Install OS9 on a G4 (867 MHz computer)

I'm trying to install Mac OS9 on a G4 (867 MHz) computer. It is currently running OS 10.3.9. (I'd like to keep OSX on the machine as well.)
I tried booting the computer from a generic OS9 install cd - the one that is white with a large gold 9 on it, in order to "perform a clean installation."
The computer won't even recognize the cd! It stalls on boot up and eventually just goes to the OSX start up. It recognizes any other cd/dvd, but just not this install cd. After a few minutes the computer will "kick" the cd out. I've tried a # of install cds, and it does it to every one of them.
Any ideas!?
ps. I've even tried to re-boot the machine from the restore cd's that came with this machine and the computer won't recognize these disks either.

Hi, jlehrer -
1) Software Restore CDs are definitely model-specific. If the ones you have available are for a different model G4, they will not work on your G4 867MHz machine.
Perhaps an important issue - Software Restore CDs are intended to revert the drive to its original as-shipped configuration. Although it is possible to use them to re-install without erasing the drive in the process, it is very easy to accidentally do just that.
2) System Profiler should have that info available, in the Hardware Overview section on the System Profile page. These pages from http://www.apple-history.com may help -
G4 QS '01
G4 QS '02
G4 MDD '02
The education version of the G4 QS '02, the 867MHz model, is not specifically mentioned on those pages for some reason, but would share the same basic criteria as the other G4 QS '02 models, including needing the version of OS 9.2.2 it shipped with.
Apple KBase Article #25114 - Mac OS 8, 9: Compatibility With Macs can be very useful, too, in determining what OS Install CDs may be used on various Mac models.

Similar Messages

Anyone running Leopard on an 867 Mhz computer?

I've got a Titanium G4 867 Mhz and I'm wondering if Leopard will run
decently on my machine or not. I know that it meets the minimum system requirements but if it runs poorly it's not worth it.
Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences.
-B

Hey There,
I just installed Leopard on both of my G4 powerbooks last night. One is a titanium 667mhz DVI and the other a 667mhz titanium Vga model... I tricked out the installer into believing i had a 1ghz cpu by using openfirmware before i inserted the install dvd which I purchased at my local Apple store. If you want me to tell you how let me know. I had a few problems do to the consitency of my previous Tiger drive. I had to reinstall it a couple of times which honestly was a pain in the behind. When I totally erased the hard drives and installed fresh new Leopard It was a success. The very first boot was reall slow as expected. When leopard opened up for the very first time after all the welcome stuff and registration, It was a lot slower then tiger to my surprise which didnt make me to happy after all of those long hours of install after install. So I decide to go to the upgrades menu and check for upgrades. Once I installed the leopard 10.5.1 upgrade it was Way faster then my tiger ever was. I really don't see why Leopard needs at least an 887mhz because it runs Superbly on my 667mhz. And I've messed with everything already with massive multitasking to really see stabillity and It is better then tiger at least for me. The trick is A CLEAN install with No previous data from tiger. and then after install just manually transfer documenst and applications if you like But def not the user data especially if your tiger was modified in anyway shape or form by you.

QS 867 Mhz processor in a QS 2002 motherboard??

