Power PC G3 as music source?

It should work, but a more powerful machine will make for faster, and potentially better sounding, lossless translations.

If you are only using a PC for music, an older G3 won't have the memory/hard drive anyway. Go spend $400 on a new pc with a nice big hard drive and newer more compatible software.

I am using a powermac g4 for this purpose and it works great.

Suggest this site
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Models.cfm?TI=4033
for possible upgrades for your G3 Mac. I am not associated in any way with OWC.

I suggest upgrading the hard drive controller using a PCI to SATA card and install a 1TB drive. That way you do not have more wires for an external drive. If you want to install Leopard upgrade the processor. Leopard has a great feature called screen sharing which will allow you to run the G3 'headless' by remoting in from another PC/MAC in the house. You would use this to control itunes for example from a remote site.

USB/Firewire sound out to an external DAC - Apogee, Benchmark - would give excellent CD sound quality.

I've used g3's, but you will appreciate a newer cpu if you can afford it. The one that I used would hang occasionally, forcing me to pull the plug ( may have been spotty ram). If you do not want to afford a new machine, at least buy some new/larger ram to help access the library...

The more I read the more I believe it would be best to just get the cheapest used mac mini I can find and dedicate it to my music. I can't do all the upgrades on the G3 myself so I'm sure the cost won't be justified. The problem is that I have no other use for the G3 and I hoped I could cheaply put it to work for this one job (and save money for a good dac). Perhaps someone else with expertise will take it off my hands.

Thanks for the ideas.