It's entirely wrong that I feel this level of elation at getting a computer to work; they should be absolutely foolproof. Regardless, I'm ridiculously happy with myself for finally beating this old blue and white G3 into submission.

I finally tracked down the problem that was causing it to crash on startup occasionally during installation. It should have been much more obvious - it's real Mac 101 stuff - but yes, it seems to have been down to a duff RAM chip. Seems to be all working now, touch wood; I spent the best part of the last weekend on and off trying different installation techniques, so that was a tad wasted...

I'm also delighted that the PCI WiFi card I installed did indeed just work. A thousand thanks to Mr Brennan who knew that, despite being listed as Windows only, BT's range of PCI adapters use the same chipset as Apple's own, so that not even a driver was needed. The Mac is now downloading and installing all the latest updates.

Once all set up, it will act as a central server, giving us the ability to print wirelessly to our inkjet printer and access our backup and other drives. Huzzah!

Once that's done, I'll be taking my IT life in my hands and installing Linux onto the other partition. Should be child's play...