[micha schraven]

i have tried to install os 9 three times on my powerbook 333 and it has never operated well.

first time after installation I rebooted and my finder quitted. Back to macos 8.6

second try after installation I rebooted and got a bombmessage while starting up. back to 8.6

third time I tried another version of 9, the international one. And well..it quitted on me again. the finder just stalls while opening my systemfolder. No errormessage or bomb. Mouse wouldnt move, the only keycombination that worked was the resetbutton on the back of my powerbook.

It seems to me that MACOS 9 was released too soon. Plainly, it sucks too much.

Many features I like about 8.6 are not available on 9, like the graphic calculator.
Got problems with 9 and your powerbook? share it.

[Adam Silver]

It sounds like you have a corrupted system. Mac OS 9 is less stable than 8.6 but it isn't that bad. Try a clean install. In fact, run Disk First Aid, Norton Utilities, or TechTool Pro before you try a clean install.

The Graphing Calculator is included with Mac OS 9. It just isn't in the Apple Menu Items folder. An updated version is available at:

http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html

[This message has been edited by Adam Silver (edited 03-03-2000).]

[theMacDude]

I have to agree with Adam. MacOS 9 is fine and I always do a Clean Install when doing a major upgrade.

The CD has Graphing Calculator on it.

-Enjoy

[Gregory]

I start ANY system "upgrade" even 8.5 => 8.6 with reformatting and clean install. Slower but in the end faster and (more) stable. And 8.6 had its own caveats - DFA not reporting or fixing some errors, writes to Directory causing more trouble. 9 has better memory management.

Odd. After years, they still keep telling us there is more native code, less legacy support.

They're coming out with Dell/Compaq machines that lack ANY legacy devices to make for simpler, more stable, systems.

My next machine/OS if all the trouble though with 9.0/9.01/9.02 and then AppleWorks 6, and what I hear of OS X - I'll go to LinuxPPC 2000 - OR - Windows2000. Really. After dozen years and twice that in $1k's upgrades etc.

OS 9 works for some, for some - wait for "minuet" for masses - has disappointed and frustrated many users.

Greg

[typoon]

I did a clen install of OS 9 ran some utilities and it runs great. Still Waiting for OS X though. From a Preview I saw and played with it is going to ROCK! Linux PPC 2000 is cool too. I would never go to Bugs 2000 (ie Windows 2000). I reformatted my drive and re-installed 9.0 and it ran better than before. Also 9.0.3 is pretty cool fixes a bunch of bugs

[billybob]

Ok, I can understand not liking os9.... but one of the main reasons being it doesnt have the GRAPHING CALCULATOR? please.... first off it is on the os9 cd, secondly, how often do you REALLY use that? it's not like that useful, and if you did need it for some reason, you'd probably wanna buy a real program anyways. even it wasnt on the os9 cd, you could always copy it from the 8.5 cd or whatever.

I dunno, i have my complaints about os9 myself, but its not THAT bad...

[micha schraven]

Hi,

thank you for your replies, but still MACOS 9 is not working on my powerbook. I have 192 mb internal memory so that's not a problem.

8.6 quits once every two weeks, macos 9 just never worked. I gave the powerbook to an applestore where they would install it for me. Boy, that guy sweated for 2 hours. And still it won't work.
So, it is back to 8.6 to me. why replace something that works fine?

[Keda]

Im guessing you did a cleaninstall. Man, that sucks!

Is your drive HFS or HFS+. This wasnt an issue for me, but I cant think of anything else. Have you used any utilites to check your disk?

I have found 9 (on 4 diff Macs) to be stable and I like the auto upgrade feature. But, I honestly dont think its worth that much sweat. If nothing else works(can you reformat your drive?), maybe you can try to get a refund and go back to 8.6.

I have a 300Mhz G3 (was 233Mhz) first gen G3.
Many of you may have excuses and such about why OS 9 doesnt work here or there and how to fix it... but the fact of the matter is that an OS should not do any of this. Things should not get currupt and IF they do the system should be smart enough to fix ALL known variations of any problem the system may come across that it itself caused. Its not the users fault if the user reformats and zeros the users HD and clean install OS 9 and it fails and fails and fails again. OS 9 is beta quality software.

