Tutorial : Dual Booting Mac OS X And Mac OS 9 On The Mac Mini G4 (Same HDD)

[alexfree]

I recently just got the chance to run Mac OS 9 for the first time after discovering the Mac OS 9 Mac Mini G4 Hacked ISO. This inspired me to write a tutorial on dual booting the Mac Mini G4 with any supported Mac OS X version and Mac OS 9 on the same HDD.

Just a note, I can’t believe this forum got the last new PPC hardware from Apple to boot OS 9. I’m just amazed. Thank you for inviting me into the world of Mac OS 9 for the first time.

==Notes On Using Mac OS 9==
Mac OS 9 does not support WiFi or Bluetooth.

Currently the release post for the Mac Mini G4 Hacked ISO v8 states that the loud fan bug may still be an issue. The fan is normal for me in Mac OS 9 so this must have been fixed.

There is a bug where right after boot sometimes the mouse cursor freezes. Rebooting fixes it. There is a workaround I wrote about here http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5347.0.html to allow safe rebooting when this happens by using a Hot Key to reboot correctly from the keyboard.

The internal speaker does not work in Mac OS 9, but the headphone jack does at a fixed volume level. I have an aux cord connected to a sound system with it's own volume control so this doesn't bother me at all. I can get very high output from this Mac Mini G4 on this fixed volume level by turning up my sound system.

I have the native resolution of my TV 1366x768  working perfectly, but have heard some very high resolutions may cause issues and that lowering the resolution manually fixes it.

==My Problem==
I use a Logitech wireless 2.4ghz USB keyboard and mouse with my Mac Mini G4. Unfortunately, this means I can not use any key combinations when the Mac Mini G4 first boots. Like holding down the c key to boot from a disc, or hold down option for the boot menu. The way I will get around this is further in the tutorial.

==Requirements==
-A Mac Mini G4.
-(optional) an Ethernet connection to the internet. WiFi does not work in Mac OS 9, I use an Ethernet to WiFi adapter since my Mac Mini G4 is nowhere near the router and whoever first bought this Mac Mini G4 didn’t add WiFi and Bluetooth to their configuration as they were build to order options.

-A Mac OS X Installer disc.
-The Mac OS 9 Hacked Mac Mini G4 ISO found in this page: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=4365.0 .

==Step 1: Installing Mac OS X==
I’m dual booting Mac OS X 10.5.6 so I put in the DVD I burned and let it boot.

Once the installer boots, I agreed to the license agreement and selected Terminal from the Utilities button within the Menu Bar at the top. I am partitioning from within Terminal and not with Disk Utility. This is because the "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" option in Disk Utility is not available to PPC Mac's that can not officially boot Mac OS 9. In Terminal, I executed this command:

diskutil partitonDisk /dev/disk0 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 35G JHFS+ macosx 35G

I still have the 80GB original internal HDD in this Mac Mini G4, so I told diskutil to make 2 35GB partitions with the previous command. Even though this totals to 70GB, it appears diskutil fixed this and made one of the partition's 39GBs and the other 35GBs.

Whatever you do, the Mac OS 9 partition can not exceed 190GB due to Mac OS 9 limitations.

Then I went to the Menu Bar and quit Terminal. If you want, you can open up Disk Utility and now see a grayed out "Mac OS 9 Drivers" checkbox checked. Now go on and install Mac OS X.

==Step 2: Turning Off Auto-Boot==
Once Mac OS X 10.5 is installed, I executed this command in Terminal:

nvram auto-boot?=false

This makes the Mac Mini G4 boot into the Open Firmware console by default. This means I can get to a boot menu without needing the boot commands which I can't access with this wireless USB keyboard since it does not work immediately at boot.

==Step 3: Installing Mac OS 9 With Mac OS X==

Now while still in Mac OS X, I'm going to install Mac OS 9 from within Mac OS X. I have to do this, since even when single booting the Mac OS 9 Mac Mini G4 burned CD, my wireless mouse doesn't work after a few seconds. It does work in regular installed Mac OS 9. Doing this also means you don't need to burn another DVD or CD.