Hi there.
I'm trying to get a Quicksilver 867 Mhz processor (with L3 cache) to run in a Quicksilver 2002 motherboard, but it ain't working. I've been pretty consistent in my troubleshooting, but before I toss it out (or try soldering the L3 cache onto a QS 733 mhz cpu... muhaaahhuuhhahhh), I'd thought I'd throw this out for some feedback in these lovely discussion pages.
I did earlier get this cpu to run on a Digital Audio motherboard and it booted up no problem - even the L3 cache was recognized. But it was unstable (unstable, but very fast...). I had originally thought that the motherboard was faulty (I got the exact same errors with the original 466 mhz cpu and a QS 733 mhz cpu - both a digital audio and a quicksilver psu have checked out ok in a different machine). I went through much trouble, troubleshooting, and eventually got a new/used Quicksilver motherboard, only to find out that the actual trouble-maker was a piece of RAM. Which was very insidious, because the mac(s) booted okay (the system profiler even said it passed), it only caused problems when I'd open certain applications, such as Firefox or System Preferences (which would eventually crash), or tried to do a new OS install or did a software update (none of which would complete, either in panther or tiger). I'm thinking it might have been a high density piece of ram that got pass me. I think Techtool said there was a problem with a piece of RAM earlier, but I thought it was refering to the new piece of 512mb (which had come from another quicksilver) and I tested that piece in other machines and it was fine, so I discounted it as the source of the errors. It turned out to be a piece I already had (256 mb hynix) and which I thought I'd used before with no problems, but I guess not (I had a couple of extra sticks).
Anyway, back to the current problem, now even with the new (tested) quicksilver board (it's a 2002 - but that shouldn't matter), the QS 867 mhz processor won't work and I don't know why! It did run in the digital audio board, only exhibiting the same errors as the other cpu's due to the bad piece of ram. It hasn't been treated any differently than the other 3 processors I used testing, in fact, probably even more carefully, and they are all ok.
It sometimes will boot to the apple OS X icon but stays there. I also get either a single beep, two beeps, three beeps, four beeps or no beeps at all (ie no power light, just the red light of the board, fans running, etc). I don't know if it got damaged earlier when testing (I did try it on another digital audio motherboard that I think was damaged in shipping), but I'm very careful (and have done a lot of computer updgrading, peecee and mac). The only thing I can think of is that when I first plugged this cpu into the latest QS motherboard, I tried to boot up without putting the heatsink on it first (not sure if this is important or not, it got hot but so did the 733mhz cpu which I'm using now - and nothing smells burned). I heard two little pop sounds, then the computer shut down (as it did before... many times with the other motherboard). I did also find out later that one of the cpu mounting posts wasn't tight to the board (it had snapped from the screw when I tightened it - didn't know my own strength), but usually no contact to the board would just cause no response, not a short to the cpu - and once again, the 733mhz cpu which is fine, went thru the same thing. I did get it to boot after this to the apple os x icon (I let it sit for a day). The motherboard is fine - I'm running from it now with the QS 733 mhz processor (and from whence I troubleshooted the bad piece of ram). And I've methodically zapped pram, reset the pmu, removed/changed batteries, took this part out, put that part in, threatened, cajoled, even sang to it... til I'm literally blue in the face - to no avail!
Any suggestions? Or it this processor fried? Or is there something I'm missing (maybe in regards to the QS 2002 motherboard)? I've searched and nothing comes up that I have to do differently, and when I put the old 733 mhz cpu back in it (not changing anything else), everything runs fine (a lot slower, but fine, as I wipe a regretful tear away).
Thanks for any input.
*Hardware Overview:*
Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.0)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 733 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
*Boot ROM Version: 4.3.3f2*
Tiger 10.4.11 (a clean install, but it didn't like Panther either though)
1 GB PC133-333 RAM (1 x 512mb, 2 x 256mb)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mb (PC flashed into Mac - no problems anywhere)
ACARD 6280M PCI card (2 drives on it - but the 867mhz cpu didn't like a drive directly attached to the board either)
Power On Self-Test:
Last Run: 28/09/08 08:06
Result: Passed
This configuration has been running stably using the QS 733 Mhz processor (and ran stably before with an earlier qs motherboard in a different machine). So unless there is something different with the 2002 motherboard, and all research indicated it completely backward compatible, nothing I have installed is causing the problem. I have stripped the machine(s) down to the original configurations at some point, and...

Can anyone tell if it would?
Yes, if it fits into the slot.
She was asking me if their is a way that a password can be put on the system to prevent him from getting into the Mac?
Use the Accounts pane of System Preferences to disable automatic login and log out or use Fast User Switching to change to another account as needed.
(43502)

Classic or instal OS9?

