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paulwgraber

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 13, 2013
121
1
Here is what I want to do. I want Leopard on one hard drive and OS 9.0 on another. I have several classic games and some OS X games. SO I would like to go back and forth. This is my setup : G4 Dual 1.4 GHZ. I have full retail copies of Leopard and Mac OS 9.0. and 2 250G hard drives. I installed OS X on one hard drive, no issues. I tried to install OS 9 on the other and it will not let me do it at all. I have read that my type of mac will not boot from a classic disk thus preventing me from installing it on a start up Hard drive. I even have a third HD with OS 10.4 on it. So I booted with that and while I can now read the classic disk it tells me it can't find a OS 9.0 system folder anywhere. So I moved the system folder from the OS 9 classic disk to the hard drive. Still no luck. So what do I do? Any advice or tips would be great. Thanks in advance. I just want to play classic games on one Hard drive and OS X games on the other.
 
Install Tiger on the other drive. Find a Mac that can boot OS9 and copy it's folders over.

Your Mac cannot boot OS9, thus you are stuck with Classic. But Classic is either an existing installation of OS9 or copied over from elsewhere. You can't "install" Classic with an OS X only Mac.
 
Are you sure that Mac can run os 9? If it's a MDD, only some of them are capable of booting classic. You can check your model on everymac.com to verify.

Regardless that computer is probably newer than the os 9 retail disc so you will need a model specific disc. You might be able to find an image at macintoahgarden.org.
 
Well it runs Tiger just fine with the classic enviroment however its telling me it's missing my OS9 folder. So how do I get that folder. I have an OS9 install disk but when I dragged it over it still gave me the same error.
 
Well it runs Tiger just fine with the classic enviroment however its telling me it's missing my OS9 folder. So how do I get that folder. I have an OS9 install disk but when I dragged it over it still gave me the same error.
Why would you assume that you can use the OS9 install disk as Classic?

The OS9 install disks have a bare minimum OS9 system designed just to boot an OS9 capable Mac and install OS9. There are no useable extensions, control panels or anything else because it's all compressed files. The installer disk was never meant to be a stand alone operating system. So, just copying that folder over would mean that every time you tried to run Classic you were running the OS9 installer disk.

There's nothing useable on the installer disk. You need an already installed OS9 system from another Mac.
 
So what would be the fastest G4 that can run and boot an OS 9 disk?
1.25 DP (MDD)?
 
The MDD G4 Macs can't boot from a 9.0 (retail) CD. They only work with the OS 9 CD that came with the machine, which, if I'm not mistaken, is 9.2.1.
 
The 1.25 GHz MDD G4 is the last one that would still boot to OS 9 natively.
One challenge when looking for one of those is that the Firewire was changing at that time. There is a model with 1.25GHz that will NOT boot to OS 9, and that will have a FW 800 port, in addition to two FW400 ports.
FW800 means no OS 9 booting.
No FW800 - it will boot to OS 9.

Yes about the correct OS 9 booting CD. The MDD came with OS 9.2.2 and won't boot to something older. It's correct, you won't boot (or install), unless you have one of those original 9.2.2 CDs.
Older model Macs won't have that issue.
 
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so will my mac boot a 9.2.2 CD then?

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What about netboot9. Could I get an OS9 system folder from it and place it on my OS 10.4 drive to run classic?
 
You have two sets of hard drive locations.
The rear (vertical) is 100 MHz, and the front (horizontal carrier) is 66 MHz ATA bus.
And hard drives CAN be installed in the CD carrier, for a total of 6 hard drives internally, if you would ever want to do that.
The reason that I tell you that, is that the bootable OS 9 hard drive can only be on one bus, and "I think" it's the 100 Mhz (rear) position. WON'T boot to OS 9 if the system drive is on the wrong bus.
So, even if you can get OS 9 to install (or get a working OS 9 System Folder from somewhere else copied to your hard drive), the bus used is also important.
Finally, OS 9 and OS X bootable systems can be on the same partition, or can be on separate partitions, or on completely separate hard drives. Those Macs that originally shipped with both did not use separate partitions from the factory. It all worked, without one system interfering with the other.
Well, very little interference :D
 
just got a system 9 folder from netboot9 from the apple archive website.
Seems to be working great now.
 
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