Well the oldest usb drive I have is 128mb and the imac can't make heads or tails of it. The stick is probably from around 2003-2004 but the mac os is 6 years behind that so I can't blame it. When I got the stick windows 98 needed drivers for it to be reconized , I'm sure mac os 8.4 isn't going to know what a usb stick is.

As for the network option if you could help me with what settings the mac should be set to for a more modern computer to access it that would help alot