I may be a bit dense, but I can't find a definative answer after much searching all over the support area. Here goes.
I am giving away my B&W, but still want a way to run classic programs on my non-intel imac G5 isight, running 10.4.10. I have been reluctant to update to 10.4.11. I do not remember installing Classic last time, and probably didn't, having a computer to run the old programs just across the room.
What I am unsure about is how best to be able to set up the imac to run the few old classic programs I still have, and not impact the files there now.
I thought about an archive and install, but do I have to go that far?
Do I just need to install Classic support and is this an option?
Do I need to install OS 9 as well, (I have the proper 9.2 universal install CD) and if so do I have to do an erase and install partitioning the hard drive?
I will create a copy of my isight's hard drive onto a firewire drive, using the utility provided on my Data Rescue CD. I have repaired permissions after doing a serious clean up of unwanted files.
I feel dumb...I have avoided learning and absorbing this information before because I have had a separate bootable hard drive running 9.2.2 on my B&W G3 (which I upgraded to a G4 years ago). Please help and tell me what's next.
Thanks
sj

Some clarification of what's possible with 9 and not:
1. Mac OS X 10.0 - 10.4.11 can run Classic on PowerPC Macs. Intel Macs can not run Classic, nor can they boot into 9. 10.5 can't run Classic, but 10.5 on pre-2003 Macs 867 Mhz and faster will dual-boot into 9. Dual booting into 10.4.11 via separate partitions or Firewire hard drive, or second internal drive preserved the ability to run Classic on Macs which supported Classic.
2. New Macs released after 9.2.1's release in 2001 could no longer use a retail installer disc to install 9 onto them and had to use the installer disc for Mac OS 9 that shipped with them to install Mac OS 9. Use this article to determine which Macs those were:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25517
3. Beginning with new Macs in August 23, 2002 a separate 9 installer disk was no longer provided with new Macs, and instead the restore disc instructions were needed to install 9 on those Macs. This coincided with the release of Jaguar in August
4. Beginning with new Macs in 2003 booting into 9 no longer was possible, but
Classic would run.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86209
separates which Macs those were in each model.
5. Beginning with new Macs in 2006 the CPU was replaced with an Intel CPU. Previous Macs used a PowerPC CPU.
6. October 26, 2007 Mac OS X 10.5 was released.
Message was edited by: a brody

Can I get an upgrade from 667 MHz to 867 MHz for a PowerBook G4?

I'd like to use my old PowerBook to support an iPod Touch for a family member, but need to install Leopard to do that. I bought a new copy of the OS for this but can't get it to install and now see that I need 867 MHz and have 667. What to do?

The deal-breaker may not be the processor but the lack of USB 2.0 on the older PowerBooks. Newer iPods require USB 2.0 and a 667mHz PBG4 has USB 1.1.
You can use a Cardbus adaptor to provide USB 2.0, like this:
IOGEAR Hi-Speed USB 2.0 CardBus 2 Port USB 2.0 for Laptops
These are getting harder to find as newer computers ship with USB 2.0 capability.
FWIW, I recently bought Leo by calling the Apple Store and installed in on a Powermac G4 1.25Ghz with 1.75G of RAM and a 64MB VRAM video card. It is not very limber compared to Tiger on the same machine, Even if you use the installer hack, I'm afraid you will have an mostly unusable computer.

867 MHZ and OS X Leopard

I have a Mac Power PC 867 MHZ, 2M L3 Cache, 640 MB of SDRAM. I am currently running OS X 10.3.9. and would like to upgrade to OS X Leopard. Has anyone done this on their computer and did you run into any issues. I would like to upgrade my software next year and need to have the current OS X to do so. I do a lot of graphics work and run Quark, Adobe CS2, Word and Acrobate.
Any advice??????

