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I have a HP external USB CD Burner but it doesnt seem to work on Mac. Is there anyway of getting this burner to work on my Mac for free?"
The best solution isn't freeware, it's Roxio's retail product "Toast." Version 5 or newer should support the USB burner. A good source for used copies of this software is eBay.
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I dont have a firewire card on my PM only a USB card. How much are FW cards?"
New FireWire cards can be purchased for as little as $20 (check out CompUSA's sale prices this week). You can find used ones for less at eBay, but by the time that you add shipping costs, you'd probably spend $20.
Before you start investing a lot of $$ trying to convert the 8600 into a more modern Mac, you should really consider saving your money for a used (Rev. 2) B&W G3 with a DVD-ROM drive. You'd have a fast 100 MHz system bus speed (twice the speed of the 8600's), ATA/IDE capability, built-in USB and FireWire, and native support for Panther or Tiger. Use/enjoy the 8600 for what it is - one of the best pre-G3 Macs made, but don't spend a lot of money on upgrade cards and/or SCSI peripherals to turbo-charge it. Anything beyond $25-$30 invested in an 8600 exceeds it market value, and the market for the resale of those upgrade components gets weaker every month, primarily because of one driving force - the newest incarnations of OS X that require a much more powerful computer.
