I recently acquired a used G3 iBook...

[DarkmoonIkonoklast]

   ... the blue-trimmed clamshell model
   In the 4+ months I've owned the wee beastie, it has eaten my MS WORD:Mac and my Excel:Mac, crashed twice, and locked up several more times...
   I'm at a loss...
   I'd like to repair, maintain, and, eventually, upgrade the wee beastie, but I don't have &100 bills to throw at a tech... I've always been quite comfortable "under the hood", so replacing / installing parts and "peripherals" holds no terrors...
   No, the problem is, I'm on limited fixed income, so I don't have a lot of $$$ to spend on things like Airport cards, replacement power supplies, etc...
   Any suggestions?

[Elwood P Dowd]

1. What are the vital statistics . . .

OS version, amount of RAM, HD size, etc.. Are you sure it's a hardware problem?

[DarkmoonIkonoklast]

2. OS 9.0.4;

   320M of SDRAM, with a 10G HD... and, no, I've no idea if the problem is hardware... not sure how to find out, either, and I can't use on-line diagnostics, as I live in a house w/o a hard-wired phone system...
   I'm not on my computer at the moment; the computer I'm using has an Airport connection to the house cable modem... my own wee beastie currently lacks an Airport card...

[GoneOffShore]

3. Do you have any utilities?

Norton, Tech Tool, Disk Warrior?

Sounds like it could be a software thing.

Have you booted from a different drive or the CD?

[DarkmoonIkonoklast]

4. No, no and, uh, no...

   I've reinstalled -- twice -- from the CD drive...
   The first time, I performed a partial reinstall, and my data was undisturbed...
   The second time -- misunderstanding the nomenclature -- I performed a "clean install"... and lost all of my accumulated data.
   I know what THAT error was, what I don't know is why the computer ate my software in the first place, why it has crashed, and why it locks up.
   At the moment, I'm mostly concerned with acquiring a} an inexpensive used airport card, so that I can take advantage of the on-line diagnostics on the Mac site, and elsewhere, and b} a replacement for the Power Adapter {NOT the power supply, as I originally said.} which has a damaged input jack (plug) and doesn't always remain connected.

[GoneOffShore]

6. Here's a thing to try

Boot from the install CD, but don't install anything.

Hunt around on the CD for Disk Utility or Disk Repair and then use that to check your main hard drive.

Run it a couple of times, reinstall your Microsoft apps, boot from the CD, do a check and repair with the utility, and then try everything again.

BUT, before you do the repair, BACK UP YOUR DATA (Sorry, didn't mean to shout - but having just suffered through a hard drive crash, I'm a bit obsessive).

[Zorro]

5. Upgrade to 9.2

and see if the problems still persist.

9.2 used to be a free upgrade that can be downloaded from the net.