Ed <gwbush@whitehouse.com> wrote:

> " Louise Bremner" <dame_zumari@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1g4vcay.1y11ii41slesy4N%dame_zumari@yahoo.com...
> > Ed <gwbush@whitehouse.com> wrote:
> >
> > > While sitting with my son at the hospital (he's been diagnosed with
> Perthes
> > > disease)
> >
> > Poor lad--how old is he? (I had never heard of Perthes disease before,
> > so I've been reading up on it).
> 
> He'll be ten next month. I had never heard about it either. It means that he
> won't be able to do any sports related activities for about two years. He'll
> have to wear leg braces or crutches...

<wince> And that will help him blend in well at school, won't it?

> > Sounds like a good bargain. Now that all Mac users are being nagged into
> > going for G5, you might be able to find a G3 or G4 upgrade card for the
> > 8500 going cheap (that kept my 7100 going for some time). How much
> > memory is installed?
> 
> Okay, you're talking gibberish here. I am a windows user. What is a G3 or G4
> and why would I need to upgrade? 

The 8500 was one of the second-generation (PCI bus) machines, before the
G3 (third generation) came out. There's some basic information about it
here: <http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/8500.shtml>. There's also a mailing
list for these machines:
<http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml>

Maybe someone there can be more helpful than me....

> I figure that this thing will at least be
> capable of running a web browser and maybe a few games. It has 48 megs of
> memory (or something around there). 

That's a little low, but not dramatically so (but I'm not sure that OS9
would run in that, so let's stick with OS8 for the moment). 

> > Presumably you do have a modem connected to it? Or it has an internal
> > one? Did it come with system disks?
> 
> It has a slot in the back that accepts an ethernet cable. 

There also ought to be a phone socket too....

> I have the cable in there, and it is connected to a hub. Now this works
> fine with my windows machine, but there is no browser that I can find on
> the OS...

There's a Find command in the Finder, so look for Netscape or Internet
Explorer (but of course they might have been removed because it's a demo
model). 

> I can't seem to copy apple software onto my windows computer and then use
> it on the apple. It just says something about the text being too long.

Nope--you can't copy direct, but I have a feeling that .sea
(self-extracting archive) files can be copied (it's just so long since
I've had to do this--sorry). 

> No system disks.

Ouch. I think we gave our OS8 disks away--all I can find at the moment
is a bootable copy of OS 8.6E (English), and I'm not sure if all the
browser stuff is on it. 

> Now I would just love to update the computer with those links you provided.
> Unfortunately, unless apples are vastly different from windows machines, you
> need a browser to open a link.

And yes, of course you need the browser first, before you can download
software (excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall....)

________________________________________________________________________
                   Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
   If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!