Burning bootable CD for iMac G3 - System 7 8 9

[behshad]

hi all,

i have a question guys. what is the best way to burn System 7/8/9 bootable ISO cd's? i tried my iBook G4 Disk Utility, drag ISO and Burn method but the successfully burnt CD's don't seem to be bootable when inserted in my iMac G3 (tried holding the C key or Option key). normally i use Windows 10 Rufus to burn WIN/Linux ISO's but there is no drivers for my old late 90s USB HP 8200 cd-writer when i plug it in. i do have a IBM Windows XP and couple 1990's Macintosh's with CD writer but i thought if iBook couldn't do it then the Mac's/XP may probably fail too.

do i need a special vintage software on Mac-only platform to burn bootable cd's? i could pull out a bootable HDD from my other iMac and clone it onto another HDD then install that inside the G3 but rather not to as it requires opening up two iMac G3's.

any suggestions?

 

[TheShortTimer]

do i need a special vintage software on Mac-only platform to burn bootable cd's?

No, not at all.

Recently I successfully burned an OS 9 ISO in order to reinstall it onto my Sawtooth and the entire procedure was identical to burning any other ISO. For the sake of simplicity, I've used Burn for around 7 or 8 years for such tasks and have never had any problems.

The current release requires an Intel Mac running a minimum of 10.9 but you can download an older PPC compatible version (1.7.2.1) from here. I've tested it for you on my Sawtooth with Panther and Tiger and it works fine.

Al you have to do is select Copy, drag your ISO into the centre of the program window and click Burn.

In the extremely unlikely event that this is unsuccessful, you can use CDBurnerXP on your IBM XP machine. Whenever I needed to create an ISO or burn discs, this is what I used on my Win boxes before the switch to Mac. It's free, easy to use and will run on 2000 and XP.

If both of these fail then something is wrong and will require further information.

 

[behshad]

thanks mate. that worked very well and i managed to burn a bootable CD using the osx (10.4) on my iBook, however having issue booting from the CD player on all three iMac G3'. when i press the C or Option key i go to this page:

IMG-20200313-184310 hosted at ImgBB

Image IMG-20200313-184310 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

and after typing 'mac-boot' in terminal it just boots either to already installed OSX (which i am wanting to remove) or to the flashy ? when there is no OS installed. tried a supposedly bootable 7.1 hard drive out from my dead Macintosh G3 Beige but that doesn't bring up any OS.

neither CD players (3) seems to spin up fast when it's booting up, maybe the CD disc is not good? or maybe i should go ahead and clone the one working OS9.1 hard drive to two other hard drives? it has turned into something too complicated while i don't think it should have!!!

 

[RogerWilco6502]

Burn on my MacBook is what I use as well. It's really good not just for image burning but also any other burning you need done. It's intuitive and has versions available to download going back to Tiger, so I can even put it on my Power Mac.

 

[behshad]

problem still exists. explored this a bit further over weekend and i believe my burnt CD's are not bootable. is there a trick in burins an ISO to create bootable OS7/8/9? i got the ISO from here:

Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal (2002 edition) - Macintosh Repository

This is a Bootable Universal install CD of Mac OS 9.2.2, US English. Suitable for most G3 & G4 Macintosh models (not all of them). Mac OS CPU...

www.macintoshrepository.org

and then simply burnt it onto a blank CD-R using Burn software on an iBook. am i missing anything else here? i tried to clone a bootable hard drive and even that one is not working! I did the cloning on Linus using dd command.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Did you select Copy, drag the ISO into the centre and select Burn?

That should create a bootable CD/DVD that will be detected by the Mac when you hold down C after hearing the chime.

 

[behshad]

no actuality i burnt it using the DATA tab which i now realize is not how someone burns ISO. i will try the COPY tonight and update rersult here.

many thanks again for the help @TheShortTimer

 

[behshad]

@TheShortTimer that worked perfect this time. I burnt a bootable CD using the copy option and installed the os on the iMac. However the installed OS.doesnt seem to be bootable. I still get the flashy question mark when try to boot from hard drive after a successful installation. Does the iMac HDD need to be partitioned or formatted in a particular way? It's a 24gb.hard drive. cheers

 

[Amethyst1]

However the installed OS.doesnt seem to be bootable. I still get the flashy question mark when try to boot from hard drive after a successful installation. Does the iMac HDD need to be partitioned or formatted in a particular way? It's a 24gb.hard drive. cheers

Did you partition and format the HDD from within OS 9 (after booting from the CD)? If you did it on a more modern Mac in OS X, the HDD may not have the "OS 9 Drivers" installed which are necessary for it to be bootable into OS 9.

 

[TheShortTimer]

@TheShortTimer that worked perfect this time. I burnt a bootable CD using the copy option and installed the os on the iMac.

Good to know you're making progress.

Did you partition and format the HDD from within OS 9 (after booting from the CD)? If you did it on a more modern Mac in OS X, the HDD may not have the "OS 9 Drivers" installed which are necessary for it to be bootable into OS 9.

