and when i was given it i turn it on and a folder with a question mark in it shows? flashing? any suggestions in to restarting it?
this post would of been better had it been a 10yr old BIG MAC.. sorry cant help you really cause never owned a mac... Though there is a new virus/hacker that supposabley this hacker is to get 43cents for each mac he can infect... Hackers pay 43 cents per hijacked Mac
That's so old that it might not be running Mac OS X. But if it is, you could try booting from your system DVD or CD and running Disk First Aid on your primary disk. If it still has the original internal drive, there's a good chance it has crapped out. Disk drives are designed to last about five years at most.
whomever gave it you, give it back. they should be responsible & recycle it. If you have problems starting up your computer, you may have installed files that are incompatible with Mac OS 9 or some needed files may be missing.
