What I meant was you went through all kinds of emulations and various apps that were "dropping bucketloads of notes" (your words) and created the "unbelievably complex" (again,
your words) situation before finally acquiring an older model Mac that could even run something pre-OSX natively to begin with. You've now finally ended up where you could have started. If you find that logic to be condescending, I'm sorry - it wasn't meant to be. Sorry I hurt your "big boy" feelings.
This is what you wrote: "I got an old G4 mac off ebay running 10.3
with 9.2 in classic mode to run SVP and a MIDI USB interface but the SVP play button doesn’t work…"
Every other day somebody posts here or on other sites and forums how they can't get their MIDI, audio, etc etc to play in Classic mode. I have found over time that the best most straightforward way to get them working seems to be a straight-ahead proper re-installation of OS9 and their DAW software along with OMS, FreeMIDI or whatever on a separate volume. There are some very good reasons for this approach that have been discovered over the years that you can read about in many posts on this forum.
So, LOL! Yes, it was a serious suggestion! You see,
you left this part out: SVP plays (was already using 4.5.1 and OMS, so again no need for a download). However I still get no MIDI output as I have now discovered my MIDI interface doesn't have a OS 9 driver.
Instead, what you said you wanted was:
1) Get the play button on SVP to work
2) Get the SMF files to output MIDI properly
So now, hopefully you understand why I responded as I did. One can only process the information one is provided with.
(I have, by the way, been running OSX and OS9 and SVP and Galaxy and a dozen other music producing apps in my studio
continuously for over 20 years so I do know a few things and yes, I even know how to use Startup Disk.)
Glad to see you're so on top of everything here. I'm sure you'll get it to work.