Mac OS 9 booting on: Mac mini G4 (Detailed Posts)

[RossDarker]

By the way, I too long often notice FW drives missing when holding option. Sometimes if you disconnect it, refresh with r key, reboot and plug it in or plug it back in before reboot it will show up. The diskette with ? means I think that it loads the ROM and stuff, so it knows about the System, but the OS 9 drivers are missing, or partition is too big to boot off. You say you have checked both these, so see if you can format it from an installed system on your internal with Drive Setup, and not Drive Setup whilst being booted off the CD.

[Jubadub]

For some reason, it's just the internal drive I cannot dual boot.

Funny how our situation is reversed!

[...] see if you can format it from an installed system on your internal with Drive Setup, and not Drive Setup whilst being booted off the CD.

I believe I tried this, but I'll take another look. I'll also dig up various versions of Driver Setup to see if any of them works. If none does, are there good known replacements for Drive Setup in OS 9? I might pay a trip to the Garden.

[IIO]

lacie silverling was widely used back in the day, mainly for making partitions on firewire disks.

[Jubadub]

Found "LaCie Silverlining", I guess that's it. Funny how my drive is also LaCie. Thanks for the recommendation!

[RossDarker]

My FW drive is A LaCie d2 Quadra where the big blue light on the front is a button where you can assign stuff to run when you press the button somehow.

Anyone know how you'd get OS X on the mini to show the OS 9 partition under Startup Disk pref pane?

[DieHard]

Ross,

Please provide notes or PM me on ROM version and things removed and added to the image, this will be the one I will post on the download boards

[IIO]

Incidentally, I believe although OS 9 won't supposedly boot from partitions bigger than 200GB, it can still see and use partitions as big as 2TB, no?

from firewire yes, from IDE no!

2*500 would be better.

[IIO]

Found "LaCie Silverlining", I guess that's it. Funny how my drive is also LaCie. Thanks for the recommendation!

i think you need the latest v.4.6 something for 9.2.2, SL is very picky about OSes

[IIO]

Anyone know how you'd get OS X on the mini to show the OS 9 partition under Startup Disk pref pane?

eventually it is not ->blessed, but otoh it should be when you installed it via ASR...

p.s. ross, out of interest, can you select this OS9 folder as classic enviroment?

[RossDarker]

It's blessed and I can select it with classic. I can boot it through the option key at startup. I think it doesn't show up in X as a startup disk because the Mac mini doesn't boot a standard OS 9. Doesn't matter too much though.

[darthnVader]

It's blessed and I can select it with classic. I can boot it through the option key at startup. I think it doesn't show up in X as a startup disk because the Mac mini doesn't boot a standard OS 9. Doesn't matter too much though.

The start up disk control panel in OS X goes by the Model Identifier.

You have to change the Model in Open Firmware to one of the OS 9 supported Macs, then you will be able to see OS 9 system folder in OS X start up disk control panel.

[Jubadub]

The start up disk control panel in OS X goes by the Model Identifier.

You have to change the Model in Open Firmware to one of the OS 9 supported Macs, then you will be able to see OS 9 system folder in OS X start up disk control panel.

Are there any known negative side-effects to OS X by doing this?

[RossDarker]

The Mac mini is also required to have a custom System Suitcase. It has ID 3 taken from the boot resource from an older version of ELN's roms copied into the boot resource of the suitcase. I don't know if it is still required (it definitely did originally) but it's still what the latest CD image uses.

[IIO]

the negaitve effect would be that we can not include this change to OSX on the OS9 CD.

[IIO]

tried to boot a stock 1.42 from the mini CD v5 - it hangs at the ethernet driver and shows a bomb.

[RossDarker]

tried to boot a stock 1.42 from the mini CD v5 - it hangs at the ethernet driver and shows a bomb.

I have a 1.42 and I test every CD I make so your ethernet port must have something wrong, or maybe you could try reset PRAM. Maybe your CD was burned at too high of a speed, could be scratched also.

[IIO]

i´ve indeed used a very cheap, minor quality, media (first time in my life), but the machine doesnt complain that the media can not be read when you attempt to copy it to HD.

maybe there is an issue with my 1920*1200 setting? i will see soon...

for now i am copying the OS9 folder to HD and use it as classic enviroment. (there is a juvenile 10.4.11 installed)

[IIO]

uh no, of course that doesnt work i go via firewire boot.

[RossDarker]

You could try getting the contents of the disk image (ISO) to a USB stick:

hdid -nomount /Path\ to/MacminiV5.iso
(Take note of the number /dev/diskX, what ever X is)

diskutil list

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskY
or
diskutil umount /dev/diskY
 (Y being the disk of the USB)

sudo dd if=/dev/diskX of=/dev/diskY
(Use ctrl+t, to see how many bytes transferred)

Then boot the Mac mini from the USB in open firmware

[IIO]

ok i found out what was up.

the mac mini doesnt seems to like when you remove the usb keyboard during operation.

because that is what i did during the CD installation above.

i tried to remove the usb keyboard during OSX boot on the same machine now - and it also happens (well, it continues to boot but you dont get the keyboard get. i have never seen this before on a mac...)