen,
Thanks to you also for your comments. I bought a Bose Companion 20 speaker set (I use these on my Intel "Hackintosh"), still in its box. I like the idea of removing the internal speaker... would that help or hurt airflow if no fan is added there? The CD-ROM drive is stock, but this computer is not planned to use the optical drive. Reason: it will be used strictly for playing old games, and the old games are already installed in such a way that the many CD-ROMs required are already in mountable disk image format, on the hard disks. In case I do need to copy from a CD-ROM in the future, I will temporarily remove the computer and set it horizontally for just that purpose. Thanks for the warning!
when the speaker is removed, you will create a new air vent, which helps the CPU and hard drives get more cooling air, but it may detract from the original cooling air path through the left side vents over the PCI cards, ie your video card. Some video cards have their own little fan on the heat sink, but some don't. It might not cause any problems without another fan, but see how much space you have in there, you might be able to fit a 60 or 80 mm fan, run a splitter from one of the hard drive molex power plugs, but you might not like the extra noise.
also, the hot air is blown out the back through the PSU, make sure that hot air can escape the back of the desk and rise so that it does not get sucked back into the G3 case cool air intake vents.
HAve you figured out how to write an AppleScript or alias to first mount a CDRom image file, than launch the application? That would be cool, I have thought about converting some old CDroms to disc images also, good idea.
"HAve you figured out how to write an AppleScript or alias to first mount a CDRom image file, than launch the application? " It's been quite a while since I did that, but I want to say that Disk Utility of that vintage could create a mountable disk image (".img") directly from a CD-ROM with the click of a button. Note that these are OLD games, no DRM installed. If I could do it, it had to be easy. In any case, the images are on the hard disk, and if I want to play (for instance) "Obsidian," which is a 5-CD game, I can just select all its .img files, mount them, and play the game from the hard disk. The mounting process has to be repeated each time the computer is powered on, before double-clicking the app.
Actually, now that I have this setup running (with speaker assembly removed), I refreshed my memory about how to make a mountable disk image from a CD-ROM. I used DiskCopy v 6.4 and selected "Create a Disk Image from a Volume" from its menu. Then I had to use the "Make a Full CD-ROM (663 MB)" option and "Read-Only, Compressed" for a successful copy. Other options would create a disk image, but they wouldn't mount.
Checked out some of my games; all work well except "Traitors Gate," which unfortunately crashes under Mac OS 9.2.2. It also seems to damage the System Resources file. (Guess I will trash that app, or else try running it under OS 9.1 to see if that works.)
So I can play Myst Masterpiece, Riven, Myst III (Exile), Starship Titanic, Journeyman Project "Pegasus Prime," Journeyman Project 3 "Legacy of Time," Obsidian, and The Dig.
I need to find out somehow if Mac OS 9.1 is actually a better OS for this game playing than 9.2.2, which has a lot of stuff apparently needed to run as a Classic OS under Mac OS 10.x. I don't intend ever again to attempt Mac OS 10 on this computer... tried that once, no likee at all.
You may have problems related to the driver that you'll use for the Radeon 7K under Mac OS 9.1. As I recall, the final pre-OS X ATI driver with Radeon Support (I can't remember the version #) had compatibility problems with anything less than OS 9.2.1/9.2.2. Under Mac OS 9.1 (and even 8.6), I don't think the installer would run. Manually placing the drivers in the Extensions folder wasn't a viable workaround. When I tried that, I think it lacked 2-D acceleration, which was instantly noticeable when scrolling was at a snail's pace.
Jeff,
Thanks, your input probably saved me a lot of trouble!
Can a Desktop PowerPC G3 computer be oriented on its side?
