Dual boot Tiger and Leopard

Hi

I'm a mac convert (from PC obviously). I'm very good at dualbooting anything PC, but on the mac it's a different story.

I've got an Intel core duo 2ghz 2gb RAM iMac 20". It's running Leopard - I also have its original Tiger discs (guy I bought machine from supplied all). I've done a fresh install of Leopard, but I'm really curious to see how Tiger ran on this machine (since Tiger was its original system). I've been using VMfusion and XP - works amazingly, but VM doesn't seem to have an option to virtually boot Tiger, the only alternative I can see is running Tiger from an external USB 2, however, I can't find a clear cut tutorial on this. Any thoughts?

At first I thought the machine was sluggish, I've since noticed that it's fast, but there is stuttering when Rosestta is in town (look at me, mac for two weeks and you'd be surprised what I've learnt!).

If anyone has a way I can try this, I'm 100% sure it can be done, but I don't want to get it wrong.

Use Disk Utility to split your drive so you have an extra partition to install Tiger to. Be sure to use the Disk Utility from Leopard... Tiger's Disk Utility is "destructive" when it comes to partitoning. Leopard's isn't.

Once you have your new partition, boot from the Tiger install DVD by holding down the C key. Then tell the Installer to install to the new partition.

To choose which OS to boot from once you are all done, just hold down the OPTION key while booting... you'll get a menu of available OSes to boot from.

That sounds super easy! I guess it's this easy as I'm starting from Leopard and boot Tiger, rather than having a pre-installed Tiger and wanting to boot a Leopard! What's more, this way I will have a true install of Tiger, not one running from a USB drive, so I will get the true impression of it. Have you ever tried this method yourself?
Thank you very much for your help, I will let you know how I get on once it's done.

jobborrow said:

That sounds super easy! I guess it's this easy as I'm starting from Leopard and boot Tiger, rather than having a pre-installed Tiger and wanting to boot a Leopard! What's more, this way I will have a true install of Tiger, not one running from a USB drive, so I will get the true impression of it. Have you ever tried this method yourself?
Thank you very much for your help, I will let you know how I get on once it's done.

Click to expand...

Well I've done it to have a secondary copy of Leopard installed... in case anything fatal happens to the one I normally work from. It also helps to have a "virgin" copy installed for troubleshooting purposes. I haven't had Tiger installed since upgrading to Leopard... don't have a need.

How much do you suggest I commit to the Tiger install? The partition manager automatically gives it half. If I click on the HD icon there's no option to create a partition, but if I click on the drive full title, (250GB etc blah blah) it gives me the partition option. Does that sound ok? Also it wants to do it as a extended OS journal (or something) is that cool? One other thing, it says if I click the first area where the os it, that I can't erase that as it's the system area, that's fine, as I wouldn't want to erase it, but would then the second new area be the same once I've got Tiger on it as it too is an OS? I ask as I only want to try Tiger and may well delete it after a few days.

Thanks for your help so far.

I ran two partitions with Tiger on each for a while. (I killed one when I decided two partitions of OS 9 were more important ).

I can't recall exactly how much extra space you should leave for OS X to allow it to run properly. I think it requires about one-quarter of the disk or partition be empty so it can run its housekeeping chores as well as its virtual-memory needs.

so really if I give it 80ish gb I should be ok, and they I can always kill it and reallocate it to the main drive right? All without ever damaging my initial install of leopard?

jobborrow said:

so really if I give it 80ish gb I should be ok, and they I can always kill it and reallocate it to the main drive right? All without ever damaging my initial install of leopard?

Click to expand...

Yes indeedy.

Update:

I did it last night, it took longer than I expected! My Tiger install disks are bundled with computer discs, so they put loads of other stuff on them. The only trouble I had was when it got half way through the install of the 2nd DVD it said installation errors, try again! So I tried again. It gave me the option to redo that part of the install, I did and it was fine.

It really was exceptionally easy, much easier than creating a Vista XP dual boot (which could kill the average human with the need to edit bootloaders and create a slip stream with necessary RAID drivers). Essentially it's a very similar thing; daul boot the current OS and a legacy OS. It all just makes me more impressed with the MAC.

My Tiger and Leopard observations:

Well, so far I've not really noticed much difference in performance, Tiger does Scale minimize/maximize more smoothly than Leopard on my machine, the genie is the same-ish. I'm not sure why this is, but it's not really that important. I guess my next job is to try some software that requires Rosetta and see if there's any noticeable performance difference.

