new to me ibook clamshell HELP

ok so I have a an ibook g3 two years old i just got a completely free ibook clamshell which i ended up paying out the nose for a power cord from mac which was $101.10 neye: so here is my problem I have never used one these and it came from a small high school in New York city so I know nothing about the running system 8.6os . I am completely lost I need help with this. HElP???? oh and i dont know if any of the ports work it looks like under the keyboard sombody went in and did their own repair job the wires for the ports (usb, firewire, ethernet, phone) all are held down with a peice of masking tape. but other then that the only problem is that the cd drive wont go in all the way. so any help suggestions ideas anything. I have the but now i am not sure wheather the battery holds any charge bu the big problem now is that i cant get through this systme it is very confusin to me :blind:

What kind of iBook is it? I mean, does it have a firewire port on the left side? What's the speed of the processor, the size of the hard drive and amount of RAM? if you have a firewire port and know somebody with a firewire enabled mac you could easily upgrade to OS X even if your CD-ROM is broken. If you're interested in the procedure just say so and i'll post better instructions.

I'm using a clamshell now with a 366 MHz G3 and 576 MB or RAM running OS 10.3.7 and it runs fairly smoothly, and stands out more than any other laptop ever could Anyways, i'm not sure if you want to put any money into this computer, but if the ports on the left side decide to not work, you could get an Airport card (around $90 on eBay), be sure to NOT get an airport extreme card, and a wireless router to get internet access on it. The clamshells also had 64MB RAM permanently installed on the motherboard, so if yours only has 64 you could get some extra RAM for it. I'd recommend at least 256MB or 512 would be best. (Apple says that 256 is the max you can put in, but i've got 512 in there and it works fine). The thing about RAM and Airport cards are that if you get a different clamshell someday you can just upgrade that one with the parts. But i'm getting off subject a bit, so can you get back with the specs on the computer?

yea well I tried cleaning the system yesterday and it failed me now it asks to say mac boot or shut down I say mac boot and it gives me a stiill screen that looks like static this clamshell does have firewire ports bguti aint sure if they work becuase the wire to the ports under the keyboard are held down with masking tape but if you tell me what to do i will try it I am thinking that I will put somemoney into this computer I aint sure I gotta find a battery first though. and then go from there but right now i am just letting it sit becuase it aint doing nothing now so yeah I might try that airport idea becuase it had an airport card in it before i got it and so I know that works but none of the internet systems worked tehy were all outdated to the system but yeah if you got any ideas give em' to me thanks

If you're in NYC and don't mind taking a trip across the GWB, you can stop by or drop it off and I can see if I can get everything updated and working. Send me a PM if you're interested.

actually i am in virgina but thanks for the offer right now i am just wondering if i take my disks for my g3 ibook and put it in this clamshell what will happen? this disks are fine i am just wondering what will happen. but the way that the girl who had working was insane there was no organization and it had come through a school and so there was all these school systems on it that were HOGGING up major ram it was terrible but now i just have to figure out how to make it all work i dont really need a lot of ram I dont plan to use this for a lot probally never hook it into the net I just will use it in class so I only need basic stuff to make it work some running system and word. thanks
douglas caton the redneck

if i took it to the apple store on monday when i get back to VA what do you think they would do to it or for me??? becuase i am in conneticut for school but I am going home for a little while so do you think they would be of any help or not?????

thanks again
douglas the redneck