In Finder on Mac OS X, I mounted  the Mac Mini G4 Mac OS 9 Hacked ISO file. In it will be a Contents directory. Open that up and you will find a Macintosh HD file. I then mounted the Macintosh HD file, and copied everything into the macos9 partition that is on my Desktop. I Also copied  the CD Extras directory to the macos9 partition.

Then I blessed the Mac OS 9 partition. I opened  Terminal and executed the command:

sudo bless -folder9 /Volumes/macos9/System\ Folder -use9 -bootBlockFile /usr/share/misc/bootblockdata

Note that /Volumes/macos9/System\ Folder might be different if you named your Mac OS 9 partition differently then I did previously in this tutorial.

==Step 4: Booting Mac OS 9==
I then rebooted, and the Mac Mini G4 booted into Open Firmware. I executed the command:

multi-boot

This took minutes to fully load, but now I have macosx and macos9 partitions selectable. I selected macos9 with the arrow keys and booted the OS.

Due to the mouse bug, I had to reboot once again. But then my mouse was movable and normal. If the mouse freezes at boot, continue to reboot until it works.

To boot a different OS or the same OS again, repeat step 4.

[DieHard]

Alex, you definitely get an honorable mention for this post; it is well thought out, concise and valuable; I hope this helps many

Just a side note, as discussed before, turn "spotlight" off for the OS9 volume in OSX to avoid any filesystem glitches that OSX may cause by writing info to the OS9 volume

[alexfree]

Alex, you definitely get an honorable mention for this post; it is well thought out, concise and valuable; I hope this helps many

Just a side note, as discussed before, turn "spotlight" off for the OS9 volume in OSX to avoid any filesystem glitches that OSX may cause by writing info to the OS9 volume

Thank you your reply means a lot! Thanks for moderating one of the best websites and keeping my new favorite OS alive.

[alexfree]

I recently just got the chance to run Mac OS 9 for the first time after discovering the Mac OS 9 Mac Mini G4 Hacked ISO. This inspired me to write a tutorial on dual booting the Mac Mini G4 with any supported Mac OS X version and Mac OS 9 on the same HDD.

Just a note, I can’t believe this forum got the last new PPC hardware from Apple to boot OS 9. I’m just amazed. Thank you for inviting me into the world of Mac OS 9 for the first time.

==Notes On Using Mac OS 9==
Mac OS 9 does not support WiFi or Bluetooth.

Currently the release post for the Mac Mini G4 Hacked ISO v8 states that the loud fan bug may still be an issue. The fan is normal for me in Mac OS 9 so this must have been fixed.

There is a bug where right after boot sometimes the mouse cursor freezes. Rebooting fixes it. There is a workaround I wrote about here http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5347.0.html to allow safe rebooting when this happens by using a Hot Key to reboot correctly from the keyboard.

The internal speaker does not work in Mac OS 9, but the headphone jack does at a fixed volume level. I have an aux cord connected to a sound system with it's own volume control so this doesn't bother me at all. I can get very high output from this Mac Mini G4 on this fixed volume level by turning up my sound system.

I have the native resolution of my TV 1366x768  working perfectly, but have heard some very high resolutions may cause issues and that lowering the resolution manually fixes it.

==My Problem==
I use a Logitech wireless 2.4ghz USB keyboard and mouse with my Mac Mini G4. Unfortunately, this means I can not use any key combinations when the Mac Mini G4 first boots. Like holding down the c key to boot from a disc, or hold down option for the boot menu. The way I will get around this is further in the tutorial.

==Requirements==
-A Mac Mini G4.
-(optional) an Ethernet connection to the internet. WiFi does not work in Mac OS 9, I use an Ethernet to WiFi adapter since my Mac Mini G4 is nowhere near the router and whoever first bought this Mac Mini G4 didn’t add WiFi and Bluetooth to their configuration as they were build to order options.

-A Mac OS X Installer disc.
-The Mac OS 9 Hacked Mac Mini G4 ISO found in this page: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=4365.0 .

==Step 1: Installing Mac OS X==
I’m dual booting Mac OS X 10.5.6 so I put in the DVD I burned and let it boot.

