G3 All-in-One: Typical Restoration Necessary When Buying Used?

[sinisterpisces]

Hello!

I'm less than two hours away from someone selling a G3 All-in-One on Facebook. I'm really interested, since I don't have any vintage (pre-Intel) Macs and it seems like a very interesting way to start. I really like the idea of a PPC Mac with a compact Mac look and expandability, as well.

I hesitate for two reasons:

1. I have no idea whether $300 is a reasonable price or not. It's reasonable compared to eBay, but eBay prices tend to be inflated for vintage computers.
2. The seller isn't offering much information about it in the listing. Pretty much all it says is "Powers on, has os 9 installed," with a photo of it turned on. Which is great, but as I mentioned in another thread, I don't have the equipment or skill to do repair myself. What are the possible issues I'm looking at if the machine is actually turning on? I know I'd almost certainly need to get the battery out of there.

I'll admit this is mostly a thought exercise. I"m 90 percent sure I don't have anywhere I can put this thing, once I actually measure my space, but I'm curious about typical maintenance requirements for these.

Thanks!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I think that is a crazytown price for a local AIO imacg3. The last two I picked up this year (one just last month) was $15 and $50 respectively & the $50 unit came with kb/ms, software and a bunch of other neat era peripherals like bondi floppy drive, bondi USB hub, blueberry Zip, floppy to SD adapter and grape printer and some OS9 mac for dummies books lol.

I get the desire to own one of these as they're an absolutely iconic PowerPC mac, but that price is looking for a sucker willing to buy it IMO. Be patient and you can find one local to you for a reasonable amount.

 

[sinisterpisces]

@Certificate of Excellence thanks for the reply. I definitely appreciate the warning about the iMac pricing. Local is the way to go, I think.

I'm actually looking at one of these. https://www.macstories.net/mac/the-power-macintosh-g3-all-in-one/
Steve rescued one, seen here:

Look at those ports. A great set of classic Mac ports, with expansion slots.

Hopefully, you can see why I'm tempted.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Haha oh mah gosh. When you said g3 AIO, an angry Krang Molar mac is the LAST mac Id have thought of I have zero idea what a fair price is on one of those - definitely outside of what I collect. Best of luck to you though!

 

[sinisterpisces]

Haha oh mah gosh. When you said g3 AIO, an angry Krang Molar mac is the LAST mac Id have thought of I have zero idea what a fair price is on one of those - definitely outside of what I collect. Best of luck to you though!

I'm in trouble. I just realized I have more than enough room for it if I move my printer.

Someone please tell me this is a terrible idea.

 

[MindThreat]

I've seen them in the $100-$250 range on a local scale (not my area in particular but in general) and when I first ran across the MolarMac, initially thought it was one of the ugliest Macs I've ever seen. Not sure what happened but my perspective on it changed and quickly grew fond of it. So much that I started to look for one locally for a brief period of time but quit because I realized I was happy with my current setup and didn't want to add more of what I don't really need.

It's probably one of the more interesting Macs to go after for sure! I think the real kicker for me was is that it had (or the premium models do anyways) have the A/V input so you could capture analog videos in QuickTime and such. Not sure if the model you're going after has the AV card on the back but you should check. I've always been fascinated with the complete multimedia package aspect of the black PowerMac 5400/5500s and really wanted one of those, only as far as I'm aware of, zero were released in the U.S. - none that weren't imported anyways.

This brought me to finding the oddball curiosity that is the Molar Mac. If you get it, I think it'd be a really cool machine to own and if you do, can't wait to see more posts and videos about it! Really love that it also has the ADB port.

 

[sinisterpisces]

I've seen them in the $100-$250 range on a local scale (not my area in particular but in general) and when I first ran across the MolarMac, initially thought it was one of the ugliest Macs I've ever seen. Not sure what happened but my perspective on it changed and quickly grew fond of it. So much that I started to look for one locally for a brief period of time but quit because I realized I was happy with my current setup and didn't want to add more of what I don't really need.

