double boot os9/x

[drsuse]

i've been borrowing a g3 imac for a while, and i may not need to return it for several more months. so i'm wondering if there's a way to double boot with os x while leaving the os 9 portion completely intact - ie without reformatting the hard drive to partition it.

 

[Apple Hobo]

Yes. You can have OS 9 and OS X on the same drive without partitions. If you already have OS 9 on the drive, just go through the OS X installation without erasing the whole drive.

Hope that helps.

 

[Blue Velvet]

There are 3 or 4 options of OS X installation about 2-3 screens in from the initial installation splash screen.

Off-hand, it may be the upgrade option you need but I would wait until someone else here confirms that. You can always start the installation process up to this point just to have a look and then cancel it...

OS X may make some changes to the OS9 System Folder if you use Classic which can sometimes have unpredictable results when booting from that system folder.

Make sure you have min. 1.7-2.5 gbs spare on your hard-drive for the OS X installation alone. Ideally you may need to have 4gbs + as OSX will write temporary virtual memory-type files to your HD if you don't have too much RAM.

 

[MisterMe]

i've been borrowing a g3 imac for a while, and i may not need to return it for several more months. so i'm wondering if there's a way to double boot with os x while leaving the os 9 portion completely intact - ie without reformatting the hard drive to partition it.

If you have not done so, run a maintenance utility suite on the iMac's hard disk. Upgrade the OS to MacOS 9.2.2. MacOS X 10.1 ships with MacOS 9.2.1. If that is your source, then you can upgrade to MacOS 9.2.2 via Software Update. Since you seem to have some version of MacOS 9, you can updaters to bring your computer up to MacOS 9.2.2 at Pure Mac. Make sure that your computer has at least the bare minimum 256 MB RAM. I recommend 384 MB, but 512 MB is even better. I also recommend that you have 10 GB HD space free before you begin the MacOS X install. After you upgrade your copy of MacOS 9 and your RAM, and cleaned-up your HD, you can simply install MacOS X 10.3 over your existing installation of MacOS 9.2.2. This will allow you to boot into either MacOS X or MacOS 9 at your option. The two OSes with cooperate with each other and neither will interfere with the other. All of your MacOS 9 fonts will be available to MacOS X. You may import your email messages from your current email client to Apple's MacOS X Mail client. Any Carbon app on your computer will now run natively on MacOS X.