Once the installer boots, I agreed to the license agreement and selected Terminal from the Utilities button within the Menu Bar at the top. I am partitioning from within Terminal and not with Disk Utility. This is because the "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" option in Disk Utility is not available to PPC Mac's that can not officially boot Mac OS 9. In Terminal, I executed this command:

diskutil partitonDisk /dev/disk0 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 35G JHFS+ macosx 35G

I still have the 80GB original internal HDD in this Mac Mini G4, so I told diskutil to make 2 35GB partitions with the previous command. Even though this totals to 70GB, it appears diskutil fixed this and made one of the partition's 39GBs and the other 35GBs.

Whatever you do, the Mac OS 9 partition can not exceed 190GB due to Mac OS 9 limitations.

Then I went to the Menu Bar and quit Terminal. If you want, you can open up Disk Utility and now see a grayed out "Mac OS 9 Drivers" checkbox checked. Now go on and install Mac OS X.

==Step 2: Turning Off Auto-Boot==
Once Mac OS X 10.5 is installed, I executed this command in Terminal:

nvram auto-boot?=false

This makes the Mac Mini G4 boot into the Open Firmware console by default. This means I can get to a boot menu without needing the boot commands which I can't access with this wireless USB keyboard since it does not work immediately at boot.

==Step 3: Installing Mac OS 9 With Mac OS X==

Now while still in Mac OS X, I'm going to install Mac OS 9 from within Mac OS X. I have to do this, since even when single booting the Mac OS 9 Mac Mini G4 burned CD, my wireless mouse doesn't work after a few seconds. It does work in regular installed Mac OS 9. Doing this also means you don't need to burn another DVD or CD.

In Finder on Mac OS X, I mounted  the Mac Mini G4 Mac OS 9 Hacked ISO file. In it will be a Contents directory. Open that up and you will find a Macintosh HD file. I then mounted the Macintosh HD file, and copied everything into the macos9 partition that is on my Desktop. I Also copied  the CD Extras directory to the macos9 partition.

Then I blessed the Mac OS 9 partition. I opened  Terminal and executed the command:

sudo bless -folder9 /Volumes/macos9/System\ Folder -use9 -bootBlockFile /usr/share/misc/bootblockdata

Note that /Volumes/macos9/System\ Folder might be different if you named your Mac OS 9 partition differently then I did previously in this tutorial.

==Step 4: Booting Mac OS 9==
I then rebooted, and the Mac Mini G4 booted into Open Firmware. I executed the command:

multi-boot

This took minutes to fully load, but now I have macosx and macos9 partitions selectable. I selected macos9 with the arrow keys and booted the OS.

Due to the mouse bug, I had to reboot once again. But then my mouse was movable and normal. If the mouse freezes at boot, continue to reboot until it works.

To boot a different OS or the same OS again, repeat step 4.

Just an update. There is no “Contents” folder in the Mac OS 9 Installer. It’s actually named “Configurations” (been spending too much time in Mac OS X app bundles).

[kikyoulinux]

Thanks for your great job!
I also find a way to dual boot X and 9 on the same partition.
Use IdentityTool (in the same repo with LeopardAssistant) to add MacRISC and MacRISC2 flags. After rebooting, Mac OS 9's system folder is selectable on Mac OS X's Startup Disk.
But I don't know what would happen to Mac OS X if MacRISC and MacRISC2 flags are checked, together with MacRISC3. It seems that I haven't encountered any bugs related to that so far...

[macarone]

> I can’t believe this forum got the last new PPC hardware from Apple to boot OS 9.

I can't  believe it either. I think it was an April Fools joke.

[alexfree]

> I can’t believe this forum got the last new PPC hardware from Apple to boot OS 9.

I can't  believe it either. I think it was an April Fools joke.

No it’s definitely real I use it daily. The Mac Mini was the last all new computer model from Apple using the PPC architecture and this forum got it to run Mac OS 9 natively. This got me into Mac OS 9, as it was the first time I’ve ever been able to use it. Now I have a blueberry iBook G3 Clamshell 300MHZ, and once my charger is shipped to me I’ll have an officially supported Mac OS 9 laptop.