Indybears wrote:
I have a Mac Power PC 867 MHZ, 2M L3 Cache, 640 MB of SDRAM. I am currently running OS X 10.3.9. and would like to upgrade to OS X Leopard. Has anyone done this on their computer and did you run into any issues. I would like to upgrade my software next year and need to have the current OS X to do so. I do a lot of graphics work and run Quark, Adobe CS2, Word and Acrobate.
Any advice??????
Welcome to Apple Discussions:
Leopard would install, but your RAM is very low. It should be maximized, esp. since your processor speed is so low and you use graphic-intensive apps. Even then it might run very sluggishly.
Also, many of those apps you list won't run under Leopard. They would probably have to be updated or replaced.

Powermac Dual 867 MHz Power PC and internal hard drive

I was just sold a Samsung sp2514n internal hard drive- 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache.
The problem is that after I installed it- my computer would not boot up. All I got is a folder with a question mark.
When I took it out- it booted up normally.
Before I upgraded, I was told that it would work in my computer?
Is there something I'm not doing- that needs to be done- or is it incompatible with my computer?
Thanks,
Mike DiGiorgio
Dual 867 mhz power PC G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

See the drive jumper settings here:
click here
You do not want CD. That's limiting the capacity to less than 32GB.
Message was edited by: Host

Connect 17" Studio CRT to Quicksilver 867 mhz G4

I have a 17" CRT Studio Display connected to my B&W G3. I just got a Quicksilver 867 mhz G4 and I am wondering what kind of adapter(s) I will need to connect the Studio Display to the G4. Thanks.

Hi,
Thanks for the information. That's plug looks exactly like what I need. However, I am still wondering about the other half of the solution that involves the monitor's power source. Currently, I am using this monitor on an old B&W G3. The power cord that comes from the monitor plugs directly into the back of the G3 tower to get its power. That connection is a female plug rather than the standard male wall-socket plug. I am guessing that I could just replace that monitor cord with a standard computer power cord, plug it in, and have the monitor get its power directly from the wall socket rather than through the computer.
Does that make sense?

In Praise of the Quicksilver 2001 - 867 MHz

Yes, I have newer machines but this one has been working very, very well for over six years and I decided that I was not going to let it go and not give it the Leopard treatment. I find it amazing how well it is working with all the current system updates, a process that would cripple any older PC. I was a little concerned to find that now this machine is at the bottom of the Leopard food chain, but I did a backup on an external if I had to find my way back to Tiger.
Over the course of time I made some changes. I swapped out the 32 MB ATI Graphics card for a 128 MB model three years ago (Core Image as software though); I swapped out the 60 GB hard drive with a 120 MB model (largest this machine can take); and I added a PCI (SATA) card that allowed me to install a 250 MB internal as well. I also added an Airport (not extreme) Card to connect to the local network. The machine was built with 1.12 GB of RAM.
The installation seemed to go well, about an hour or so overall (I believe this machine has a 4x DVD read). Of course I had the issue with the Login based on 10.1 or earlier and found this right after my login after the installation. I had to do a new keychain, but (although a little inconvenient) it was fairly easy to do.
The first thing I noticed is that the icons for the PCI card connected drives had changed. Before they looked like the main hard drive, now they are orange and are similar to the FireWire attached drives. Everything seems faster than Tiger, and that is quite impressive on an over six year old machine. Safari is snappier than ever. Mail is fast as well. I don't miss the Spotlight delay while typing at all. Quick Look and the additions to viewing files in the Finder work fine and are very useful.
My menu bar is not transparent (not enough GPU power?), so for some detractors this may be a good thing, but it doesn't detract from the use at all. I'm a left-side dock person and I liked the original design that looked like when it was on the bottom, but the current configuration is OK and the lights for active programs are very easy to see. It seems to be using up more RAM than previously, but I'll have to keep watching that and see if it's overall or just certain things.
Overall my rating of this effort is a big success, and I'm sure I'd find it harder and harder to live without Leopard each day if I did not upgrade this machine. I'm not expecting this machine to act like a top of the line model, but with it's new spots, this mature machine has a lot of life left in it!
Some things I've tried so far (not in great detail, just briefly):
Photoshop CS seems to work.
Filemaker 8.5 seems to work.
Rise of Nations seems to work (maybe a tad slower in some respects, but barely noticeable)
Word seemed to work, although it seemed a bit cranky when initially highlighting text and moving windows.
Still bonding with Stacks, seems useful but requires some mindset adjustment, but it is faster than having the Application Folder in the Dock and holding it down for a menu of the contents. It would be nicer if you just saw a folder though and not the first application icon in the dock.
Spaces are definitely Cool!
Preview (4.0) has an odd crash after adjusting colors and trying to save
Disk Utility (11.0) takes a while to repair permissions and only give the rotating status bar while doing so.
So here are some thoughts from the bottom edge of the Leopard territory -- and they are good! And I still have a lot of testing to do yet.