It's probably one of the more interesting Macs to go after for sure! I think the real kicker for me was is that it had (or the premium models do anyways) have the A/V input so you could capture analog videos in QuickTime and such. Not sure if the model you're going after has the AV card on the back but you should check. I've always been fascinated with the complete multimedia package aspect of the black PowerMac 5400/5500s and really wanted one of those, only as far as I'm aware of, zero were released in the U.S. - none that weren't imported anyways.

This brought me to finding the oddball curiosity that is the Molar Mac. If you get it, I think it'd be a really cool machine to own and if you do, can't wait to see more posts and videos about it! Really love that it also has the ADB port.

I've asked the seller to post photos of the back, and about any cracks, and whether the ZIP drive is present.

I agree that this thing is appealing. I love the idea of what is essentially an expandable, more powerful iMac, with Old World Mac ports (SCSI!).

Will report back. At the moment, a lot depends on what the seller says and if I can convince my roommate to agree to putting the Large Printer in their office. For historical preservation reasons.

 

[karl]

For anyone else looking to buy an AiO, here's some of the difficulties I experienced getting mine working.

These (and other CRT things manufactured by LG for Apple during this time period) have a nasty habit of their flyback transformers dying. I bought my molar mac "as-is" last year on eBay for $200 plus $50 ground shipping. Turned out that the flyback was failing and constantly arcing, causing the picture to blank out and eventually making the Mac continuously reboot. The only place I eventually could source a replacement FBT was https://technotronic-dimensions.3dc...-Apple-powermac-Flyback-transformer_p_60.html but at least it wasn't a terribly difficult soldering job.

Other things I had to replace on my as-is AiO:

• Hard drive had been removed. Beige G3s need the OS to be installed on the first 8GB of a drive since they weren't originally meant to use large disks. I ended up buying locally a used 8GB IDE drive instead of using one of the modern IDE replacements; I've found OS 9 to run OK on sd2ide but OS X usually chokes. The spinning rust drive is working great.
• Floppy drive was faulty (couldn't read past a certain point on any diskettes I tried, even after cleaning). Replaced with a spare I already had.
• CD-ROM made loud noises, seemed to possibly be failing, replaced with another, faster one purchased from Operator Headgap. It also wasn't reliably reading discs, but I think that might have actually been the 3V CR2032 I was using as a PRAM battery replacement—switching back to a genuine 3.6V lithium 1/2AA seemed to make everything on this machine much less flaky.

 

[XodiumRetro]

For anyone else looking to buy an AiO, here's some of the difficulties I experienced getting mine working.

These (and other CRT things manufactured by LG for Apple during this time period) have a nasty habit of their flyback transformers dying. I bought my molar mac "as-is" last year on eBay for $200 plus $50 ground shipping. Turned out that the flyback was failing and constantly arcing, causing the picture to blank out and eventually making the Mac continuously reboot. The only place I eventually could source a replacement FBT was https://technotronic-dimensions.3dc...-Apple-powermac-Flyback-transformer_p_60.html but at least it wasn't a terribly difficult soldering job.

Other things I had to replace on my as-is AiO:

• Hard drive had been removed. Beige G3s need the OS to be installed on the first 8GB of a drive since they weren't originally meant to use large disks. I ended up buying locally a used 8GB IDE drive instead of using one of the modern IDE replacements; I've found OS 9 to run OK on sd2ide but OS X usually chokes. The spinning rust drive is working great.
• Floppy drive was faulty (couldn't read past a certain point on any diskettes I tried, even after cleaning). Replaced with a spare I already had.
• CD-ROM made loud noises, seemed to possibly be failing, replaced with another, faster one purchased from Operator Headgap. It also wasn't reliably reading discs, but I think that might have actually been the 3V CR2032 I was using as a PRAM battery replacement—switching back to a genuine 3.6V lithium 1/2AA seemed to make everything on this machine much less flaky.

Thanks for posting this! I actually have an AIO that's currently pushing up daisies that I need to get off my arse and fix, and the flyback sounds like exactly the thing that's gone off in it.