I want to install 10.3 Panther on a Umax S900 system (400mhz, 384mb ram). There is no OS on there at the moment and some software require installing OS9.2 before installing OSX. Mainly looking for a way to make a clean install without doing it from another OS version. Thanks!
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Installing Panther on Unsupported System
- Thread starter Rabidjade
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XPostFacto is the only way. Your machine isn't supported by Panther and won't run on it. The oldest machine that will run Panther officially is the Blue and White (or B/W). 10.2 will run on the Beige G3.
Looks like you'll need OS9 from eBay or something.
EDIT: I believe you can delete OS9 after running XPostFacto because doesn't it flash the Mac ROM into thinking it's a supported machine? And it doesn't need to be on a separate partiton as OSX and OS9 can run on the same hdd. Behold
Looks like you'll need OS9 from eBay or something.
EDIT: I believe you can delete OS9 after running XPostFacto because doesn't it flash the Mac ROM into thinking it's a supported machine? And it doesn't need to be on a separate partiton as OSX and OS9 can run on the same hdd. Behold
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I have OS9.0 but don't feel like going out of my way to install OSX. 
Comming from PC's I can see why I remain there. I installed Windows XP on Pentium 2 computer without going through Windows 98SE and using a hack to install it from there. Straight install, from the original XP CD. I thought OSX was a decent OS when I saw it used but its another way to get Mac nuts to buy new systems, even Microsoft doesn't do that.
Comming from PC's I can see why I remain there. I installed Windows XP on Pentium 2 computer without going through Windows 98SE and using a hack to install it from there. Straight install, from the original XP CD. I thought OSX was a decent OS when I saw it used but its another way to get Mac nuts to buy new systems, even Microsoft doesn't do that. 
Rabidjade said:I have OS9.0 but don't feel like going out of my way to install OSX.
It's not a big effort. Just create a very small OS9 partition (just enough to squeeze a minimal install of OS9 onto), and that's all you need. The OS9 partition need only be a hundred megabytes or so.
Installing OS X on an unsupported machine with XPostFacto is certainly no harder than installing a dual-boot Linux PC. The solution is there. If you can't be bothered to take the small detour to do a dual OS install, then I really doubt you're ready for the much larger detour of learning an entirely new OS. Maybe it really is best if you stick with your PC and offload the Umax on eBay.
Not a big effort for me. I just figured with how big and bad people made OSX out to be, I could install it on something without buying a new system. Its the first OS I ran into that had minimal hardware support in an effort to force people to goto drastic measures to be able to use it (new systems, new hardware). Then in the MS world, you can force software onto anything, even if the computer can't really run it. I probably will try it eventually but saying "A PC man can't handle installing a Mac OS" is an overstatement. Having to use a hack to install an operating system on a computer that can easily support it in the real world, is not something any computer owner should do, Mac or PC. I'll tinker with my OS9 then go up to OSX when I feel like bending over backwards to do something I shouldn't have to do.
oingoboingo said:So you've never installed Debian then?
ohh God don't mention Debian. I went back to SuSe and Redhat after that mistake. Sorry for the off topic post. Anyways, I'll read up on xpostfacto before trying it. My OS9 experience started about a week ago on and off since then. Still got lots to learn. I was more surprised at the roadblocks that OSX posed than anything else and a little upset at the installation limitations. Anyways, i'll get over it and move on, OS9 first though.
Rabidjade said:
I do see where you're coming from. I ran Linux (RedHat, Debian and Mandrake) as my work system and home system for 7 years before switching to the Mac, and after you get used to everything being open and unrestricted in the x86/Linux world, adjusting to the more closed off environment of the Mac can take some time. There are certain tradeoffs that need to be made to achieve a platform where 99% of the time, everything fits together perfectly and 'just works' the first time around, and sometimes this includes not providing official support for your latest OS running on 6 or 7 year old hardware. At least the open-source OS X kernel (Darwin) allows software such as XPostFacto to be developed for those who wish to run an unsupported OS install and get some extra life out of their old systems.
If I were you, I wouldn't bother spending too much time playing around with OS 9. OS X is significantly different in just about every respect...underlying architecture, filesystem layout, user interface, user preferences and configuration...pretty much everything. Unless you have some very specific app in mind, there are now OS X-native replacements for basically all OS 9 programs. Possibly the only reason to stick with OS 9 on an older machine like your Umax is that OS 9 does run faster on machines like that...because it's a much less sophisticated operating system. If you've spent any amount of time with Linux (and it sounds like you have), the Unix shell access to all the internals of OS X, and the full development environment it ships with (gcc, Perl, Python, Java etc) will probably grab your interest.
Found this, might be interesting to others who ran into the same roadblocks.
http://www.lowendmac.com/supermacs/xinstall.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/supermacs/xinstall.html
Rabidjade said:
In OS 9, I think it's the Disk Utility. Look in the Applications/Utilities folder.