Running OS 9 standard on an eMac

It depends on the eMac model. The older models can do this, but the newer ones (eMac (ATI Graphics) - SuperDrive, eMac (1 GHz G4), eMac (USB 2.0)) can only boot in OS X, whether or not OS 9 is installed.

If it can boot in OS 9, it would have come configured this way. Go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk. If you can select OS 9 here, you can boot from it, otherwise you probably can't.

no no no no no.

emac ati 1ghz macs can boot into os 9. usb2 folks are right out, and the second release of the emac ati 1ghz can't do it. but the first rev can (they have 40, 60, 80 gig hd i believe) (128 megs standard). if they can, it's probably not installed by default, as the above poster said, but instead is on the software restore cd (which at least on my mac, was not installed by default). just pop that sucker in, restore any software, and you have a dual boot system. pick your startup disk from the startup pane in system prefs (or startup disk control panel in 9) and pick what you want to use that day

matt

The machines with Airport Extreme you would have to reformat the drive with OS 9 drivers enabled, but there is not guarantee it'll work some do (ones without Superdrive, I think) some don't -- Apple did a change midway through that reconfigured AE eMac machines to remove OS 9 boot partition, some of the AE eMacs also got their OS 9 bootability gutted (most likely a newer firmware).

All the eMacs with DDR memory won't.

The SDR memory ones prior to Airport Extreme should still boot OS 9.

Yellow Dog Linux & MOL

What about formatting the system with Yellow Dog Linux, Installing Mac On Linux on it, and setting it to start on boot. Even better, can MOL be run on OS X?

Threnody said:

What about formatting the system with Yellow Dog Linux, Installing Mac On Linux on it, and setting it to start on boot. Even better, can MOL be run on OS X?

Click to expand...

The MOL creator on his site says they are working on a OS X version, although it wont be out for a while.

If one were to completely erase and reformat, reinitialize the drive on a newer non-OS9 boot machine, and then installing 9 from the CD, would it then be able to boot? Or is it some limitation of the hardware? I have a copy of Acrobat 5 that I took off my old Tibook and want to put on my Albook. The only problem is that I have an upgrade disk and the version it upgrades from can only be installed in OS 9 not Classic.

parrothead said:

If one were to completely erase and reformat, reinitialize the drive on a newer non-OS9 boot machine, and then installing 9 from the CD, would it then be able to boot?

Click to expand...

Depends...

All non AE machines were OS 9 bootable, and came with a OS 9 boot partition.

The AE machines came with and without the capability, Apple killed the boot parition in some, and gutted the ability completely in others.

So you may reformat the drive with OS 9 drivers and find some AE capable machines boot OS 9, while others don't.

parrothead said:

Or is it some limitation of the hardware?

Click to expand...

The newest eMacs have the DDR chipset found in the iMac/iBook/PowerBook -- and OS 9 never was updated to recognize that chipset.

So it's a limitation of the ROM in the OS -- way back all machines needed ROM and/or extensions to run. It didn't change when they went to new world ROM (ROM in RAM), they still need to have updated ROMs.

And the switch from SDR to DDR was a major hardware change.