Excellent advice. I encountered this recently when attempting to partition my G3 via El Capitan. I switched to an older version of OS X that included the OS 9 drivers option.

 

[behshad]

Did you partition and format the HDD from within OS 9 (after booting from the CD)? If you did it on a more modern Mac in OS X, the HDD may not have the "OS 9 Drivers" installed which are necessary for it to be bootable into OS 9.

@Amethyst1 first try i did nothing (hard drive was formatted on OSX), however the second time, i booted from OS9 cd and went into utilities where i could see the hdd and i partitioned and formatted it before advancing to the installation. the installation succeed but when i rebooted, i get the question mark like there is not OS. how do i actually get the OS9 drivers on the hdd? wouldn't they just get copied across during the installation? cheers

 

[TheShortTimer]

how do i actually get the OS9 drivers on the hdd? wouldn't they just get copied across during the installation? cheers

Here's the Disk Utility screen on Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) on my iBook G3. As you can see, the option to "Install Mac OS 9 Disk Driver" has been ticked. This option is absent from the more recent versions of Mac OS X. If you're going to set up an HDD/SSD within Mac OS X and want to ensure that it can be seen within OS 9, you need to use an older release of OS X that still has this choice available to you.

 

[alex_free]

No, not at all.

Recently I successfully burned an OS 9 ISO in order to reinstall it onto my Sawtooth and the entire procedure was identical to burning any other ISO. For the sake of simplicity, I've used Burn for around 7 or 8 years for such tasks and have never had any problems.

The current release requires an Intel Mac running a minimum of 10.9 but you can download an older PPC compatible version (1.7.2.1) from here. I've tested it for you on my Sawtooth with Panther and Tiger and it works fine.

Al you have to do is select Copy, drag your ISO into the centre of the program window and click Burn.

In the extremely unlikely event that this is unsuccessful, you can use CDBurnerXP on your IBM XP machine. Whenever I needed to create an ISO or burn discs, this is what I used on my Win boxes before the switch to Mac. It's free, easy to use and will run on 2000 and XP.

If both of these fail then something is wrong and will require further information.

To the left of me is TWELVE CD-R coasters of 8.6-10.2. Inside of my iBook however, is a booting OS 9.2.2 CD! I thought the CD Drive was broken, and I had a serious problem because my iBook does not have FireWire (nor do I own any FireWire stuff), and I swear usb booting is a myth at least on the original iBook 300MHZ I have.

The 3GB HDD just stopped booting entirely the other day, probably due to the weird thing I did which basically converted jaguar into OS 8.6 since I couldn’t get a single CD to boot.

I was at a desperate situation. My USB DVD burner did not show up as a boot device either (works for my Mac mini, I don’t think it can get enough power out of the iBook). I thought my only course of action would be to remove the HDD and install an OS using my Mac mini. I don’t even have all the tools to do that.

I bet 8.6 will work with burn as well. I used my Mac mini btw, somehow both my Macs have working optical drives.

Thank you. I’ve been waiting to install an OS for 2 weeks!

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thank you. I’ve been waiting to install an OS for 2 weeks!

Glad to be of help: just as your efforts have been of immense help to us!

...and I swear usb booting is a myth at least on the original iBook 300MHZ I have.

Booting via USB isn't a myth, I installed Tiger on my G3 iBook with a USB stick with the standard Option key post-chime. It can be done.

 

[alex_free]

Glad to be of help: just as your efforts have been of immense help to us!
Booting via USB isn't a myth, I installed Tiger on my G3 iBook with a USB stick with the standard Option key post-chime. It can be done.

Very happy to help each other out!

Has to be my usb devices then, they are all pretty new usb 2.0 ones (16GB and 32gb). I even tried my supposedly usb 1.1 compatible sata adapter with a HDD, same error (Bad VHB, absolutely no info on internet about this error). None of the above ever show in the multi-boot menu, what is your method for booting off of usb?

I think a worthy investment is some kind of ancient usb 1.1 external cd drive, modern usb external optical drives are not compatible (mine is not and online I’ve seen other people come to the same conclusion). Also of course, is either a new IDE HDD or some adapter solution.

Still currently installing OS 9, this original 3GB HDD has a death wish and at this point is just Russian Roulette each boot. I’m amazed that in the past 20 years it has never been changed, but hey, my 15 year old Mac mini has the same 80GB drive.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Very happy to help each other out!

I think that ethos defines the spirit of this community.

Has to be my usb devices then, they are all pretty new usb 2.0 ones (16GB and 32gb). I even tried my supposedly usb 1.1 compatible sata adapter with a HDD, same error (Bad VHB, absolutely no info on internet about this error). None of the above ever show in the multi-boot menu, what is your method for booting off of usb?

It's not your USB devices. From my experience, the process is extremely inconsistent and varies from one machine to another. On my G4 iBook, I tried to boot Tiger using the very same USB 2.0 8GB Sandisk drive that had worked with the G3 and it didn't appear in the boot menu - even with refreshing to check for drives! Very frustrating. I think in some instances dabbling with Open Firmware is required (more on this later).

