free software for mac os 9x ??

Hi all,

I would like to run my daughters brand-new-secondhand-imac with mac os 9x, we are using mac os X but I feel it is draining the computers resources too much. We have 9x installed also (not just the emulator within os X, but native also) but I don't know where to find legacy software to to use with it, mainly she needs a movie player of some kind to play avi's and mpegs and maybe DVDs too if we can get an external dvd-rom or replace the internal slot loading cdrom with a dvdrom.

It is an older imac, I think a G3 or G4 350mhz and 256megs I think

in mac os X most of her movies play OK with VLC or Quicktime (VLC seems to be better) but there are some that are still too jumpy to watch, but that work fine on my better faster computer (PC/linux)

also - waiting for ubuntu for ppc in the mail, I am interested to hear if anyone else uses it on such an old computer with great success (I have ubuntu on my PC and it works great but I have a fast processor and heaps of ddr ram though)

does anyone have any mac os 9 software they could send/sell me or know of any links to downloads?

Also - I know I can easily upgrade it to 1gb of sdram, but the cost is a bit of an issue there.

all help muchly appreciated - THANKS XXXX

It's a G3, the G4 was used in the first flat panel iMacs, and started with 700MHz.
Mac OS Xs performance is very memory dependant, the more you have, the better it runs. Even on a new iMac G5, with only 256MB it runs a bit slugish, as the system is permanently swapping memory to the harddisk.

Now for OS9, first you should update to the last version of it (MacOS 9.2.2). You can download the updates for free at Apple's site, but you need at least 9.1 to be able to update.

OS9 comes with a DVD player software, and Quicktime plays mpegs natively. To play DivX encoded avi files, you need the DivX codec for OS9(available at www.divx.com), but keep in mind that decoding video is very CPU intensive.

For software you can find lots at the following sites (free- and shareware):
www.versiontracker.com
www.macupdate.com
www.pure-mac.com

I hope this helps...