I have never owned a mac.I have always been a pc person.i found a performa 410 at a yard sale for 5$.Came with moniter and keyboard.I want to set this up for my young son (he already has a win 3.1 pc).The first time I turned it on it booted to a desktop but seid somthing about improper shutdown and to hold control to fix?(sorry It didnt stay in the screen long enoff to read) the it restarted and whent to a grey screen with an icon of a disk and a ? flashing.now thats all it will do.Please advise me if this is a hopeless cause or if i can just reinstall the os (which one is best).I understand that all mac os's under 7 are now free. I cannot however find these anywhere.I want to fix this as cheap as possible also I would like to knolw where i can find software cheap of free for this machine (games mostly since this is a child). Thank you for anyhelp. I would love to give my son a chance to learn about a computer that i never took the time to mess with.

It sounds like a bad OS. Reinstalling should work just
fine.
The performa is a greeat first machine.
You should be able to download from apples
archives for the old OS. Check out http://
www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html

This should have what you are looking for.

After you get it working you can find games and
other apps on ebay for under 5.00

Hope this helps

thank you for the info.I also need to know witch os to install on this machine some tutorials on how to use it.I know nothing about a mac like keyboard short cuts how to enter the bois (if there even is one).Not only for my son but I have always been intersted in the mac myself.