I have spent 1/2 my life lusting after a tangerine iMac. Was given a Mac 9500/120 complete with a zip drive, and external modem thingy. Clean installation of Mac OS 9 onboard. No software at all.
It's not tangering but it's a MAC and it was free. Before I buy a wordprocessing package or other software I thought I should find out if there is any generic freeware I could install and try. Also, is the zip drive different for the Mac than the one I have for the PC? or is it just the disks that are formatted differently. I have 17 new disks for my zip and I am presuming I won't be able to use them with the Mac zip which came with no disks.
Any help anyone could give me about setting up this machine would be ever so greatly appreciated. I am lost.
Thanks
I believe you can get a free download of Wordperfect for Mac at the following address:
http://acmfiles.csusb.edu/corel/wpmac.html
(there are 2 files, the 24 Mb download for WP, and a smaller updater - just tried it - still seems to work)
I seem to recall another Mugoo member posted that here that Corel made their last version free to the public.
I'm sure there are other freeware/shareware products out there too. (or trial versions)
You can check out http://www.versiontracker.com for Mac OS related shareware/demo/updates/freeware.
The Zip drive will be able to use PC formatted disks - just reformat them (they can probably even be read and mounted without being reformatted too, say if you wanted to transfer a files to a PC like pics or text files, you should be able to throw them on your PC formatted disk in your Mac, and then the PC should be able to grab those files. Mac formatted disks don't seem to be recognized by PCs though.) A quick trip to Iomega's website will probably give you access to drivers/Zip tools if they aren't already installed on your Mac.
Many compressed files on Macs are in .sit format. (Stuffit) (much like a PCs .zip files). You can do a search on your machine (use the Find function in your edit menu, or use the keyboard shortcut: Apple Key + F key, otherwise called Command Key + F key). If Stuffit Expander is present, that will allow you to expand/unpack most compressed programs you would download. (other common compressed files end with .bin or .hqx) Just drag the compressed file onto the Stuffit Expander icon, and it'll do it automatically.
Others can probably add to this list, and many of these may already be installed by your OS 9 install, but for just basic websurfing, email, and wordprocessing.
Netscape 7.02 I believe is the last version compatible with OS 9
Internet Explorer 5.1.7 (build 5815) is the last version of IE
iCab is another alternative available
You can have the free WordPerfect previously mentioned.
BBEdit Lite is another text editor.
Netscape Communicator can give you email and user groups access.
Outlook Express and Eudora Lite (?) are available also for email.
Adobe Acrobat Reader for your .pdf files.
Stuffit Expander to expand compressed files.
You will probably find some websites just don't work well with one or more of the browsers above. Development for OS 9 browsers, as far as I know, is dead, and a number of "newer" websites are using coding which these browsers can't handle.
re: finding out some of the specs for your machine: if you are at the Finder level (ie. the desktop level, as would be indicated in the top right corner), going to the Apple menu on the top left, you can go to "About this Computer" to see what OS version you are running, and how much RAM is installed. In that same Apple menu, Apple System Profiler will give you a lot more information about your Mac. I'm hoping that you have more than 64Mb of RAM...
Hope this gives you a start...
-Mike