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Gotta love that "my life is pain" face the Molar Mac front panel has!!

I had one of those Molar Macs and like a fool got rid of it many years ago. That is one of Apples best computers ever made. Although ugly, the potential for upgrades made it a beast and the ability to easily repair it, makes it legendary :)

We had a few of these at my school, where they were used as teacher's computers in classrooms. The computer labs had lots of Power Macintosh 5200s, but they eventually upgraded them to iMacs before going all-Windows with, swear to god, a bunch of those "never obsolete!" eMachines. Two steps forward, three steps back.

We had a whole bunch of these in the music room as a kid, but we never actually used them. This was around 2005-2009ish, no clue where they are now. Wasn't able to identify them for years until I saw a picture of these randomly one day on my Facebook feed.

8:35 Technically, all screws are "hanging on by a thread".

It's the Pontiac Aztek of Macs: hideous on the outside, not too bad inside.

I had then at my high school, it’s the most awesome Mac of its era , always wanted one

Back in the 2000s, some friends found several Molar Macs in a dumpster behind a school in the suburbs of Chicago. They brought them into our screen printing shop and we got them all running! They gave me one as a thank you gift for helping, and I actually used it in our graphics workflow for several years to convert files from pixel to vector files.

It's time for the beige G3s to fulfill their destiny and run Mac OSX. Looking forward to that video as it's something I've wanted to do when I get one of these.

My favorite use for my Molar is as a bridge device. It’s a great little complete package that lets me easily make floppies for my 512k as well as other 68k Macs

Heh, I remember that when these were introduced there was a lot of demand for them to be sold to home users and not just to schools; Apple actually released a statement that ( *very* paraphrased) “ _we’ve heard your interest, and we’ll introducing something we think you’ll like later in the year…_ “

VGA is 5 signals, RGB, HS, VS, plus a whole lot of grounding for clean signalling. 10 pins implies it's likely VGA, but knowing apple they might have shoved a side channel to talk to the display for the fancy control of the brightness and positioning in there. 5 mins with a scope could figure out if the display signals are VGA, if so you could likely get the monitor showing a picture, just without control of brightness. (unless they're crazy enough to be doing that on the VGA card)

8:05 - The person who designed it loved cats. It's the perfect shape or a cat sleep on, and all the heat from the computer comes up through the vents to keep the kitty nice and toasty.

My school had a TON of these. They have a soft spot in my heart because I actually built my first website one of them over many many study halls.

I have so much nostalgia for those g3's.

I had one! Upgrded it with Sony CDRW, larger HDD, and maxed the RAM. Worked great dual booting OS 9.2 and 10.2. With ADB, SCSI, and adding USB it could do anything. I miss that thing but I don't miss moving it.

I was insanely fortunate to see these when they were in their prime: Back in the 2002-2003 school year I helped the CompSci teacher oversee the lab and there was a pretty even split between the G3 AIOs, the Power Mac 5200s, and the iMac G3 slot loaders. Never used them much, unfortunately, but they were there and they were interesting looking. Actually ended up getting one with what appeared to be a failed flyback from the one and only Garth Beagle, but CRT stuff is kinda outside my pay grade and research suggested that even with the proper flyback it'd still need some fine tuning which...yeah. Ended up handing it off to a friend who knows this stuff way better than I do.

It's the AU Falcon of vintage Apple. Just needs a Barra Swap (AKA a G4), and it will destroy everyone who dares to question its appearance

I remember servicing these as a summer job in high school, it was the most advanced Mac at the schools (yes I'm dating myself here).

I haven't watched the entire video yet but I just had to say, I love your choice of t-shirts in every episode, I always get a chuckle out of them

Is the power cord guide also designed to store a spoon?

Well Sean I see your still holding Steve captive LOL That is one crazy heavy looking G3 Mac very curious about what kind of upgrades you can throw in that thing

That "None pizza with left beef" thing is hilarious...

I have one of these I was given to by a school I was doing some work at in 2003, fprgot I even had it until I went into the crawl space under my steps to do some electrical work. I am going to get it going again eventually , vids like this one serve me with 2 things , a kick in the ass to get me going on it , and gives me valuable info on the internals , thanks tons and I have subscribed to keep an eye on your progress on it

Believe it or not, my mother who was a school teacher, bought four of these for her small business. I remember seeing four of them in her house at one time.