Well, it's been a month with Leopard and I like it very much, but on this machine I not quite "sold" as of yet. I'm hoping future updates round off the rough edges and put the past spark into all aspects of the machine.
I really like Spaces, CoverFlow and QuickLook.
I really don't like the Preview Crash, Disk Utility Speed and Indication, Hunger for RAM, and the "Little Stall".
The Preview crash still happens when adjusting and trying to save, but this is happening among a large number of different machines so it may be with the GPU and Leopard coding.
Disk Utility still takes longer than Tiger in repairing permissions and the graphical indicator of the task is still not fully corrected yet.
RAM seems to be more of an issue than it ever was with Tiger. I've got 1.125 GB well within the requirement, but at times it seems to get taken up more frequently than under Tiger. While running Tiger I never had to check what was using what RAM with Activity Monitor. It seems that more stays active with Leopard as with Tiger the active was always somewhere between 25% to 40% of RAM, and the inactive was at least that much or more, but active would slim down and inactive (less yellow than blue - on Activity Monitor standard colors) would increase, but never any slowdowns with this scheme. With the same amount of applications running in Leopard, the yellow (active) will work it's way up to half with very little blue (inactive). Over time if you leave the machine on and sleep more RAM will kept getting taken up. From my observations it seems to be Safari, which starts out at about 50-80 MB for five tabs, but overtime and surfing it will balloon up to over 300 MB and it makes more sense to quit and restart Safari to get back more RAM. I thought it might be related to Spaces, but I turned it off and the RAM usage was the same. I always expected Leopard to use more of the RAM, but I think there must be some optimizations that can be done to make better use of what is available and to curtail Safari's thirst for memory. Make no mistake, Safari is a great browser; and is my number one choice.
The "Little Stall" (using a Seinfeld-esque slant at naming) is also a result of Leopard I'd like to see the last of. While running the new screen savers "Shell" or "Arabesque" or using any of the iTunes Visualizer (including the original), the effect will run for about three seconds then they're be a "little stall" of about half of a second and it will continue for three seconds and on. It almost seems like there is some disk usage or caching involved and seems odd as I have 128 MB of Video RAM (ATI Radeon 9000 Pro). Could it be that even with 128 MB that Core Image is being done as software and not hardware is causing the the "Little Stall"? I find that hard to believe that this is how the effects are supposed to work on a machine with a non-programable GPU, since there are a number of machines that are well within Leopards requirements that have non-programable GPU's. How many iBooks and other machines are out there with 32 MB GPU's of the same type? I'm hoping that future updates will bring us updated ATI drivers that allow Leopard to take advantage of the same things Tiger could without issue.
All that said, I have Tiger on a backup drive with a complete backup of the drive when I did the upgrade, and I booted up in it the other day to update my Mail if I decide to take this machine back to Tiger and concede on Leopard. As I was working in Tiger, it was as good as I remembered, but in the end I was really missing some of the Leopard features. So I'm keeping Leopard (updating Tiger mail as a fail safe) and hoping future updates will take the Leopard experience on the Quicksilver 2001 - 867 MHz to where it needs to be.
So in the end, I'm a bit torn between what I had, what I have, and keeping hope for what I will get in the end. I'm a few tweaks away from true happiness, but the wait is excruciating.... I know I'm not alone, so let's hope the tweaks and fixes come fast and furious.

