I have a Beige Power Macintosh G3 minitower (266 MHz; 1997 vintage) that I got free when my old lab switched over to PCs a few years ago. Currently it is running OS 8.6, although I have discs for 9.2 that I never got around to installing.
I am trying to postpone buying a new Mac for as long as possible; “baby” does everything I need at the moment, and I have a lot of software I use regularly that I’d have to rebuy since the old versions won’t work on OSX. On the other hand, this clunker is paleolithic and I don’t want to spend any more money on upgrades than I have to.
I need to bring files back & forth from work on a regular basis, but the last computer at work that had a Zip drive just got trashed, and our email server chokes on large files. So I’d like to put a USB connection on baby so I can use a thumb drive, which is much cheaper than buying a CD-R drive for home or an external Zip drive for work (not to mention that Zip drives seem to be a dead technology).
I’ve poked around a bit on the web and it seems that having the Rev A ROM (which I do) is a major issue. I have found three conflicting answers:
[ol]
[li]No USB card will work until the ROM is upgraded[/li][li]Only USB 1.1 cards will work[/li][li]USB 2.0 cards will work, but will act as if they are 1.1[/li][/ol]
Does anyone have any actual experience with this? I found a couple of Rev B and C cards on eBay for around $20, but I’d rather not buy anything I don’t actually need.
Thanks,
JRB