I *did* have the privilege of seeing and using one back in the day, if only briefly, and in my own home! My dad was a systems engineer for an Apple Education Reseller and he would often bring home machines to try out. The G3 AIO was no exception. I still remember it sitting on the desk, being almost too big to fit on it. We grew up with a Mac Classic, and used LC 575's at school so I was always fascinated with AIO machines. The fact that this one was so expandable kinda blew my mind, even if the design wasn't the best. I can't remember how long we had it for -- it probably wouldn't have been very long. Within the next year we saw an original iMac and a B&W G3, which stuck around a bit longer, and allowing for some fun network gaming with Carmageddon, Age of Empires, Dark Vengeance, etc.

NGL, Doug Demuro jumpscare got me good.

i dont think it would be hard to find the service manual for it and find the pinout for the internal video connector pinout then make a vga cable adapter for it. But there is another issue is how the new card can control the settings for the monitor unless you use the pins for the rgb input only.

I've been looking forward to you doing a Molar video. Awesome as always :)

Awesome video! I can't wait for the stream of upgrade videos to come!

The cameos with Steve are priceless! 🤣

You see, that's what I love about Action Retro. This kind of presentation definitely has some teeth.

I've been waiting for this video for so long! 😁

It seems to be RGB for the monitor. There is also controls for changing the Monitor's settings like position and such.

My eletemtary school had one molar mac plus a bunch of older macs but i remember playing games on ie in os 9 man what a blast that it was. Kid pix deluxe as well back in 2004 or 2003 give or take

I have always liked this AIO design. It's unusual and off putting. Congrats on the find. I have the G3 tower, and the desktop, but this one is still missing from my collection. Need new faceplates for the tower though. Some part of it broke.

seeing these with the two headphone out ports gives me a vague memory... I'm not sure if they actually had these at the aquarium i visited with my school once but i get the association of this machine with that place.

My 6th grade teacher had a PowerMac 5400 in the classroom, I don't think the students were allowed to use it, but the school did buy a bunch of the iMac G3's in blue for the computer labs. I don't like Macs, but the sight of these classic machines brings me back to a better time of my youth.

When you turned the machine to the side, I wasn't expecting so much depth! Great video!👍

Love the moments with Steve! Perfect!!

I love that computer! It’s hilarious that you put eyes on them. This is why I love your channel

I actually had this system in my middle school back in the day - and I stuck with using the G3 Powermac as it had video in.

I do like those Disk On Module things, they're a bit pricy, but work great. And hey I do still have those G4 iBooks we were talking about over email

i just died of laughter when Steve made his cameo.

My high school had one of these. I loved it.

I remember my middle school got the iMac g3 in red and they had the At Ease on them. Basically was to keep us from exploring around the hard drive, a bummer at the time. Would have loved to see one of these but they went with the iMac.

Our school got a whole lab of these and they did indeed have us use the dual headphone ports. We would watch multimedia programs two kids to a computer so they could fit twice as many students in the lab.

Nightmare Corrosion could be a Corrosion of Conformity tribute band

I was raised on the apple II in 5th grade and then we got the Molar G3’s in 7th grade in catholic school. I got an eMac from the trash of the public school still works and was my first Mac in high school.

The ISL lab in my elementary school had 1 of these computers and I always was fascinated by it. Definitely a gem from my childhood that always brings back fond memories.

the fact he has a none pizza left beef shirt is.. incredible.

The way we cleaned the cases of machines that came in for repair at the Apple authorized repair center I used to work at was to use lemon extract from a bakery supply company. We bought it in gallon bottles. The citrus terpenes plus the alcohol cleaned things right up and left the repair lemony fresh.... actually the smell went away from the case right away but the shop was left lemony fresh.

I almost died with that photo of Doug. Quirks and features indeed. Thanks for your videos!!!

I have one of these. I only gave it a few modest upgrades like a 400MHz processor, 6MB of VRAM, Zip drive, and the AV card. Some of the early AV cards have the requisite connectors to work in these, but none of the DVD cards do. I don't think anybody has found a way to get upgraded video to the internal screen without a lot of hackery and some lost features (notably display geometry and brightness control). These have a lot of the same problems of other CRT-based Apple products of the era, namely: cracked solder joints on the HV circuits. You may have to touch those up, especially around the flyback.

