Unpartitioning a disk

[Shravan Vasishth]

Hi folks,

I've just bought a new ibook with the following specs:

                          iBook 12,1 " TFT G3/700 Mhz, 600-odd
                          MB SDRAM, 20 GB HD, CD-ROM

It had Mac OS X version 10.2.1 and OS 9.2.2 CDs with it, which I installed
initially. I then thought I'd install Yellowdog Linux 2.0 and OS 9.1 on
this machine, since I had that setup on another (older, 2001) ibook, and
that was all I currently needed for my work.

I made the mistake of assuming that OS 9.1 can be installed on the new
ibook (it can't). I used the old 2001 ibook's OS 9.1 install CD to try to
partition the hard drive into two equal parts, one with the Mac Standard
format, and the other with an unallocated format. This is how the
dual-boot installation is done for Yellowdog 2.0, with OS 9.1.

However, the machine of course refused to install OS 9.1 on the Mac
partition. So I tried reinstalling OS X and OS 0S 9.2. This I did manage
to do, but the one half of the disk that is still unallocated is not
visible and not usable. At one point I was able to see it, using one one
of the Utilities folders on an installation CD, but it is marked as a
network drive.

How do I revert to the original situation? I.e., I want OS X and OS 9.2.2
installed on the entire (20GB) disk.  Reading some web pages it seems the
only solution is to use Norton Utilities. Is this correct? 

Basically, if I can repartition the drive to one partition with the
Standard Mac format, and then reinstall OS X and 9.2, all should be OK, I
think. The question is: how to repartition the drive?

I didn't get a disk repair CD or anything with the machine, just a
hardware check CD (apart from the machine-specific OS X and OS 9.2.2 CDs,
that is). I'm assuming that the hardware check CD is going to be useless
for a software problem, although with a Mac one never knows. But I don't
want to mess with it anymore until some experts tell me what to do.

Any help/suggestions will be gratefully accepted,

-- 
Dr. Shravan Vasishth                           Phone: +49 (681) 302 4504    
Computational Linguistics, Universität des Saarlandes, Postfach 15 11 50
D-66041 Saarbrücken, Germany         http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~vasishth