Power Macintosh G3 - wiki
//draft for PERCH cards/video:
"There are a handful of different variants of the G3 personality cards, which are sorted into three main versions:
1. "Whisper" cards had external 3.5mm jacks for standard audio in and out.
There were two main layouts for the whisper cards: one has a 40-pin header for the G3 All-in-one's front panel controls as well as internal 10-pin analogue video out connector for the monitor of the G3 All-in-one models. The other design supplies the 26-pin connector which is actually compatible with front panel/IR boards from earlier 5xxx/6xxx models but which was never utilized in any shipping G3 model. Not all boards populated all components of the layout. There appear to be unpopulated headers for TV or TV/FM tuners on both variants of the whisper card (as well as a 34-pin header I don't recognize on the non-AIO version,) but I have not heard of anyone trying to use a tuner with a whisper card, only with wings cards.
2. "Wings" cards had external connectors for composite and S-Video in and out, stereo RCA in and out, as well as 3.5mm jacks for standard audio in and out. These had an internal 60-pin DAV port for use with accessories such as the AVID cinema PCI, same port as on the video-in upgrade boards for the 5400/5500/6360/6400/6500/TAM, or on the logic boards of the 7200/7500/8500/8600.
Similarly to whisper cards, there are two different design variants of the Wings card. One variant supplies the same unused 26-pin IR/front panel connector for the 5xxx/6xxx, along with a 10-pin connector for the TV tuner or TV/FM combo tuners used in the 5xxx/6xxx, again never used in any shipping G3 model. The other variant of the wings card supplies an internal 10-pin analogue video out connector for the monitor of the G3 All-in-one models, along with the 40-pin header for the All-in-one's front panel controls. This design also permits use of the TV tuner or TV/FM tuner, but to my knowledge this function was not populated on the variants with populated AIO ports. They can be populated by hand and tuners are known to function (https://web.archive.org/web/20071104111656/http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/g3tv-1.html). In general, not all boards populated all components of either layout.
3. "Bordeaux" cards were externally identical to wings cards, but included onboard MPEG DVD decoding and supplied none of the "bonus" internal headers found on the wings cards.
• All variants of the G3 personality card also provided a modified Comm Slot II interface which only worked with Apple's 56k CSII modem (I think one by GV too, but no ethernet cards,) which would disable the onboard serial port when populated (same behavior as previous CSII machines.) There were two versions of the sticker surrounding the ports on each variant, so that the port icons would be upright on both tower models and desktops/AIOs (all shared the same logic board, but there were three logic board revisions with different onboard ATI chips at different manufacture dates.) The first was 3D Rage II+DVD, then 3D Rage Pro, and finally 3D Rage Pro Turbo (turbo may be a simple marketing rebrand in-line with a more optimized software driver.) The "+DVD" monkier was used to denote the chip's bandwidth exceeding the requirement for being passed decoded MPEG-2 video, though the decoder itself was not onboard (hence Bordeaux.) All three models had 2MB onboard VRAM and could accept a 4MB upgrade for 6MB total.
Here are pictures of the three cards I find most appealing upgrade-wise. To be clear, there is no factory mount for either tuner or IR board, but if you're creative it's a fun upgrade. No components have been added to either of the wings cards (yet)- they can be found this way in the wild."
Main logic board (Revision A?) 820-0864-B
CPU (266MHz) XPC750FIP266CF
CPU (300MHz) XPC750HIP300CK
4MB VRAM SODIMM - KMM965G512BQN-G0 / 966G512AQN
"Whisper" PERCH card - 820-0922-A
"Whisper/AIO" PERCH card - 820-0972-A
"Wings/AIO" PERCH card - 820-0971-A
"Bordeaux" PERCH card - 820-0983-A / 620-1270-B
//draft for PERCH cards/video:
"There are a handful of different variants of the G3 personality cards, which are sorted into three main versions:
1. "Whisper" cards had external 3.5mm jacks for standard audio in and out.
There were two main layouts for the whisper cards: one has a 40-pin header for the G3 All-in-one's front panel controls as well as internal 10-pin analogue video out connector for the monitor of the G3 All-in-one models. The other design supplies the 26-pin connector which is actually compatible with front panel/IR boards from earlier 5xxx/6xxx models but which was never utilized in any shipping G3 model. Not all boards populated all components of the layout. There appear to be unpopulated headers for TV or TV/FM tuners on both variants of the whisper card (as well as a 34-pin header I don't recognize on the non-AIO version,) but I have not heard of anyone trying to use a tuner with a whisper card, only with wings cards.
2. "Wings" cards had external connectors for composite and S-Video in and out, stereo RCA in and out, as well as 3.5mm jacks for standard audio in and out. These had an internal 60-pin DAV port for use with accessories such as the AVID cinema PCI, same port as on the video-in upgrade boards for the 5400/5500/6360/6400/6500/TAM, or on the logic boards of the 7200/7500/8500/8600.
Similarly to whisper cards, there are two different design variants of the Wings card. One variant supplies the same unused 26-pin IR/front panel connector for the 5xxx/6xxx, along with a 10-pin connector for the TV tuner or TV/FM combo tuners used in the 5xxx/6xxx, again never used in any shipping G3 model. The other variant of the wings card supplies an internal 10-pin analogue video out connector for the monitor of the G3 All-in-one models, along with the 40-pin header for the All-in-one's front panel controls. This design also permits use of the TV tuner or TV/FM tuner, but to my knowledge this function was not populated on the variants with populated AIO ports. They can be populated by hand and tuners are known to function (https://web.archive.org/web/20071104111656/http://www.geocities.com/pm9600g4/g3tv-1.html). In general, not all boards populated all components of either layout.
3. "Bordeaux" cards were externally identical to wings cards, but included onboard MPEG DVD decoding and supplied none of the "bonus" internal headers found on the wings cards.
• All variants of the G3 personality card also provided a modified Comm Slot II interface which only worked with Apple's 56k CSII modem (I think one by GV too, but no ethernet cards,) which would disable the onboard serial port when populated (same behavior as previous CSII machines.) There were two versions of the sticker surrounding the ports on each variant, so that the port icons would be upright on both tower models and desktops/AIOs (all shared the same logic board, but there were three logic board revisions with different onboard ATI chips at different manufacture dates.) The first was 3D Rage II+DVD, then 3D Rage Pro, and finally 3D Rage Pro Turbo (turbo may be a simple marketing rebrand in-line with a more optimized software driver.) The "+DVD" monkier was used to denote the chip's bandwidth exceeding the requirement for being passed decoded MPEG-2 video, though the decoder itself was not onboard (hence Bordeaux.) All three models had 2MB onboard VRAM and could accept a 4MB upgrade for 6MB total.
Here are pictures of the three cards I find most appealing upgrade-wise. To be clear, there is no factory mount for either tuner or IR board, but if you're creative it's a fun upgrade. No components have been added to either of the wings cards (yet)- they can be found this way in the wild."
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