Bury or resurrect G3 minitower

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oldtimer3221

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I've been running and occasionally upgrading a beige G3 (266) with OS 9.2 for 7 years (hence "oldtimer") -- until the day after Thanksgiving, when the bomb appeared, repeatedly, on startup. :( Couldn't boot from CD either. :( :( Looks really bad.
I figure it's time to start over with a new machine, but the rub is, I don't have the cash for that. I've become a bit rusty about troubleshooting and tinkering -- although in my heyday I popped the case open on many occasions to add RAM to the max and USB port card and replace (2 years ago) the original hard drive with a 80G drive that I partitioned. (Lots of stuff on there that I want access to.) That's why I wandered in here.
Is there anything I can do to resurrect this machine? Is the appearance of the bomb an indication of motherboard failure? Is there any hope for this formerly trusty old thang?
 
If you try to boot from CD, does the bomb appear, too? Is there some kind of error message? When in the boot process does it appear?
 
It might be time to save for a mac mini. Save a few hundred and snag one refurbished from apple.com. It's not the best, but it's light years ahead of what you've been running. Good luck!
 
Yeah, the bomb appears when I try to boot from CD. I've concluded it's a goner. Got 7 years out of it, and even if I got it going again, it would still be the same slow machine. I definitely want more than a Mini, though.
 
save the hd (can install as slave in many other newer models), and sell the rest for parts (pc133 ram is still worth something, cards, case w/power supply etc....) to offset the cost of a newer box....
 
Like he said sell the parts you can sell everything except for the motherboard. Or another solution purchase another motherboard. Since you said you want more than a Mac mini makes me think you should wait til Intel but a PowerMac PB or somthing similar. To arrive at that sum of cash sell the parts from the old machine or keep then for the newer one. Good Luck, so your choices are buy a new processor,buy a Mac now, wait for intel.
 
Or, you can make a geek project out of this by installing an open source Linux or Unix distro and using it as a server. You might have to jump through some hoops, but it's a good learning experience. :) I've done this on a Motorola StarMax 4000 Macintosh clone that had a Pre-G3 PowerPC chip and enjoyed the adventure.

Consider that some of the hardware that might not have been supported under OS 9 on that machine would be recognized by something like Linux, even if you install some PCI cards into it meant for PCs.
 
I thought about doing that, but didn't want to tie up any money into a system I might screw up. I'm not that technical. Anyway, thanks for everyone's input. Stan...
 
You won't screw it up if you experiment with Linux. The only thying that would mess up is the installation, but that's where the learning comes in. It was a fun project at the time for me at least. :)
 
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