[micha schraven]

amen

[wlonh]

well, on my beige G3 rev2 minitower MacOS 9 is totally uneventful, the kind of uneventful everyone wants: stable

and i know that all my family's Macs are running MacOS 9 (iBook, PB 3400, PB G3 series, Performa 6360, PM 6500, PM 8600) and are experiencing stable conditions...

i am not saying that MacOS 9 is all that, i am saying it is not as bad as some claim it to be

Amen wlonh.

OS 9 is rock-solid stable on two Macs here too. One is an 8600/G4/400, I had a little trouble installing over 8.6, so I did a clean install and have had smooth sailing ever since. The other machine is a factory installed OS 9 on a G4/350, has not crashed ONCE in six weeks of use. Out of the box, no reinstallation necessary.

peace,
Linda

Awesome that it works well for some. Awesome that its uneventfull and stable for some. So glad it works nicely for some. Maybe for most it works fine. Perhaps for 90% of all )S 9 users it works perfictly. What about that 10%? For that 10% there is problems. For that 10% they want to know why their OS is be'n beta quality. Does that 10%not matter? Therefor this OS isnt all the bad things it could be? Some beta software works for more than it doesnt work for. Didja know opening Sherloch 2 in 8.6 says it needs OS 8.7 to run? All who own OS 9.0 own in reality either OS 8.7b1 or OS 9.0b1. What a confusing and unstable and slow OS 9 is. It has some good features but an upgrade isnt always determaned by the number after the OS.

[wlonh]

look, i was only trying to add some balance to the subject... ya dig. though why i bother sometimes is beyond me, it is nearly always taken the wrong way.

i did NOT imply/infer/suggest that those who are having trouble with MacOS 9 do not count. no way did i say that, nor would i say it.

and yes, the majority of MacOS 9 users are not having great difficulties with OS 9. i know quite a large number of Mac users by more than just acquaintance and not one of them is having any trouble to speak of with OS 9.

no one, not you or anyone else knows how i am troubled by many aspects of Apple's dealings in the past several months, and if i were selfish i wouldn't care about Apple's dealings BECAUSE my particular computing environment suits me just fine and i have all the speed and storage space and stability that i need.

but to be smug is not a far-sighted approach to the matter and therefore i am VERY concerned with certain things happening in the Mac world emanating from Cupertino.

now, allow me to help some folks as best i can out of the kindness of my heart (yes that IS correct, kindness i said)... thank you

[Adam Silver]

Lazeruus,let it go. Mac OS 9 works for almost everyone. Almost every issue has been fixed. Thanks to the Software Update control panel, you can assume that normal people have updated their systems. It is not beta software (officially or unofficially).

As for 8.7 vs. 9, do I have to explain marketing to you?

hahaha stop taking thigs so personal I wasnt directing my words to anyone person. I'm just saying that an OS that is getting these many complaints is an unfinished OS. As I said before many beta quality software works very well for many people as does OS 9. I understand markating and understand that people will react more to a full 1.0 upgarde than a smaller .1 upgarde. 9.0 didnt deserve to have a full 1.0 upgarde for it just wasnt improved upon enough. Sherlock 2 was cool. The auto update thing and multiusers capabilities were also cool. (I dont see why I should 'let it go' for people that dont let many things go help improve. Never settle for okay if great is just around the corner. I hope 9.04 or .05 makes everything great untill then many people such as myself will be 'downgradeing' to 8.6 simple for the fact that 9.0 doesnt work properly in all systems supported by Apple.
Have a nice day!

I have come to realize the when you have a product that works for the 90% of the Mac masses and the 10% that have the problems with it. The 10% are probably not telling you the truth or the WHOLE truth. There is no logical reason that if lets say 100 people that have the same config as the poor sap who wants the Graph Calc and it works for 99 of them, my guess is that he is not telling everything that we need to know. I support 5k users world wide and we config there laptops here and we QC the hec out of each and every laptop that leaves here. they call and tell us that when tey rec'vd the laptop it does not work...Bull#$%@. they did something that they were no suppose to do or they installed SW that just does not allow the computer function properly. my guess is that sap man is not tell us the truth the WHOLE truth and nithing but the truth

Actually, I want to contest that 90% good figure. We're running OS9 on 5 different G4s here in a university lab, and every single one of them crashes on a near-hourly basis. And I've spent almost the whole of today trying to fix one machine which can't start-up without finder crashing. It starts without the extensions; when I divide my extensions into two batches, it can start with either one-- but not both! *frustration*

If you do a search on "finder quits" in these forums, you'll find that I'm hardly the only one with this problem. What's more, there's no simple single source of error. There's something fundamentally wrong with the way OS9 handles extensions, and if you haven't happened to install something to trigger that error, it speaks to your luck rather than to the quality of OS9. This level of performance is unacceptable in an operating system-- particularly if it's the OS that shipped with the product!

