Can't open Classic in OS X.4.3

Question

I recently installed OS X.4 Tiger on my Dual 450 and then the upgrade OS X.4.3. Classic did not install and I had been told I needed to install it separately, but the single disc I got with my purchased OS X.4 (bought from the Apple store) did not seem to have Classic on it. So I used the extra software disc that came with my iMac (on which I had successfully installed Classic) and installed Classic (system 9.2.2) on my Dual 450.
Classic looks like it is installed but when I try to open it the icon in the dock bounces up and down and then I get a message that "Mac OS ROM file is not available. It is either damaged or not installed." However, I can see the ROM file in my system folder.
What can I do to open Classic? I have tried reinstalling everything and that does not work.
Should I have gotten a separate CD Installatin disc when I bought Tiger? Maybe one was left out of the box. Maybe the OS ROM file for the iMac does not work with my Dual 450.
Any suggestions? I tried calling Apple Care and was put on hold for over an hour today.

Answer 1

Did you do an erase and install? If not, if
Classic
was installed before, it should still be
installed.
I did an erase and install. It was the only way I
could get OS X.4 to install. When I tried to archive
and install the computer crashed (several times)
Ah. Usually this means that something in the directory was corrupted.
OS X doesn't come with Classic anymore.
I found that out.
Steve did 'bury' OS 9 several years back.
[snip]
Do you have the OS 9 CD for the 450? You could try
copying the Mac OS ROM file from that CD over to
the
OS 9 System Folder on the 450 and see what
happens.
I tried that. Just tried it again. No luck. OS
X.4.3 does not want to recognize any OS ROM file. I
also tried to select the system 9.2.2 from my backup
hard drive as the one for OS X.4.3 to use to open
Classic. Also no luck. Same message: "The Classic
Mac OS ROM file is missing or damaged."
This is strange. My primary Classic folder is an old OS 9 System Folder on a FireWire drive. That System Folder started out as an OS 8.1 System Folder on an external SCSI drive attached to a 7200, and was upgraded over time to an OS 9.1 System Folder on the same SCSI drive attached to a beige G3, and then was copied over to a FireWIre drive and updated to OS 9.2.2 and attached to a first generation eMac. The successor to that FireWire drive is now attached to a 1.25GHz eMac, OS X 10.4.3, works fine...
I have tried to reinstall OS X.4 with no success.
You don't need to install OS X 10.4, you need to reinstall OS 9.
I called AppleCare today and was basically told that
Apple will not support Classic any more and that on
an older machine I may have no luck. Obviously I
find this hard to accept. All I need is a Mac OS ROM
file that the computer will see. But where can I get
that?
If Apple is making OS 9.2.2 impossible to access,
what happens to archived files on programs that need
OS 9?
What I'd do is to:
1 back everything up. I mean everything.
2 find the OS 9 system disc which came with the Dual 450. Boot from it, run Drive Setup and format the hard disk. This will kill all directory corruption stone dead.
3 install OS 9 from the CD.
4 update OS 9 to 9.2.2, either via Software Update or via a previously downloaded updater.
5 reboot and make sure that it all works.
6 now install OS X 10.4. You shouldn't need to do anything other than an upgrade install.
7 boot in OS X, make sure that everything works, especially including Classic, update to 10.4.3 either via Software Update or a previously downloaded updater. Reboot and make sure everything still works.
8 restore your data from backup.
Did you do a backup before running the install? If
so, you can simply restore your OS 9 System
Folder.
I did do a backup and it is on another hard drive.
The computer does open on that hard drive and so far
works just fine in OS 9.2.2 on that HD. but I can't
go back and forth between OS X and OS 9 that way.
Hmmm... you can't tell Classic to run from that disk? I'd try to get Classic to run from that hard disk before going to the trouble of doing a complete reformat and reinstall. I've got various different OS 9 folders around here, one on the internal drive in my eMac, one on my boot FireWire drive, and several others on other drives. The one on the eMac's internal drive is the vanilla System Folder as installed by Apple's system discs for the eMac, the one on the boot FireWire drive is my heavily customised System Folder with all the fonts and extensions and whatnot that I've accumulated over the years, and the others are System Folders rigged for specific tasks, such as playing a certain old game which barfs if certain extensions are loaded. I can get Classic to load from any of them, as required. If there's a problem getting Classic to load, you may have other, more serious, problems that you don't know about yet.
So every time I switch to a program that requires
OS X I need to restart the computer using that start
up disc. Not exactly convenient.
You should not have to do this.
Any other suggestions on how to get Classic to run as
part of my OS X.4.3?
Thank you for trying. It is much appreciated.
I've never seen this particular problem, so I'd like to know more about what goes on.