[G4] Who needed help loading OS 9 on his MDD?

[Ronald Steinke]

On 16 Jun, 2007, at 3:55 PM, Bruce Ryan Nakamura wrote:

> Yes, I have selected Clean Install.  It will wipe out whatever OS  
> is on the
> drive, than install OS 9.2.1.
>
> Since you are a technician, what is the difference in meaning  
> between Native
> OS 9  and Classic OS 9?

  Something is not being done properly because the "Clean Install"  
option is supposed to make it possible to install a brand new version  
of the operating system without deleting the older or original  
installation and its contents (extensions, drivers, etc) . This was  
supposed to be to allow you to install a "non-corrupted" version of  
the operating system and then use it to determine what was causing  
the problems with the old system. You could then bring in "extra  
programs from third party developers" one at a time and test for the  
problem being resolved.

A thought occurred to me that you might be able to make a copy of an  
OS-9 installation onto a USB drive and then "sneakernet" it to the  
machine you need it on. From there, it is just a simple drag and drop  
copy onto the hard drive and then select that system folder as your  
Classic environment in System Preferences.

As an experiment, I just did that exact procedure with an iBook that  
would not recognize my OS-9.2.1 CD to install from. I made a copy of  
OS-9.2.2 from my personal G5 tower onto my flash drive, carried it to  
the iBook, drag and dropped the folder to the hard drive, and checked  
System Preferences/Startup Disk to see whether the OS-9 folder would  
be recognized. It was recognized, so I selected it and clicked on the  
restart button.

The iBook restarted to OS-9.2.2 and shows the full contents of the  
hard drive when I open it. The OS-9 startup disk control panel gave  
me the choice of either system folder to boot from. I selected OS-X. 
4.9 and restarted. It booted in OS-X.4.9. It looks like my drag and  
drop procedure worked for me, but I can't promise that it will work  
for you.

I'm not a paper certified tech, just a knowledgeable Mac user who  
does volunteer refurbishing of donated equipment to put into school  
classrooms. My interpretation of the difference is that Apple has  
used the title "Classic" to denote all computers, operating systems,  
and software that is pre-OS-X and that "Native" applies to machines  
that are capable of booting to OS-9. There probably is a true company  
definition of those terms, but I haven't been exposed to it yet. In  
OS-X, programs that are OS-9 or earlier need to have the "Classic"  
environment running in order for the programs to operate, but it is  
not the full version of OS-9 and most of the system processes are  
being handled by OS-X resources.

In the Mac User Group that I am a member of, we use the terms  
interchangeably and usually mean a pre-OS-X item when we say it.