[G4] Installing os9

[Ronald Steinke]

On 20 May, 2006, at 8:29:24, Bob Schmidt wrote:

> Well, I zeroed my disk, reinstalled 10.4 with os9 drivers, and it  
> still will not boot from os9 cd, I'm at a loss. Thanks to all of  
> you who offered your thoughts, I wish I could remember what I had  
> to do to make it work last time.

Which Mac do you have? Did you do a "Get Info" on the thing before  
you started having trouble booting? Do you have a FireWire 800 machine?

I ask these questions because I have read on various postings that  
the FireWire 800 model may not be capable of booting to OS-9 at all,  
no matter what you do with the install CDs. I don't have access to  
one of those machines, so I have no experience with them and can't  
swear to the fact or not.

I do know that I worked off and on for two weeks trying to get a12"  
G3 iBook to boot to a factory OS-X.3 disk to upgrade it. The darned  
thing would sit there and spin the CD for about three minutes and  
then boot to the OS version that was on the hard drive no matter what  
combination of keys I pressed. I finally hooked the iBook to my  
upgraded QS and booted it in target mode and used the DVD/RW drive in  
the QS to install OS-X.4 on it.

The iBook would boot into OS-9 with no complaints at all, but that  
wasn't what I wanted to install and I almost wanted to throw the  
thing in the dumpster after repeated refusals to boot from the 10.3  
CD. There is probably a solution as easy as mine was and the right  
person hasn't read your posting yet.

Don't despair and give up. The machine is worth saving even if you  
have to threaten it with an Intel chip.