We had one of these in my 9th grade English classroom. I loved using it- it was quite the powerful machine back then

I love the molar mac, when I was in school, all the teachers had these at there desk, we had the more common iMacs to use so I never got to enjoy them, but loved how much bigger they were and always wanted one

Looks like the franken berry mascot

This is what my school had growing up and it's so cool to see again.

My school did have the Molar Mac and I love the look of them to this day!

In high school I remember we had a classroom full of iMacs but our teacher had this as a workgroup server before they upgraded him to a G3 tower.

If I remember correctly from a conversation I had when these were current, the top of the G3 AIO (being designed for the education market), was the shape it was to discourage students from placing things on top, or "helping" items placed on top to fall off so that the vents on the top wouldn't be blocked.

IIRC these " Molar Mac " systems use a VGA signal for the internal display but it uses special hardware and software to do it. That said with a Mac compatible VGA card you should be able to make it work with a little bit of tinkering.

I actually found a Molar mac and a Macintosh TV at a recycling center once. Both were in rough shape, with the Mac TV suffering from rust, while the Molar Mac was just filled with dust. I disassembled both, and even repainted the molar mac in white and blue like a classic iMax G3. Unfortunately it never worked, and while the Mac TV did start up, it still has issues. Sadly I had to get rid of the molar Mac due to space , but I did manage to hold onto my Macintosh TV.

My high school bought them new and they were the first G3s I'd ever touched and the first really fast Macs I'd ever used. It's maybe the only computer model that can instantly conjure a series of fond memories for me. I learned to program on one, made really meaningful friendships in front of one. I'll love this computer forever. Update: I noticed the stamp from my old school district so I've decided to assume you're restoring the actual computer that I learned to program on.

While I don’t know for certain, given that the internal display is a CRT, that header on the personality card is almost certainly RGBHV (“VGA”). You’d need a test pattern on the Mac and an oscilloscope to verify. You could probably desolder the DE15 connector on a newer video card and solder a header adapter.

Okay the Googlie Eyes is the greatest thing since eyes on Roomba. Good job sir! Lol!

I love youtuber collabs. Thanks for helping otu Steve. Hope you enjoy your molar mac.

I remember these were the big upgrade when our elementary school computer lab switched over from (vaguely remember inserting giant floppies in a very dark room and thinking of it’s one of those things I can’t afford) a bunch of old ones. But within 2 years the iMacs started flowing in. It one of the first parts of the school to get AC which the rest of the school up and running after graduation. Not that it’s relevant but the AC installations also followed graduation for middle and high school, computer labs were the best.

I had to wait until 5:55 until shenanigans were mentioned. The shenanigans must begin sooner! 🤣

This thing is as close to "Function over form" as apple seems to get. I can imagine that the upgradable drawer motherboard can be used for all kinds of fun upgrades. Looking forward to seeing what you do next!

The eyes make this mac infinitely better. Like an inverse teletubby. wait...

I definitely remember seeing these in school. They transitioned to the translucent iMacs and later the white flat ones later.

My high school computer lab (circa 2003) had several of these "molar Macs". We weren't exactly the most well-funded school and I distinctly remember the majority of the computers in the lab being pre-G3, 60x-based models. There was a Power Mac 8100/80 (which was my favorite because I loved the minitower form factor!) and several of those god-awful LC 5200 all-in-ones. These funky-looking G3s ran circles around the lot of them. Don't know if we ever got any G3 iMacs; all I know is we didn't have any by the time I graduated in '04.

I saw one of these recently at a Goodwill where you buy things from large bins by the pound (pay for it by weight). It was heavy, so nobody bought it. They then wheel the bin containing it to the back where it gets shredded and recycled.

Is it possible to pre-image an IDE disk lr SCSI disk with an OS that supports pci USB cards? I'm asking because I have a G3 motherboard with its personality card, but no adb mouse or keyboard, and I'd like to make it run again. on a SCSI disk I have os 7 but that doesn't recognize the pci usb card :(

In elementary school our computer lab was full of these! Learned alot of computer skills thanks to them.

This was used at my School where I taught. But, I couldn't get one as it was slated for another Department!😞 This one you have was definitely a Media center computer back in the day!😅 It IS a monster being 60 Lbs., so that was one reason I bought an iMac (2nd edition-Grape) and later for 2 more for my kids!) Still, this Mac did have its own advantages.

