Want to wipe old iMac's hard drive

I have an old iMac from 1997 or 1998. It's unusable and has been sitting in my attic for about 7 years. I want to recycle the thing, but I want to wipe the hard drive clean before doing so.

As near as I can tell, I need to change my startup disk to something other than the hard drive. But I don't have any of the disks/instructions/etc that came with the computer.

Is there any other way (without the sledgehammer) to wipe the hard drive? Free software I can download?

If not, can someone tell me how to create a startup disk?

Thank you!

spinnerlys said:

Do you currently have a Mac with Firewire?

If so, you can take advantage of Target Disk Mode.

Click to expand...

No, I'm all PC these days...

I'll ask around to see if any of my friends have old OS CDs (this is a pre-DVD machine...heck, it's pre-CDR. Just got the good ole CD-ROM drive.)

Thanks!