Thanks for the support

If I may interject here, I find it fascinating that the Mac, the 'amateur' system, handles partitioning and os installs so much better than Windows. You would think partioning on-the-fly would be a standard on any OS this day and age, but you still can't do it with MS

Here's a new and interesting problem related to this: I have decided that I don't really like the 'clunky' bluetooth wireless keyboard I had, and the standard blueooth mouse, so today I bought myself a new super slim ali keyboard and a mighty mouse (wired). Only trouble is, holding option down with the new keyboard has no effect during start up and won't let me select the boot drive? What the heck? The old Bluetooth one still lets me do that, but the usb wired keyboard won't? When it's all on the new keyboard functions just as it should. What the heck is going on? Any thoughts?

I think you'll need to download from Apple's website an update for that keyboard of yours.

When I bought an Alu keyboard for my iMac G5, there was an update for the keyboard so you could have full usage of all the keys and prevent certain conflicts with some apps like QuarkXPress, as an example.

If you run Software Update with the new Alu keyboard plugged in, it should be able to detect the patch you need.

The latest update for the ali keyboard is 1.2 as far as I can see (which I have) the apple update returns nothing related to keyboards and on further digging around various threads this is a common problem for which there is no fix! It seems that the 2006 iMac (what I've got) has this problem, I'm unclear as to what other machines have it, but it's shockingly disgraceful in my opinion, I would expect it from MS, didn't expect such poor support from apple. The keyboard didn't even come in a box that told you the keys during startup are totally unresponsive. I'm shocked by this, I still love my mac, but it proves they're all the same! How can a computer be used effectively if you can't access any features during start up? C doesn't work, Option doesn't work, can't select boots can't boot from disc. Others on forums have suggested that the best thing to do is use your apple remote, holding menu lets you select the boot drive... shocking!

http://forum.maccast.com/index.php?showtopic=15161

The people here seem to know something - I'm quite disappointed about this... The Ali keyboard is so slick, there should be a notice on the box saying "known issue when used with 2006 iMac".

A standard made-for-windows keyboard (labtec £9.99) works, you can select you bootable drive with that, boot from disc with that, but a £29.99 made-for-mac keyboard doesn't function with a mac.... Three times the price, half the functionality, You have to agree, it's pretty poor!

Aluminum USB keyboard stress!!!

I've got an iMac 2GHz 2GB RAM (2006 model) running Leopard and dualbooting Tiger.

I bought it 2nd hand, it came with a bluetooth keyboard, I decided to get myself a mighty mouse and a new USB Aluminum keyboard.

BIG PROBLEM: the alu keyboard is 'powerless' during start up, in other words all keys are totally useless during start up, control, C, X etc will not function.

The old bluetooth keyboard works with these functions, a £9.99 pc labtec keyboard has no problems. My £29.99 mac keyboard doesn't work! Once everything is on and booted it's fine, all the special functions specific to the alu keyboards work.

I did some reading and apparently this is a known issue with the 2006 iMac! I think it is madness that Apple wouldn't put some kind of warning to this effect on the box, or better yet, release a fix?! It's definitely not an update issue, the latest updates are installed.

Does any bright spark out there know of a way to fix this issue? I'm new to mac and these are the kinds of bugs I thought macs didn't have, macs just work apparently? Although, not 2006 iMacs with Alu keyboards? Insane!

*Merged threads for continuity's sake*

I think it might have to do with the line of products that were available when your Mac shipped.

For instance, the Bluetooth wireless Mighty Mouse didn't exist (or, if it did, at least my iMac model did not ship with it and it was not standard equipment) so whenever I boot from a CD or DVD for repairs like with Alsoft's DiskWarrior, I have to fish out my old wired Mighty Mouse, the wireless one is unresponsive during the repairs.

Maybe talking to Apple in the feedback webpage or calling AppleCare about this would make them think a firmware update would be worth writing up ?

Fair comment, I guess it would be easier to understand if the wireless version was the unresponsive one, it's just a surprise that it's the wired one that doesn't work!!

I will get in touch with the support people at apple, but they must know about it as there have been others (I placed a link to others talking about the same problem before).

I'll post whatever I learn!

Cool ! This will help others having the same problem as you.

Besides you never know : if there are enough complaints and something can be done about the situation, maybe Apple will get its act together on this one.