OS Classic Not Installed

[ronmagee1]

Hi all,

I have recently acquired a G3 (and G4) so am getting familiar with the Mac. The G3 had 9.04 installed on it, I then updated the firmware, installed the 9.10 upgrade, and finally installed OS X 10.3 as it is the newest version operable on that particular model (M5521). My issue is that I was trying to install some games for my 3 year old that run in Classic OS yet I receive the message "Classic OS Not Installed".
This may be a quick fix, but can anyone lend me some expertise? This machine is perfect for my boy to play games and educational software on!

 

[Gregg2]

You apparently installed 10.3 without preserving OS9. That would be your problem. You need to wipe the drive, partition it, and then install OSX on one partition and OS9 on the other. The decision about how much to allocate to each partition is critical, more so the less disk space you have. So, no, it's not quick and easy.

 

[Queso]

A disk wipe isn't necessary providing you have an external drive. Boot from an OS9 Install CD and install to the external drive. Once finished copy the resulting System Folder to your normal boot drive. You may have to run OSX Disk Utility and select "Restore OS9 Permissions" (it's something like that anyway), but the System Preferences Classic panel should pick up the installation and allow you to start it.

 

[SailorTom]

A disk wipe isn't necessary providing you have an external drive. Boot from an OS9 Install CD and install to the external drive. Once finished copy the resulting System Folder to your normal boot drive. You may have to run OSX Disk Utility and select "Restore OS9 Permissions" (it's something like that anyway), but the System Preferences Classic panel should pick up the installation and allow you to start it.

Just to echo that point, OS X and Classic can both be installed on the same partition - works on my G4. Remember you need to have the Classic application/environment/emulater installed that is bundled in OS X if you don't want to reboot. I can't specifically remember, but I don't think it's installed by default when OS X is installed fresh. It should be an optional install.

 

[TEG]

You can boot from an OS9 CD, do an Install/Replace, which will not harm your OSX installation, then everything should be fine. This is they way I've installed OS9 after OSX every time since 10.1. Also, you may just need to configure Classic (located in System Preferences) to point to the existing "System Folder" on your computer, as prior to Tiger it was very bad about auto-detecting OS9 System Folders.

TEG