Where can I buy a cheap monitor card for a blue/white G3?

The one that shipped with it is bad.   I just need basic output.  No
3D, No games, etc.  Can I pick up a card mail order for under $50.

I found some on ebay for $100, but they are higher end ATi radion
cards.
I just need something basic, just for word processing.

The only requirement is that is support OSX 10.2

Any ideas?

Hello sherpaj:

You can pickup a cheap ATI XClaim PCI video card from eBay. The card
supports VGA and old Mac Monitor output, and ATI supplies drivers for
Mac OS 7.5.5 through to OS 9. Mac OS X includes OEM (built-in) drivers
for the card.

There are currently five XClaim video cards available for bidding on
eBay, with the lowest-costing one at $19.99 USD.

The link to the auctions is below:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=Mac+xclaim


You may also consider an ATI Rage 128 PCI video card. This card is
more powerful than the XClaim and is definitely supported under Mac OS
X 10.2. There are (again) five auctions for this product, and you can
view them here:
http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/SaleSearch?satitle=Mac+rage+128+pci&ht=1&sosortproperty=1&from=R10&BasicSearch=

Every auction is less than $50.

I personally have used an ATI Rage 128 card on my Power Mac G4 under
OS X 10.1, and it works flawlessly and performs well (except in heavy
3D games).


According to AppleSpec (
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43123 ), the Blue and
White G3 does not have an AGP slot. Therefore, when purchasing an ATI
Rage 128 video card, be sure it is PCI-based, not AGP-based. As well,
your machine has 4 PCI slots, with one "dedicated to video". When
replacing your existing card, use the same slot.

You should be aware that none of these cards supports Quartz Extreme,
which is Mac OS X 10.2's rendering engine. Quartz Extreme requires an
AGP-based ATI Radeon or at least an Nvidia GeForce 2. Your Blue and
White G3 does not support any of these cards. However, Mac OS X will
run just fine without Quartz Extreme.

Finally, before committing to purchase a video card, ensure that it
has the output(s) that you need (VGA - 3 rows of 5 pins, or old Mac
Monitor - 2 rows of 7 and 8 pins). Every video card supports VGA
output, but not all support old Mac Monitors.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions about
this.

- supermacman

I think the radeon hardware is identical for Windows/Mac versions, and
that just the packaging is different.

Otherwise, to get your card, I suggest posting a want-ad on
craigslist.org.  Pick the city closest to you, or just pick ny/sf and
ask if someone can ship it to you.

this talks about using ati windows cards in macs:
  http://atimacunderground.freeservers.com/instructions.html

The Radeon hardware is pretty much the same, but the ROM is different.
Sometimes you can re-flash the ROM, but it's much more trouble than
it's worth. It's also easier for nVidia cards than ATI cards, since
Mac ATI products are more different from their PC counterparts than
are Mac nVidia products.