USB on a Beige G3 : WAS: Re: Install disk doesn't boot

[Eric Dunbar]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:04:44 +0000, Cian Duffy <myob87 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is there a retrofit card that can be installed to
> > allow me to hook up a burner to my ol beige G3 300?

Don, you already have three choices:
1. External SCSI CD burner;
2. Internal SCSI CD burner (need to replace the IDE drive);
3. Internal IDE CD burner (CHEAPEST option of all);
If you get a USB or a USB-FireWire card you also get the two extra options:
4. External USB CD burner;
5. External FireWire CD burner;

Note: since DVD+-RWs are getting to be cheap you may as well get
yourself a DVD-RW unless you're extremely strapped for cash or have no
need/desire to store 4 GB on _ONE_ optical disk (it's nice for backing
up iPhoto libraries).

The cheapest of these options is #3, get yourself a (dirt cheap)
CD-RW, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, or DVD+-RW burner. I picked up a DVD+-RW
supported by Toast for 60 CAD (50 USD/40 Euro)(in OS X... haven't
bothered to figure out how to get YDL to do burning... figure it's
more effort than it's worth since I've never seen people write good
things about "out of the box" CD burning in Linux & I can access the
YDL partitions from within OS X 10.2.8... the only reason I boot into
OS X on the server box ;-).

That said, I suspect that YDL can be convinced to burn using an IDE
CD/DVD burner (with less head aches than a USB or FireWire or SCSI
burner since i86 programmers are used to IDE).

> However,a  300 is very, very slow for CD burning. That said, I burnt on my P-75.

300 slow for burning to CD? I burn to DVD-R (IDE) on a Beige G3 266
(of course, under OS X 10.2.8 using Toast so it's not exactly
"roughing" it on the software front).

Eric.