One of my neighbors threw away an original tray-loading imac a few days ago. I've never owned a mac, so I grabbed it from the can and away I went! I brought it home and it powered up fine, but I have a few problems. First of all, the guy who owned it put linux on it. That's cool and all, but I want to play with the mac os. If I can get os 9 on there, I might try and sell it to use the money for a newer mac. I found a copy of os9, but I have to update the firmware, first. This requires a pre-existing mac os, so I'm out of luck. I found a norwegian copy of os 8.6 online, but my mac won't boot after I installed it. (grey screen with alternating mac face and "?" in the center). Can somebody help me find a retail copy of os 8.5? I really don't want to spend much money on it, certainly not the $40 to $75 I've seen it go for online. Thanks in advance!

Try www.betamacs.com, go to the left side of the screen and click on software, then the one that is for $19.99 should work just peachy for you.

Forgot to tell you, if you plan on keeping OS 8.5, download the 8.6 update.