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adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
So I bought a used MDD with no restore discs (didnt know I needed to have them) only to find out I cant use the retail os9 disc that I have. The main reason I got the MDD was to play around with os9 and kinda live in the past...lol...is there anything I can do to get the retail disc to install or anywhere I can look for the specific restore discs?
 

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
You need to look for a specific restore disc. The MDD PowerMac G4 had a rather unique Mac OS 9 OS. But if you have a MDD with FireWire 800, it'll never run Mac OS 9.
 

CapnCrunch53

macrumors member
Sep 9, 2012
59
11
Indiana
Yep, the MDD uses a special version of OS9.2.2. It can be pretty difficult to find; I went through this ordeal recently myself. Note that, as Intell said, you have to have a non-FW800 MDD; the FireWire 800s do not support OS9 at all.
 
Last edited:

CapnCrunch53

macrumors member
Sep 9, 2012
59
11
Indiana
Macintosh Garden has the disc image as well; I figured we weren't allowed to link to such things on the forum hence my sort of cryptic reply, but if you search on that site you should easily find it. It got me up and running on my MDD.
 

adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
I installed panther then got a system folder and supposedly everything that was needed but something went wrong...it initially booted into os9 but after the setup screens it went blank and now I can't seem to get it as a boot option...it's in the startup disc preference pane but holdin option at startup doesn't get it to show up...prolly just gonna need to get those restore discs but now I have another question...if I get the restore discs and do a factory restore can I upgrade the osx side to tiger and still keep my bootable os9?
 

adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
I tried the Macintosh garden thing but I had trouble with it...maybe pm me with detailed instructions?...I'd appreciate it...
 

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
Yes. If OS 9 and OS X are on the same partition, the boot menu (option at boot) will only show the currently select active OS. It will not show both.
 

adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
Yes. If OS 9 and OS X are on the same partition, the boot menu (option at boot) will only show the currently select active OS. It will not show both.

Any idea then why the blank screen then?...if it matters my particular MDD has an atx power supply...got it on the cheapz so I can't complain too much...haha
 

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
That's because you're trying to boot into a OS 9 installation that is not compatible with that machine.
 

CapnCrunch53

macrumors member
Sep 9, 2012
59
11
Indiana
It should be. Here's what I did: I downloaded and mounted the .dmg on my MDD in OSX Tiger (I already had Tiger installed on its own drive). Then I formatted the hard drive I planned to use for OS9 in Mac OS Extended format and selected the option to include OS9 drivers. After that, I just copied the system and application folders from the .dmg onto the OS9 drive and it worked.

Are you trying to put Panther and OS9 on the same drive? I'm very probably wrong about this as I'm quite new to Macs, but if so, could the drive not have have the drivers for OS9 on it? Again IDK how this works so correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a thought.
 

adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
Here's what I did...Only have 1 drive...I reformatted it and installed panther and made sure to include the os9 drivers when I did...plugged in my USB drive with the os9 dmg on it then mounted it and dragged it over to my hard drive icon on the desktop...it then showed up as a boot option in startup disc preference pane...I sat it as the default startup drive and then restarted...all went fine until setup was complete when the screen was black and I couldn't get it to come on...wound up having to reinstall panther...now just waiting for suggestions as to how I can remedy this next time I try!
 

adamj575

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 17, 2011
288
3
Tennessee
I wonder if i split my HDD into 2 partitions and then drag the os9 general.dmg to the empty partition if that would allow me to hold option at startup and see both installations...my problem comes from not being able to do anything if the os9 side fails and wind up having to reinstall osx and go through the whole routine again...kinda slows down my troubleshooting...
 
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