Can I install Tiger in a Dual 500 MHz PowerPC G4?

Can I install Tiger in a Dual 500 MHz PowerPC G4, or is it better to stick with 10.3.9? I'm having some problems so I was going to wipe he hard drive and re-build everything from scratch o I was wondering if migrating to OS X 10.4.9 is worthwhile or even compatible with this PCU. Thanks.

Yes you can run 10.4 on your dual 500, I have a dual 450 (I overclocked it to 550...) and it runs pretty fast. You need a minimum 192 MB of RAM to install it and a minimum 128 MB of RAM to run it. I would suggest having at least 512 MB of RAM when running 10.4.
What problems are you experiencing? If it's just lagging and seeming slow it may just be worthwhile to clean some temp files and clean up your disk. IMHO, 10.4 is a much better system than 10.3, and runs much smoother. I can guarantee you that your system will run much smoother if you wipe the disk clean and put a fresh install of 10.4 on there, and also get a decent amount of RAM in there. After I upgraded my RAM to 1.5 GB, I noticed a substantial difference in speed, and got a lot less spinning color wheels. But one thing that you need to always keep in mind is to KEEP YOUR DISK CLEAN!!! Clean the temp files often and limit your internet downloading. If you keep your computer on all of the time, restart it every once in a while. There's a lot of little things you can do to increase speed in OS 10.4. Use spotlight and recent applications. Fill up your dock. Don't clutter the desktop, etc. There's plenty of articles on the net to help increase speed without adding anything else to your system, just navigating through the OS differently.

Radeon X800XT in a G4 MDD 867 mhz?

Can a flashed Radeon X800XT be used in a G4 MMD 867 mhz?
I assume it will need to draw power from the optical drive, is a standard Y cable OK?
Do pins 3 and 11 will need to be taped?

I installed that same video card into my old 1.25 Ghz G4 MDD.
You will still need to tape the pins, I believe, though.
As far as power, I am not sure in your MDD model.
All I had to do was take one card out and put the new one in.
The card I had before this was a 256 VRAM ATI 9600 PC/Mac edition card, but did not perform as well with some things.
The X800XT is a much better all around performer in the G4, G5 model Macs.
The only thing I was advised about is that this video card runs a lot hotter than the other standard video cards for Mac.
I was advised to install a PCI slot fan to keep both the interior of the Mac and the video card cooler.
So, when I installed the new GPU card, I installed the slot fan at the same time also.
Be advised though that the X800XT is a longer card and with the edition of the PCI slot fan, it was a very tight fit to get the MDD cases closed and locked.

How to install OS9 in OSX with OS9 disk?

I just got a G4 with OSX installed and no disks I want to load OS9 for classic support with the OS9 disk I own. Do I need to do anything special to install? All the forums mention the OSX disk which wasn't included in the purchase I made. I don't suppose I could just copy the os9 system folder from my old computer and place it where it belongs in OSX ? Thanks for the help. CJ

CJ:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.I don't suppose I could just copy the os9 system folder from my old computer and place it where it belongs in OSX ?Yes, you may. Andrew is right. I have done it many times and it works perfectly. The beauty of doing this is that you don't have to do all the updates that you would have to do if you installed from disk.
The only concern I would have is whether Mac OS 9 drivers were installed when the disk was formatted for OS X. If they weren't, OS 9 would not work no matter how you installed. They very well might have been installed, though as DU usually has it selected by default.
Good luck.
cornelius
PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS (10.4.4) Mac OS X (10.3.9) Beige G3 OS 8.6

How to install os9 on separate partition alongside os 10.3?