My method with the G3 was to partition the USB stick to the Apple Partition Map (because this is what PPC Macs will require) not GUID or MBR and then format the drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then, in Disk Utility select the Restore tab and drag the dmg etc that has the OS image file onto the Source field. Next, you need to drag the USB drive to the destination field - click on Restore and wait. Some patience will be required at this point but a fully bootable USB drive will be created and eventually mounted in OS X - you can click on it and make an inspection if you like.

This was enough work in the case of my G3 but other Macs may require some further wrangling involving Open Firmware. Read this guide and pay attention to step 7 and onwards. Here is an alternate guide that also covers what I've outlined above but also uses visual aids and is quite well written. Hopefully between both of those and my method, you'll enjoy success.

I think a worthy investment is some kind of ancient usb 1.1 external cd drive, modern usb external optical drives are not compatible (mine is not and online I’ve seen other people come to the same conclusion). Also of course, is either a new IDE HDD or some adapter solution.

The absence of FireWire annoyingly complicates what would otherwise be a cakewalk with Target Disk Mode.

Still currently installing OS 9, this original 3GB HDD has a death wish and at this point is just Russian Roulette each boot. I’m amazed that in the past 20 years it has never been changed, but hey, my 15 year old Mac mini has the same 80GB drive.

My favourite story is the 500 MB that continues to happily chug along in a 1995 Win Box. Built to last!

 

[alex_free]

I think that ethos defines the spirit of this community.



It's not your USB devices. From my experience, the process is extremely inconsistent and varies from one machine to another. On my G4 iBook, I tried to boot Tiger using the very same USB 2.0 8GB Sandisk drive that had worked with the G3 and it didn't appear in the boot menu - even with refreshing to check for drives! Very frustrating. I think in some instances dabbling with Open Firmware is required (more on this later).

My method with the G3 was to partition the USB stick to the Apple Partition Map (because this is what PPC Macs will require) not GUID or MBR and then format the drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then, in Disk Utility select the Restore tab and drag the dmg etc that has the OS image file onto the Source field. Next, you need to drag the USB drive to the destination field - click on Restore and wait. Some patience will be required at this point but a fully bootable USB drive will be created and eventually mounted in OS X - you can click on it and make an inspection if you like.

This was enough work in the case of my G3 but other Macs may require some further wrangling involving Open Firmware. Read this guide and pay attention to step 7 and onwards. Here is an alternate guide that also covers what I've outlined above but also uses visual aids and is quite well written. Hopefully between both of those and my method, you'll enjoy success.



The absence of FireWire annoyingly complicates what would otherwise be a cakewalk with Target Disk Mode.



My favourite story is the 500 MB that continues to happily chug along in a 1995 Win Box. Built to last!

The first guide you linked I previously tried (as I did many others). The second guide I have not seen before, I’ll try this out in the future. You know that CD drive is a ticking time bomb, this is the original iBook G3 Clamshell.

I’m still amazed that my Mac mini cd drive (also known as one of the worst optical drives Apple ever put out) burned a Maxell CD-R (The worst CD-R brand , at least most people say so online), that booted on an iBook G3 Clamshell launch model (known for having an optical drive as bad as the original iMac, it truly was an iMac to go in this sense).

The bad VHB error is weird, only happens on the iBook never on the Mac mini. I swear it’s a chipset incompatibility, usb 1.1 is ancient and if a usb DVD burner can’t be a boot device (that is supposed to be usb 2.0/1.1!, it was made in 2019 and was the cheapest thing at the store) then it’s not to far fetched to think the usb flash drive controller of newer flash drives could be incompatible as boot devices.

I have never had a usb device show in the multi-boot menu. And in open firmware I can find the usb but when attempting to boot on it I get that cryptic bad VHB error that there is no info on.

Thoughts?

 

[behshad]

one extra step i took to make the G3 bootable after OS installation was to make hard drive the start up disk (https://ibb.co/zXgZxCG) still same problem not being able to boot from hard drive, one strange thing is that i am installing 9.2.2 but why the installed version is 9.1.2? any idea?

re drivers, the hard drive is blank so there is no previous OSX or any other OS installed. can't figure out why it doesn't boot?

taking my attecntion of this one i switched to installing 9.2.2 on the second G3, i get this error (ttps://ibb.co/yyQZy8f) which i guess it means my firmware is too old. would you know where i can find the firmware?

i guess if have a newer firmware i might be able to boot from USB

@alex_free i bought an early 2000 external CD drive just to have the option of connection to my newer computers to burn CDs, eliminating the need to pull out my iBook to burn cd (download iso, copy onto USB stick, transfer to iBook and then burn the CD!) but the old external CD drive is not recognized in either Windows 10 or latest OSX

 

[Macbookprodude]

Wow ! So much OS 9 and classic Mac OS activity - I have been in touch with Cameron Kaiser - myself and a few others are working on getting classila to run most about 90 percent web browsing. YouTube sadly won’t be supported as the OS predates YouTube by almost 5 years. This will all be fixed in classila 9.3.4.