Thanks Ataraxy,
Well you have certainly cleared away a lot of fog, I've learned a lot, trouble is, at my age one is prone to forget a lot as well so I have to act fast while I still understand what I'm doing.
Installing tomorrow a later version of a card listed by Autocad as fully tested and then I'll upgrade to Maya 2010.
This is just a hobby thing to keep my brain alive but I'm having a ball. The bonus is that most of the tutorials out there will at least be relevant to my version.