Hi - I would like to know how to install os9.2.2 on a separate partition (with os10.3 on the other) so I can boot in REAL os9 (not classic) to use pro tools free which will not run on classic - (my old g3 I used this for has died) - I have recovered the hard disc contents and what I really want to do is just copy the entire 0s9 system (without having to reinstall it) to a partition - I know how to reboot the machine into os x (hold down x key during start up), but;
1) - can I boot the os 9 partition and if so how?
2) - will this work? - I remember someone telling me it was possible a few years ago, I just can't remember who -
any help greatly appreciated
Thanks!
James

Hi, l. No Aluminum Powerbook can boot into straight OS 9, so you'll have to a) use Pro Tools Free in Classic mode, b) get an older OS-9-bootable computer to run it on, c) buy the real Pro Tools to run on your top-of-the-line computer, or d) use some other application instead.
No Mac has ever been able to boot into an older OS version than the one(s) that were installed on it at the factory.
OS 8 & OS 9 hardware compatibility matrix
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25114
See Note 9 at bottom of article. There is no workaround.

Installing OS9 on a separate hard drive that can boot in 9

I am setting up an older computer for my children. It's been several years since I used it and even longer since I booted in OS9 on it or used classic. We still have some children's software that ran under 8.6 and I'd like to see if we can run it in OS9. I have my original disks. I have a MDD Power Mac G4. It came with 10.2 and was able to run in classic or boot into OS9. On one hard drive, I have installed the latest version of Leopard. On the other original hard drive, I'd like to install OS9 along with the software that should run on that OS. I have not been able to figure out how to do this.
Do I need to reinstall 10.2.xxx and completely restore that hard drive and then just boot in 9? Or is it possible to just install OS9 and the software I want?

Tammy in MO wrote:
... I have my original disks. I have a MDD Power Mac G4. It came with 10.2 and was able to run in classic or boot into OS9. ...
Do I need to reinstall 10.2.xxx and completely restore that hard drive ...
Yes, and OS 9 will require a partition less than 200 GB in order to boot. The original system discs you have for the MDD will not boot into an OS 9 installer. You have to boot the 10.2 OS X disc and install the 10.2 system on a partition, not on top of an other OS X system. Once you have the original OS 10.2 on your system, you have to boot into that and then run the /Applications/Utilities/Software Restore application. This will run under OS X and prompt you to insert each of the OS 9 CDs. Once this is done you can boot into OS 9, or specify that System Folder for use in Classic mode under OS X up to version 10.4. Classic support was dropped in 10.5.

Install OS9 using an external CD drive

I have an eMac OSX10.4.11
They internal CD drive has died and I'm using an external drive connect by firewire.
I want to install OS9 but the computer doesn't recognise the external CD drive when I hold c and restart.
Any suggestions please

Hi, Stephen -
Try using either -
• Startup Disk control pane in Syatem Preferences. With the CD in the drive and visible on the desktop, see if you can select it as the boot volume in Startup Disk. If you can, then do so and restart.
• Startup Manager. The external drive will need to powered up, ideally using external power, with the CD in the drive.
Article #HT1310 - Startup Manager: How to Select a Startup Volume
The graphic in the article is for Intel Macs; the one that will be depicted on your PowerPC Mac will be sightly different. If an icon is shown for the external drive, click it to select it and then click the right-hand (straight) arrow.
Notes -
1) The OS 9 install CD you use will need to be appropriate for your eMac. Not all eMacs are OS 9 bootable; those that are need to use the machine-specific OS 9.2.2 Software Install CD that came with them (the original eMac) or the combo disk set which boots to OSX (other models).
2) If your eMac is OS 9 bootable and you are using an appropriate stand-alone OS 9 Install CD, if OS 9 drivers have not been installed on the hard drive then the drive will not be available to the installer on the CD.

Install OS9 on a G4 (867 MHz computer)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for