New to me Power Mac G4 533

I am new to the Mac world. Just got an older PowerMac G4 533 tower without any accessories from a University upgrading their systems. It has no OS in it. When you turn it on it displays a flashing icon with a question mark and the face. What do I do now? Will I require purchasing an OS for this system, like OS9? Any information or advice wuld be greatly appreciated.

You definitely need to purchase an OS. See if you can find an older version of OS X, like 10.3. Tiger (10.4) may run, but probably pretty slowly. IIRC, 10.0-10.3 have legacy (9.x) support built in.

The 533 runs Tiger fine.No problem's on mine. In fact so do the older G3's. You will need an OS but you can sometimes find one for about $80 (used)

kattos when you buy the Panther or Tiger OS, make sure it is a black full retail install disc and NOT a specific model, system restore disc which are grey colored.

What you are seeing is the machine looking for a boot system and seem none is installed. Quite common computers are disposed of with the Hard Disk Drive formatted ready for you to do your own install, admin password etc.

Agree with all the advice so far. I will just add upgrade the RAM as far as you can. Don't even bother with OS9. Way too old and not a lot of support. Awful Web Browsers that are very behind the times. Go with OSX. 10.3 or 10.4. 10.4 Tiger will run fine if you give it enough RAM. Just do not expect it to fly with a 533 CPU but it will be useable if you give it 1GB or more RAM. The Single 533Mhz G4 is a Digital Audio. It takes 3x 512Meg PC-133 Ram modules for 1.5GB RAM.