Mac Mini with broken DVD drive, any chance to install MacOs9 ?

[Pabloz]

Hi guys, i have an old Mac Mini 4G, it currently has MacOs 10 installed. but i want to have it with MACOS9 for retro games. I downloaded the MacOs9 ISO V8  from this forum and burned into a CD. but my MAC Mini dvd drive is broken, every CD or DVD i insert gives me some motor sounds and then the CD gets ejected after 15 or 20 seconds.

what i did was to connect an External USB DVD burner lite-on, the CD shows up on MacOS 10, but when i keep pressing the option key while booting only the Hard drive shows up as bootable, so maybe these old macs cannot boot from external CDRom drives?
(the macos9 v8 ISO was burned on a PC using Nero burning rom)

- So my question is related what can be done if my Mac Mini DVD drive is broken?
- If it did not work with external usb dvd drive then USB flashdrive must be not possible?
- can i replace the original MacMini dvd drive with a normal PC PATA notebook dvd drive? at least to boot the CD, or Macs has a different connector for dvd?

i appreciate any  tip you can give me, since my dvd drive is broken i have no idea how to install macOS 9 v8   
-

[SDG]

G4s tend not to boot from USB by default. They can be coaxed to do it for OSX, not sure it will work for OS9. The easiest solution is to either replace the optical drive or to use an external FW optical drive like this one

[macStuff]

you dont have to use an optical drive;
there is something called the "drag install" diehard created;
he might be able to help you out with instructions but hes over his head atm with things to do

personally id say just buy another g4 mini that isnt screwd up will probably be lesss money then buying a firewier cd/dvd drive
i dont touch mac minis tho id stay with old faithful Desktop g3/g4 form factor that has the ability to open up easily and easily replace hard drives + cdroms etc
get a real g4

[macarone]

1) Back up your MacMini to an external FireWire drive.

2) If you don't have another Mac, either invite a friend with a Mac laptop over, or take your MacMini, keyboard and mouse to a friend with a Mac.

3) Start up your MacMini with the T key held down, give it time to boot and then connect it with a FireWire cable to a regularly booted Mac. Your MacMini should mount on the other Mac like an external hard drive.

4) Use DiskUtility to ERASE the hard drive on your MacMini, and BE SURE TO CHOOSE: "Install Mac OS6 9 Drivers. Then REFORMAT the hard drive in your MacMini into at least 2 partitions. You may adjust the size so that one of them is large enough to restore the original data.

5) Copy a OS 9 System Folder with MODIFIED "Mac OS ROM"  file. A Finder copy will work. (just drag it to the smaller partition. No need to use copy or restore utilities. Make sure the folder is "blessed" by dragging Finder to Desktop and dropping it over the System Folder icon. Or run DiskWarrior on the OS 9 partition from the booted computer.

6) Plug the external drive with the backup of your MacMini when you started. Use SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner to restore to larger partition.

7) Eject the 2 MacMini partitions and disconnect the FireWire cable between the 2 computers and hold the power key on the MacMini 5 secs to turn it off.

Boot the MacMini with Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse connected and hold the Option key down. PRAY to Steve Jobs who art in Heaven. Select OS 9. If OS 9 does NOT appear, boot into OS X, and go Startup Disk Pref Pane, and see if OS 9 appears there.

9) No matter what happens post an insult telling me my instructions are stupid, and you will get better, simpler and easier to follow answers than mine.

[Pabloz]

hey guys, thanks for all your reply and knowledge. since i didnt have any friend  near that uses a Mac. I followed the path of opening the mini and removing the PATA drive.

first i tried with a dvd drive from a thinkpad, it started to work fine i was able to boot the cd and just after the screen with the txt file tutorial steps appears and hard drive wipe utility , mouse dissapeared from screen, tried several mouses and none worked.

then tried with a dvd drive from a Dell notebook and i was able to fully install MacOs9 withouse mouse issues.

some things i found rare:

1) in OS9 if i connect the External usb CDR-W, the OS9 will only detect if its a data disc. If i insert a music cd or a DVD movie..it just ejects the disc. Kind of bad because i wanted to be able to read all discs with a usb CDR-W

2) as we all know, no sound so im looking near my city a usb sound dongle

3) related to #1 how can you play a game in macOS9 that has data and music tracks in it? is there an image utility or is there something like daemon tools or alcohol 120% that creates a virtual cdrom and loads the ISO?

[RossDarker]

is there an image utility or is there something like daemon tools or alcohol 120% that creates a virtual cdrom and loads the ISO?

Check this http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/virtual-dvd-romcd-utility

Also on your external volume speaker, did you make sure you had the input set to the aux in, and also have it quite up a bit?

[macStuff]

is there an image utility or is there something like daemon tools or alcohol 120% that creates a virtual cdrom and loads the ISO?

yes; its funny u word it this way because its likely that adaptec TOAST was the original softawre that might have originated the whole virtual image mounting; probably before daemon tools ever got started
only trouble is this doesnt help when it comes to booting and doing a fresh install that way; but its macos9 and its a very simple os; u can just drag the files from a saved fresh install onto your driev with diehards fresh drag install

[Pabloz]

is there an image utility or is there something like daemon tools or alcohol 120% that creates a virtual cdrom and loads the ISO?

Check this http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/virtual-dvd-romcd-utility

Also on your external volume speaker, did you make sure you had the input set to the aux in, and also have it quite up a bit?

hi. sorry i didnt understand your question

on macOS i only see one setup for audio and the only device listed is built in audio.  the speaker tab is greyed out

in my speaker...its one of those 90s style pc speakers. powered to wall , with just volume control and plugs into minijack on the back of the macmini

[Pabloz]

i was wrong

there is sound coming out of the minijack, even at full speaker volume its kind of low tho.
i was so wrong, i thought it had no sound because on common tasks like empty the trashcan and thing like that i never got any sound at all, and on the sound system setup i see preloaded sound files for common tasks and when i hit play nothing happened

then i installed quicktime, downloaded some mp3s and some mov files and i was able to hear the sound!
these adapters cheap  china also work

https://showmecables-static.scdn3.secure.raxcdn.com/media/catalog/product/cache/ecd051e9670bd57df35c8f0b122d8aea/u/s/usb-to-3.5mm-audio-converter-adl-usb-audio-1.jpg

https://dqzrr9k4bjpzk.cloudfront.net/images/13467108/872424576.jpg

the second one has a small crackle from time to time.

[darthnVader]

You should be able to boot any new world mac from a USB stick with os 9

devalias is your friend.

boot usb0\disk:,\\:tbxi

[IIO]

... when it is APM/HFS formatted, that is.

[alexfree]

Just a heads up for anyone coming across this with the same problem...

external USB DVD burners work, even the cheapest one I bought at BestBuy last year.

[IIO]

and i think it didnt work for the OP becasue he was not going into the boot manager.
holding "c" will usually not show up usb or firewire attached optical discs.