Howie,
Thanks for the link. After seeing what was pictured, poorly at that, I was able to put my finger nail under the first, smaller, clear plastic cover and pry it from the larger clear plastic cover. It should be easy sailing from here. (I spent three hours googling yesterday on this problem). Yeah, I'm a tech, but taking apart an HP front panel takes over 20 minutes... The Mac was a lot easier.
Pigmode,
Thanks. I now see that it uses 144 pin PC100 SO-Dimms. Dang. I was hoping it used 'regular' PC100 or PC133 DIMMs. I really don't know if I want to put money into it. What I really wanted to do was to just throw Ubuntu on it, perhaps Hoary which looks a lot like Panther. At least I wouldn't be affected by their 8G partition limit (Holy NT4, Batman!).
So unless I can find parts off Ebay, read: really cheap, I may just sell it off at a loss. I paid $50 for it without a mouse and keyboard. I am resistant to paying $30 for a keyboard and was thinking of using my MS Wheel Mouse Optical mouse on it.
Paying $150 for OS8 or 9 or $130 for OSX is not an option. Which is why I was thinking of Ubuntu (free).
I would bypass external USB burners by just using a USB mem stick to transfer files to my WXP machine or just network the Linux box to my Windows box. (This all started when my friend bought a G4... I have been supporting him because he has absolutley no patience with Mac support and stores. I support his Windows machines, too. Man, the things we do for friends...)