I don’t know of any other OS that can playback a 480p MP4 with under 100MB of RAM used.

[Jubadub]

I don’t know of any other OS that can playback a 480p MP4 with under 100MB of RAM used.

Wait... MP4 playback? Could you enlighten me and tell which Mac OS 9 program supports MP4? And is it both audio and video playback, or just audio?

[theG4fantastic]

n-as-mac-mini:~ na$ nvram auto-boot?=false
nvram: Error (-1) setting variable - 'auto-boot?'

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

[IIO]

he means mpeg-4, which as container format also can contain content with compressions methods older than mp4. :=)

[Volga163]

n-as-mac-mini:~ na$ nvram auto-boot?=false
nvram: Error (-1) setting variable - 'auto-boot?'

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Try to run the command with sudo:
sudo nvram auto-boot?=false

[theG4fantastic]

OK. I blessed the Mac OS 9 partition.

I got the nvram to dual boot.

The OS 9 disk appears as a selection after multi-boot. It starts for a brief second, then I get the disk with ?.

Any ideas?

[Jubadub]

OK. I blessed the Mac OS 9 partition.

I got the nvram to dual boot.

The OS 9 disk appears as a selection after multi-boot. It starts for a brief second, then I get the disk with ?.

Any ideas?

Did you check if you could boot OS 9 from that HDD (SSD?) in a normal configuration (meaning no OS X alongside it) first?

When I used a 512GB PATA SSD, "alt-booting" the internal drive was out of the question. I also couldn't boot directly from the SSD into 9 even otherwise, and to get around this, I discovered and used a certain exploit.

But first, let's try to rule out all other possibilities.

[IIO]

as much as i appreciate the effort to overcome this, but right now your best bet is to replace the DVD drive with a second SSD and boot your linux/OSX/morphOS from there.

otoh, i wonder if it would work to prepare a disk in alex´style with miniOS9 and 10.4 or 10.5 and then make a clone/ASR installer DVD of it?

[lxs]

This post was very useful. I have a G4 Mac Mini and OS X Install disk. I tried many ways to burn a bootable OS 9 from (hacked and Universal iso), but none would boot.

Using the method here, I now have a dual booting machine. Thank you!

A question, is it possible to have Open Firmware automatically go into dual boot (eg after 5 seconds)?

[Jacques]

I had to explicitly specify the partition numbers doing it with a 10.4.11 install dvd.

diskutil partitonDisk /dev/disk0 2 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 30G JHFS+ macosx 45G

Thank you for the writeup!

[teroyk]

diskutil partitonDisk /dev/disk0 2 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 30G JHFS+ macosx 45G

JHFS+ macosx? Journaled? Mac OS 9 not see it, or is it what you want?

[macarone]

 >The Mac Mini was the last all new computer model from Apple using the PPC architecture and this forum got it to run Mac OS 9 natively.

NO!

The last PPC Mac was NOT the Sept 2005 G4 MacMini.

The last Mac PPC was the G5 Oct 2005  Tower PowerMac11,2

and I would be delighted to know how to get it to boot into OS 9.

I still think the article was an April Fool joke.

[DieHard]

The Mac Mini was the last all new computer model from Apple using the "G4" PPC architecture and this forum got it to run Mac OS 9 natively

Ok... fixed

Forget the G5, as the experts (I'm not one of them) here have explained, they can make the G5 will run OS9 natively, as long as you don't need any working slots, sound, Ethernet, firewire, USB ports, etc.  The G5 would be a huge undertaking with radically different hardware.

[Jacques]

diskutil partitonDisk /dev/disk0 2 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 30G JHFS+ macosx 45G

JHFS+ macosx? Journaled? Mac OS 9 not see it, or is it what you want?

HFS+ for the OS 9 partition and JHFS+ for MacOS 10.3. OS 9 sees the JHFS+ partition and the drive appears on the desktop. I've not tried writing between the drives as I don't like 'mixing my OS drinks'. This is what I wanted, my FW400 external drive acts as a common software repository.