"Ed" <gwbush@whitehouse.com> wrote in message
news:bpnfk5$luh$1@cobalt01.janis.or.jp...
> While sitting with my son at the hospital (he's been diagnosed with
Perthes
> disease) I got tired of the inactivity of watching him play Stuffy 2 on
his
> game boy and took a walk. Right next to the hospital is a computer store
> that is going out of business. I walk in and there's almost nothing on the
> shelves. What they do have is an old demo version of a power mac 8500/120
> selling for 1,500 yen. A 17 inch monitor was going for 1,000 yen so I
bought
> the computer and monitor and told my daughter that it's her computer.
>
> She was ecstatic about having her own computer until we powered the thing
> up. I'm a windows dude. I don't know jack about apple computers. She
want's
> to access the internet, but I can't figure this thing out for the life of
> me.
>
> All I know is that it has version 8 something of a mac OS.
>
> Help, help, help!!!

Hope your son will be OK, If diagnosed early I guess Perth's can be
remedied.

Funny, I also just bought an old PowerMac 7300. I am using it as a router in
my house, the idea being that it will be a hell of a lot less susceptible to
viruses and hacking (becuase friggin' no one writes sobig viruses for old
Macs).

The PowerMac 8500 was pretty much TOP OF THE LINE way way back in '97 or so
when it first came out. People would have killed you to get that computer.

What I think you have to do is look for the same circa 1997 software that it
used back then. Sometimes it is better to use older software just because of
system requirements, memory etc, which have all increased a lot since then.
I still use Internet Explorer from about 1998 for my mac.

Try this place "Resources for the Older Mac"

http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/oldmac.shtml

There are a few other sites as well. Also, you can find older software for
sale on ebay, quite cheap usually. I just bought an OS8.6 for about $15. If
you need ethernet cards etc you may have to go for older versions as well
(although I just bought one at my local computer store that said Mac OS9 and
up, but it works fine on OS8). The Powermac 8500 may have built-in ethernet.
But you need an adapter, called in the ol days an ethernet transceiver, etc
that plugs into a weird socket in the back of the mac and provides a
standard internet jack on the other end.

I'll be happy to assist with details, but I will be away for the next week.

I was just going through some of my old stuff and found I still had a floppy
containing the first version of Netscape (ver 1) produced for Mac back in
'95 or so. This was pre-Explorer days, and the only other browser around was
Mosaic. One day I gues I will donate it to the Smithsonian.