regarding firewire drives, see this:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/firewire...almessage.html
in other news,I love panther, but i have no idea how it'd run on older systems. and by older I mean G3's. :shrug: Depending on what you're doing, there are some definate perks to Panther. upto and including X-11 installed by default, new dev tools (oh my goodness, they're not too shabby), vim installed by default, exposé(freakin' awesome!), and upgrades on stuff like sys-prefs. it's pretty spiffy, all told.
