At 10:25 AM -0600 12/6/02, Andy Ball wrote:
>Hello!
>
>I'm trying to help out a friend who recently picked up a
>300MHz beige G3 Mac.  He says the mainboard supports both
>SCSI and ATA disk drives.  I've trawled my usual sources
>(LEM, google etc.) without finding much in the way of
>specifics.
>
>He's thinking of upgrading its disk drive.  I've read that
>it supports "wide SCSI", but I'm not sure if this means
>single-ended, hvd or lvd (I'm guessing single-ended).  I'm
>also wondering about the speed of the SCSI bus (20MHz?)

Almost certainly single-ended.  At a guess I'd say 10 MHz (20 MB/s if 
wide).  You may get better deals buying ATA disks, but I can't 
address the interface performance comparisons.

>Next upgrade is probably IEEE-1394 'FireWire' as a PCI card.
>Are some better than others?  Do some work better with
>NetBSD? Does his beige G3 support 5V cards, 3.3V or both? As
>you can tell, I'm not all that familiar with this model.

Go look at the i386 port.  If you are willing to configure kernels 
and test drivers you can probably use anything that works for them, 
eventually.  There may be some endianness issues to fix, but I'm sure 
you can get any help you need on this list for that.
-- 
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
Henry.B.Hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu