[Joe Macperson]

I just sold my trusty Beige G3 (512 MB, 500 mHz G4 Sonnet upgrade, 43 gb 7200 rpm HD) with 10.2.8 up and running. The person who bought it would like to dabble in OS X but needs 8.6 (or 9?) for working with all his SCSI peripherals. I already had 10.2.8 on a 7.8 gb partition so I put 8.6 on the 35 gb partition, but booting into 8.6 must require alignment of the planets...

While in OS X I've tried selecting the 8.6 partition using System Preferences: Startup Disk, but, when I restart, the Happy Mac makes a brief appearance, only to be replaced by the OS X startup screen. Holding OPTION makes no difference. Zapping the PRAM doesn't help. Booting from an 8.5 CD and then choosing the 8.6 partition with the Startup disk control panel doesn't work, either. I was able to boot 8.6 immediately after installing it, but I can't get there from OS X. It's ironic because all the posts I've seen on different forums about dual-boot problems have to do with not being able boot OS X. I can do that...that's all I can do.

What am I overlooking? I installed 8.6 because I don't have an OS 9 CD and because the new owner was perfectly happy with 8.6 on his Radius clone before it died.

(The G3 was originally a 266 mHz model; it can do two master/slave pairs)

[reader50]

If I recall correctly, the Beige's onboard ATA controller requires bootable OSes to fall within the first 8 GB of a connected drive. I'd assume that's why your bootable partition was made 7.8 GB, and placed first. Edit: The 8 GB limitation only applies to OSX booting, OS 8.6 / OS 9 is not affected -- thanks to a friend.

The Beige G3 does not support option-boot selecting, that feature turned up much later.

Make a folder called "Mac OS 8.6" at the root of the 7.8 GB partition. Copy 8.6's folders into it. Then see if you can boot into 8.6 from there.

OSX won't want to select it, because it's not OS 9. And 8.6's Startup Disk control panel won't want to select OSX because 8.6 knows nothing about OSX. So switching back and forth might require booting from the relevant CD each time, and selecting the proper OS, then rebooting.

Edit: The 8.6 System Folder may have become unblessed somehow. Boot from the 8.6 CD, and look at the 8.6 System Folder on the hard drive. Does it show the Happy Mac on the folder, or is it still a generic folder? If there is no Happy Mac on the folder, open it. Drag the System suitcase and Finder out of the folder. Close the System Folder. Drag the System suitcase and Finder onto the closed System Folder. Both files will go back in, and the Happy Mac icon should appear on the System Folder. Now try to boot into the 8.6 install again.

[himself]

You can also try XPostFacto for booting between Mac OS X and the classic Mac OS on oldworld machines.