Q3Test Review - Part 1

The Macintosh G3

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Kenn's comments in BLUE

What's in the Box?

Kenn

Appropriating the hardware wasn't all that hard. It basically meant a trip down to the local computer store and a (painful) swipe of the plastic. Luckily, one box was all we needed, and we trucked that back to the FiringSquad testing labs.

I've got to admit, when it comes to hardware, Apple really has their act together. The case (Mac users refer to it as "the CPU" is packed in styrofoam, and the keyboard, mouse, and OS disc are stored in another smaller box. Pure simplicity. Here's what comes in the box:

PowerPC G3 processor

1MB L2 backside cache

64MB SDRAM

ATI Rage128 graphics, 16MB SDRAM

4 PCI slots (1 taken by Rage128)

10/100 Ethernet built-in

6GB 5,400 rpm Ultra-ATA hard drive

2 Firewire ports

2 USB ports

ADB port

16-bit sound

USB keyboard

USB mouse

MacOS 8.5

Plaintalk Microphone

Thresh
Well, considering Apple Computer builds all of the systems, peripherals, and OS components, we expected to find a well-integrated package, and in that they delivered. Kenn insisted on having the system installed over near our test bed system, which incidentally makes his desk the only viable option. Just wonderful.

Kenn
Ah, the joys of "hardware testing." We quickly got the Mac up and running. I hooked up the second input from my monitor to the Rage128 in the G3, daisy-chained the mouse and keyboard, and plugged in a free ethernet cable. The last steps were to hook up the mini jack from my Cambridge Soundworks Microworks, and finally the translucent, rainbow power cord.

Start up

Kenn
We then plugged in The friendly, familiar Mac chime greeted us on power up. A friendly Mac icon appeared, and after the OS booted, a friendly dialogue box popped up with a suggestion that we take a tour of our new system.

Thresh
Piffle. I tried to close the applet, only to have the window grow to full size on me. Damned interface differences! After unlearning the top-right-corner rule, we jumped right into the network configuration and set our IP, DNS, and router information. I was really impressed with the fact that all of this could be done and initialized without ever rebooting the system.