Could anyone tell me if my old imac G4 might be good enough to run maya, it's still in good working condition. Does anyone know the specs needed to run maya

I don't know if it is even compatible really.
But if you are serious about learning and using Maya I really advice investing in a good quad core workstation.
I tried to find a benchmark that will compare G4 with current processors and I could find only a comparison of G4 with Core Duo which is already outdated.

From which I can conclude that the fastest G4 will render on average 4 times slower then a Core Duo.
And if we compare a Core Duo with currently the cheapest Core 2 Quad processor Q8200. It will render on average 3 times faster than the Core Duo because rendering engines are really optimized for multiple cores. So as a result Q8200 will render a Maya scene 12 times faster then G4.
It's a big deal when instead of waiting 5 minutes to render a scene you wait for 1 hour just to find out that you have some errors in your scene.

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Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

thanks for the advice something worth looking into

No problems! You are welcome!
Would you mind if I move this topic in the General CG Talk forum?
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Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

my computer specs are 3.2mhz dual core, with 2gb of ram and a 512 9200gt graphics card, i can run 3dsmax, maya and whatever else, smothely, however i used to run 3dsmax on an old laptop with 512mb of ram, and around a 1.8mhz processor