Running OSX and OS 9

I recently bought an iMac G3 600Mhz. The previous owner reinstalled OS X 10.3 and reformatted the HD. She did not complete the installation, however, and I still need to install some of the software.

I ran the OSX disks again, and it seems to be working.

However, I am trying to install MS Word for Mac 2001, and it tells me to install OS9. Can I run two OS on the iMac? I have not used a Mac in 10 years, and the process is confusing to me.

Any suggestions are welcome, especially detailed ones. I am a user, not a technician.

Thanks.

Can I run OSX and OS 9?

I posted this in the "Classic" room, but I don't know if that was the correct place.

I recently bought an iMac G3 600Mhz (currently 256MB RAM, but will be upgraded to 1G this week). The previous owner reinstalled OS X 10.3 and reformatted the HD. She did not complete the installation, however, and I still need to install some of the software.

I ran the OSX disks again, and it seems to be working. I also upgraded to 10.3.9.

However, I am trying to install MS Word for Mac 2001, and it tells me to install OS9. Can I run two OS on the iMac? I have not used a Mac in 10 years, and the process is confusing to me.

Any suggestions are welcome, especially detailed ones. I am a user, not a technician.

Thanks.

Find yourself an OS 9 disk, Retail copy prefered and boot to it holding down the C key while powering up. run through the process of installing the OS being careful NOT to initialize the drive.

Tada, you now have a dual boot Mac.

On the other hand you might just want get a copy of Office 2004 and run an OS X native application vs running an old OS 9 application in "Classic mode".

If you are a student, teacher or parent of a student you qualify for the student teacher edition of Office which is MUCH cheaper.

Okay.

I tried rebooting twice while holding the "C" key. It still rebooted in OS X. The second time, it opened a window for the CD. I tried running the "Install OS 9" app and got an error message stating, "Classic cannot update files in "System Folder" on "Mac OS 0.1" becuase the disk is read only."

Apparently, it is trying to write onto the CD.

BTW, Office 2004 WITH the educator discount is still nearly as much as I have invested in the iMac.


Thank you for your assistance.

Insert the OS 9 disk again, then reboot while holding down the Option key (it will take a while, so be patient).

This should present you with a choice of boot options, one of them being the OS 9 disk. Click on that disk, then the restart arrow or whatever the restart icon happens to be.

If all is right with the world, the machine should boot from the disk, after which you can install OS 9.

Ideally, you should partition the drive, then install OS 9 on one, and OS X on the other. This will allow you to run third-party OS 9 disk utilities such as Norton or Disk Warrior. Running any such repair program when OS 9 and OS X are on the same partition will destroy the OS X installation.

Is it possible to partition the drive after OS X is already installed? I know with Windows you have to partition during the OS installation.

Weird. I tried pressing "option," and the only option offered for startup was the HD.

I don't know why a G3 wouldn't recognize an OS 9 disk, unless the disk was sold with a different model Mac, such as an iBook or a tower. Other than that — unless the disk drive is defective — I'm at a loss.

You can't make partitions without the process wiping the drive, so to do so, you'd have to back up whatever files you want to keep, then start again.

That shouldn't be much of a problem. We just got the iMac a couple of weeks ago, and the disks are originals.

How do you process wipe?

You have to boot the machine from the DVD/CDs to partition the drive and reinstall (just follow the directions on screen). But if the machine doesn't recognize the disk, you're stuck.

Would I start with 9 or OSX?

I'd start with X. If I remember correctly, there might be an issue as to where X must be placed on the disk, though someone might correct me on that (especially if this doesn't matter when the disk is partitioned).

But for what it's worth, I've loaded both systems a few times when I changed the number and sizes of the partitions, and always loaded X first, and on the first partition.

As long as you leave a partition for os 9 in the HFS or HFS+ you should have no problems just install X than install 9. If you leave the partition as journaled than os 9 won't recognize it.

mac0s9user said:

If you leave the partition as journaled than os 9 won't recognize it.

Click to expand...

I don't recall that being a problem with 10.3, but I usually ran it with journalling turned off, anyway. It isn't a problem with 10.4, however.

I didn't seem able to see a partition if it was journaled when running os 9..... weird.