In short, OS9 is as bad as they say-- worse, even. It's bad, bad, badity bad.

[WSKCONDOR]

I must agree with almost everyone. OS9 is stable and OS9 is problematic. What does that mean? Well I HAD an iMacDVSE and I installed OS9-I had some severe problems, one of which caused me to have to completely reformat the drive after which I reverted to 8.6 and had little or NO problems. Now, however, I have a Pismo 500MHz, so I have no choice but to use 9. MOST of the time it has been stable, but I installed a lot of stuff right after getting the machine (who doesn't, that's why you GOT the machine,right?) And I had problems. Some USB plugging and unplugging (hardware) problems-some of which have been acknowledged by Apple. And some mysterious-unable-to-start-up with extensions on problems. Those are bad, but usually can be traced to one software install, or a pair taht aren't playing well together. I have had to restart with OS9-all, and then duplicate and create a new set, turning extensions back on one at a time, AS I NEED THEM, and seeing if I have problems. So far so good.

So is it BETA-quality, or not?
1) The hardware problems are not acceptable-and Apple dropped the ball with that. They cut corners with engineering or else they had a less than competent team on some modules.
2)The third party conflicts are harder. People ARE having problems, so there ARE issues out there. Perhaps if Apple would spend a little more effort on testing WITH the most common 3rd party packages it would help. But I would actually rather have the system out and get thousands of angy consumers talking to the Microsoft IE team, or to driver developers than to wait and then still have the problems, but at a later date, because the 3rd parties still didn't code with discipline or whatever.

3) Was Windows 95, 98, or is 2000 BETA software at release? Do you know how many bugs those operating systems had or presently have? I hade a roommate who wanted to install Win95 the day after it came out. He locked himself in his room for 8 hours for two days. At the end of that he could startup but many of his old programs would not run.

4) Is #3) an excuse for Apple to slack off? ABSOLUTELY NOT! If you are looking in your rear (Windows) view mirror, you are not looking forward. Ok to check now and then, but concentrate on where you are going. we expect and demand that Apple hold itself to a higher standard than other operating systems, and we pay for it in sheer price and compatibility every day.

Chant the Zen mantra. what is and what will be. OS9...this too shall pass...and OSX will lie ahead. Meanwhile, keep the pressure on Cupertino to MAKE IT BETTER. I didn't really like the middle Indiana Jones movie, but I went to see it anyway, because I like Indiana Jones. I hoped the third one would be better...and it was.

[wlonh]

ahhhhhh...

that was soothing, WSKCONDOR. i particularly liked the finish: "this too shall pass... and OSX will lie ahead", may we live in interesting times... can i_get_an amen...

btw, OS 9 is still stable on all my family's Macs: "...not a SPECK of cereal."

I have 2 OS9 disks. One from the apple developer program and one from the store. When I install the one from the store it always crashes and does the delay thing. When I install the apple developer one it works great! I don't know, you tell me.

[micha schraven]

reply to WSKCONDOR..

I don't think it is okay to compare MACOS to Windows. After all : while 95 and 98 were bugging around, we still had stable macosses.

MACOS 9 is a mess. besides, I heard a beta release of macos x (now that's 10 right?) is circulating in the illegal cirquit. people were not too enthousiastic about that either.
8.6 , as far as I am concerned, is better after all.

I don't get it. I have an old Power Macintosh 7500 on which I have done same major surgery to, i.e., adding a 150 604 PPC, Voodoo 3 2000, ATI 128 Nexus, Audio Media III card. It has two internal hard drives, one external, an external CD recorder and a ZIP disk. It's now running as a 366 G3 PPC. I've been using this Macintosh since System 7.5 and I must say that I don't have any problems with Mac OS 9. I only made sure to install the latest ATM (Adobe Type Manager 4.5.2/This update is only for OS 9 users) and it's been running just fine.

I'm running Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament at full resolution on the Internet using a 56k modem. I do manage to frag my way to first place from time to time.

Ceaser A. Miranda, Jr.