[macgyvr64]

I've got a dual 1 GHz QuickSilver machine that was running 10.3.5 for quite some time, and it is now going to be used for audio recording purposes with Mac OS 9. However, I put in an actual Apple Mac OS 9.2.1 CD, reboot holding C, and only the mouse pointer was displayed. I then removed every bit of non-Apple hardware, including a Protools card, and SCSI card, and a Geethree Stealth Serial port, and it boots the 9.2.1 CD up to the loading screen. The Mac OS 9 progress bar moves about half an inch, then stops. No extensions load (it's a CD, after all).

I've done a PRAM reset, CUDA reset, and "reset-nvram" "reset-all" in OF, and nothing will get this machine to boot OS 9 off the real Apple 9.2.1 CD all the way to the desktop. I've also tried CD-R versions of 9.2 and 9.2.2 (tough to find!), and all I got with them was the blinking ? disk.


What else would stop a dual 1 GHz QS tower (no upgrades, no PCI cards, no hard drive even!) not to boot Mac OS 9?

[bradoesch]

1) Will the CD boot another Mac?

2) Will the QuickSilver boot from any CD?

[tonywong]

Not to be pedantic, but did you put in the 'set-defaults' in the OF reset?

Are they retail versions of 9? or machine specific?

Do the discs show up in the system prefs startup disk in X?

Do the discs show up when you hold the option key down during boot?

[macgyvr64]

1) Will the CD boot another Mac?
Yes, it boots an old G4 (green power LED).

2) Will the QuickSilver boot from any CD?
Yes, it boots 10.3 CD 1 just fine.

Not to be pedantic, but did you put in the 'set-defaults' in the OF reset?
Yes.

Are they retail versions of 9? or machine specific?
The 9.2.2 copy I have is for an iMac G4, but the rest are generic. The real 9.2.1 CD that boots partway is also generic.

Do the discs show up in the system prefs startup disk in X?
On supported machines, yes

Do the discs show up when you hold the option key down during boot?
Yes, and they have the Finder face on them, but clicking it, then Next still results in a blinking ?

[reader50]

What video card is in the Quicksilver? A video card that came out later than the OS version can hang bootup.

[Madrag]

If you've formatted the HD, don't forget to add the OS 9 drivers!

(If you erased a partition, those drivers can be lost, and you'll have to format the HD to add the drivers...)

the same happened to me
I just had to format the HD, and restore the OS 9 image; now it boots (I don't need it anymore anyway,

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by Madrag:

I just had to format the HD, and restore the OS 9 image; now it boots (I don't need it anymore anyway,

I keep OS 9 around for troubleshooting. It's very handy when you need it and rather useless when you don't.

[tonywong]

Can you restore a Classic environment from OS X and then choose that as the startup disk vs. using a CD?

Do you have a HW test CD? Will it boot from there?

[bowwowman]

That G4 most likely came from Apple 9.2.2 preinstalled, in which case it will not boot any previous OS. And that iMac disk wont help, since it is machine specific.

But more than likely, as already mentioned, it sounds as though the OS 9 disk drivers were deleted and not re-installed at some point. This would cause the problems described herein

damned that little √box anyway

[macgyvr64]

Finally got it. Here's what worked.

I downloaded a generic copy of 9.2 (don't complain about piracy; I bought 10.3, but it didn't come with 9.2.0), and that actually booted the machine. I had another copy of 9.2, but that didn't work for some unknown reason.

Once I got it to boot that CD, I ran the installer and was informed that the software couldn't be installed on that machine. Okay, so I'll hook up an IDE optical drive and put in the 9.2.2 CD and run that installer while booted off 9.2. That worked.

Funny thing was that the machine booted the 9.2.2 CD from the slave optical drive I had just hooked up, not the 9.2 CD in the master on the other channel (the main optical drive). Simply putting that very same 9.2.2 CD in the master CD drive would not boot the machine. It took a Lite-On 52X CD-RW in slave mode on the hard drive IDE channel (the one close to the bottom of the case where the main HD tray is). The drive was almost vertical inside the case, but it worked.

Strange thing that OS 9. Whatever. It's installed and working great. I intend to invest in a standalone HD copier once we get ProTools and all that good stuff installed and configured just so. Make a copy onto a blank 20 GB drive (if we can find one!) and just store it for later.