Can a beige G3 be tricked out to drive a 1600x900 widescreen monitor? If
not, what are the oldest Macs capable of working with that monitor?
The background:
My neighbor, a long-time Mac user but with limited breadth of
experience, recently agreed to administer a club website, with his beige
G3 and what must be a 15-year-old 13-inch monitor capable of 800x600
resolution or some such.
The monitor had a difficult time displaying a full page. It went out in
the trash today.
I'm his reluctant guru. I'm trying to give him a crash course in webpage
maintenance and design, with my own limited experience and Dreamweaver
MX.
I made the mistake of suggesting he should get a new monitor, without
thinking about how much monitor his G3 could use.
I got a call from his wife at Staples -- she saw a choice between a
1024x768 17inch monitor and a 19-inch widescreen 1600x900 monitor, both
for under $200. I urged the 19-inch....and then realized a few minutes
later it might be too much for the G3, as it is for my Pismo G3 and
probably my wife's 1.2ghz 12-inch G4 iBook.
While she was driving the monitor home, I frantically looked through
low-end mac to see the video specs. Sure enough, it seems it can deal
only with a 1024x768 monitor. I'm pretty sure it has just 2mb of video
ram. And when we connnected it, the G3 stretched and distorted the image
horizontally to fill the screen.
He realizes the value of the larger screen, including real estate for
Dreamweaver's palettes etc., so he's inclined to keep the monitor for
now. I'm considering suggesting he return it for the 17-inch.
With more VRAM -- 6mb is max -- might the beige G3 drive the larger
monitor?
I've no experience with video cards, but would that make a difference?
If my neighbor buys a newer but used Mac, what's the oldest (i.e.
cheapest) machine or machine/video card combo that could drive this
widescreen monitor?
--
Bob Ball
If you want to think positive thoughts, surround yourself with positive
people.
If you want to email me, eliminate the negative.
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