os9 to osx

[colonel Panic]

Hi there, this is such a great site, i am new to computers and new to apple, someone just gave me a jellybean imac with os9 on it and i want to go up to osx so i can back up my movies, but it only has a 64 ram in it and i need minimum 128, can anyone tell me where to get some extra ram and what brand? is it the same as pc ram? i live in melbourne, australia, i have been to computer swap meets but everything over here is pc and apple dealers are up themselves they only want to sell me a new g5, if i mention i have a jellybean they screw their faces up and treat me like a leper or something! I would like to change it myself cos i love tinkering with this sort of thing, also can anyone tell me of any good sites for new fiddlers to that can explain the tech sides of things, from what i can see inside it looks like pc stuff (interchangeable?) like the same hard drives and optical drives and plugs etc.
Thank heaps.

[galactica]

http://www.ramseeker.com/

under top left pulldown choose the mhz rating of your iMac G3
that will point you to the type of memory and places that sell it.
Getting it to you will be up to them, but you can at least see what "type" ie pc2100 etc etc

Memory is memory, it is interchngable, just realize that you must meet EXACT specs your comp needs, otherwise you will start to get some wierd things [system failure etc] because of "bad memory"

The imac is great comp, but jsut realize that yours is a G3 and that it wont be the "fastest" around, but hey, its a mac isnt it?!

[decay]

if it's a tray-loading imac (233, 266, or 333 mhz) you'll need PC66 SO-DIMMs.

if it's a slot-loading imac (350-700 mhz) you'll need PC100 SDRAM DIMMs.

each holds 2 modules.

you can see the different models on this page:
http://everymac.com/systems/by_casetype/allinone.html

more info here:
http://lowendmac.com/imacs/index.shtml

both types of iMac G3 take standard IDE/ATA 3.5" hard drives. the optical drives are like those of laptops, so you can't use a standard optical drive.