Great video of the mac. I also found this funny when seeing the bird fly by giving its own opinion about wren lol. -> @4:55

I distinctly recall using 2 of these machines in school around 2005.

I actually used those in the computer lab in Jr high in 2000 and I often got a neck-ache from looking up at the monitor.

lol used both of those in school was there when switch was made too. soo cool.

I remember having the molar Mac when I was in elementary school. We had a whole computer lab full of them brand new. The high school had the iMac all in one so I got to use both!

I actually like the look of these. The older AIO's are kinda cute and inoffensive (or kinda just dumb) but these look almost imposing. I don't know how powerful it actually was at the time, but it looks like it is. Like an iMac Pro of 1998.

I'd love to know what kind of software was on that Mac originally. School software is nostalgic and interesting to me.

What did that message say after the computer started when the machine made that beep when you said "Oh god"?

My school had a few entire labs full of those PCs. My junior year the school was overcrowded, and they opened the labs up as normal classrooms. This was 1999. My English class was in one of the labs and we would secretly use the PCs all class to chat using AOL Instant Messager and browsing sites like FARK and Hot or Not. Oh the memories. I always thought the front looked like a weird face. With the headphone jacks as the eyes, volume rocker was the nose, the 2 floppy drives were the mustache, and the CD was the mouth. Now you cannot unsee it. lol The library had the Imac in Bandai Blue. the one with the CD drawer.

I was taking Computer Network Technologies classes back in high school(got out in 2000), and part of our class work was taking some of the load off the county's school system IT department(Aiken County SC which is the largest in the state)which was also designed to give us some real world IT field experience, and I remember one day in early 99 we took a field trip to one of the elementary schools who had just gotten a mix of the Molar Macs(I guess Apple had some surplus stock they wanted to unload for cheap 🤷), and iMac G3 units to replace their earlier 68K Macs, and Apple IIE systems.(Apple IIE systems seriously hung around for way too long in my school system), and we were being tasked with getting the stuff ready for e-waste, but sadly we were not allowed to keep any of the old Apple 68K, and Apple IIe stuff 😫 But yeah I remember couple of my friends commenting on how the Molar Macs looked like something that belonged in a creepy dentist office 😂

We had some in storage at our middle school around 2007.

Even the approved upgrades I attempted to put in my Molar Mac were rejected by it. Only the RAM and HDD upgrades worked. Mine was fickle even though there was nothing wrong with it physically or internally. (I think mine may have been originally owned by Linda Blair or Damien Thorn for that reason.)

Oh shit! My elementary school had one of these and a couple Performa 5200s. Most likely long gone to the scrapyards, especially since they had to rebuild the entire building. Really wish I could've saved them...

Action you didn’t show how you disassembled the AIO I was looking forwards to that I have Two I want to fix!

that's a nice point for the feature list: hard drive tray made from disintegrating platic

We had one of those in our school library. It was the last Mac they got... I think ever, actually; it was flanked on either side by that horizontal case PowerMac you brought out near the beginning, and ran MacOS 8 which at the time felt like a huge visual upgrade over the System 7 that had been running on every other library Mac since I'd started going there back in 1991. Reminded me of AOL's UI at the time, with its chunky 3D buttons and window frames that made it look kind of like the plastic the computer itself was made of. (And of course, featuring a pale version of that particular shade of indigo that was all the rage in the '90s.) I remember playing a _Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?_ game that was basically a point-and-click adventure game. I remember one puzzle that involved recording Thomas Edison's voice on some of his own wax cylinders and then playing them back out of order to trick someone into giving you a spool of thread to use as the filament in the first light bulb. I don't remember why he was trying to stop you from getting supplies for him, but that's Edison for you.

Looking forward to more Action Retro and Mac84 crossover shenanigans.

I enjoyed your video. I know I loved my Molar Mac until my wife made me get rid of it. I used it for many things and my kids enjoyed playing games on it.

We had one of these growing up! We got it secondhand from a school I think, as a replacement for our apple II🤣

2:14 LOL! EDIT: Seeing that "School District of Philadelphia" stamp made me Smile with Nostalgia :D

A great bridge option with floppy making for old macs

That Mac is missing a mustache :) Thanks for sharing!