Need to Run PM 6.5 on iBook - what OS "to buy

[mary m]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, and I am going to get all the technical terms wrong, but please bear with me.
I am looking to buy a iBook soley for running Pagemaker 6.5 and associated programs (word processing, mail, photos, etc.) I have read that the newer mac OS do not support PM 6.5. Upgrading from 6.5 is not an option. I run PM 6.5 now on OS 9.2 on my desktop ( I know that is not the correct Mac term, but it's late and my brain is fried) but I need it to be portable. Do I look for a used ibook with 9.2? What do I need to look for or watch out for? I've been looking on Ebay - not sure where else to look.
I am more of a buy it, turn it on, it better work type of person, than actually knowing how it all works together. Any advice would be appreciated!

[John A]

I doubt you'll run into any problems. I got PageMaker 6.5 running on my iMac which was running Mac OS X 10.4 (it was using the Classic OS 9 subsystem, granted). Any version of OS 9 will work great (and OS X should work fine as well, provided that it's a PowerPC Mac that has Classic installed).

[mary m]

Thanks for the info..So what would you suggest I look for when I am shopping on ebay? Would the listings have to say "classic installed" or are all OS 9 "classic"? Sorry to be so clueless...

[John A]

Thanks for the info..So what would you suggest I look for when I am shopping on ebay? Would the listings have to say "classic installed" or are all OS 9 "classic"? Sorry to be so clueless...

If you're buying OS 9, you don't need to worry about Classic. Classic is basically a backwards-compatibility layer that can be installed on Mac OS 10 systems. Any version of OS 9 should work. Sorry about the confusion.

(One thing I forgot to mention in my last post: when you run OS 9, you may have to set the number of colors in your display resolution to 'thousands'. When I set it any higher than that, all the PageMaker interfaces were white, in other words, I couldn't see anything.)