Dual Booting Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10.2?

[Europa]

So I recently bought an iBook and am thinking I'll eventually upgrade it with maxed RAM and a 128GB SSD.

I've heard of issues between Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 occuring (and have actually had it happen with my G4 running OS 9 and Tiger). Would this be an issue with Jaguar too or is it old enough that it doesn't mess with the filesystem enough to cause any problems?

I know a few major culprits are Spotlight and Time Machine, neither of which Jaguar has. I think it would be cool to possibly do it and I probably will once I make the upgrades I mentioned. Does anyone know of any reason I shouldn't do this?

[Odi458]

I have a 3rd edition g4 ibook 1inch 1.33 with 1.25gb or ram which comes with panther grey dvd'sand with a little digging it is possible to dual partition there you should read the posts by imic on setting it up with right rom and driver's and nvam patch which tells the system that it isn't restricted to just X and remember once installed of the unsupported cd to remove the multi cpu folder from the extension folder. I have posted my journey thus far in my other posts. Panther doesn't have spotlight and seems to like my machine more than tiger or leopard for me anyway.

[Odi458]

ALSO Depending on the ibook you have if it is the same as mine the ssd hard drive is a big job to replace
Ram is much easier

[GaryN]

So I recently bought an iBook and am thinking I'll eventually upgrade it with maxed RAM and a 128GB SSD.

I've heard of issues between Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 occuring (and have actually had it happen with my G4 running OS 9 and Tiger). Would this be an issue with Jaguar too or is it old enough that it doesn't mess with the filesystem enough to cause any problems?

I know a few major culprits are Spotlight and Time Machine, neither of which Jaguar has. I think it would be cool to possibly do it and I probably will once I make the upgrades I mentioned. Does anyone know of any reason I shouldn't do this?

There's no issue with Jaguar. On the other hand, Jaguar is primitive compared to later revs.
You say you had issues with tiger and OS9. The only filesystem directory issue you will get there is from Spotlight.

If you do this IN ORDER:
1. Install Tiger
2. Partition the drive. name the second partition "OS9" or whatever.
3. Immediately set Spotlight prefs to EXCLUDE the entire OS9 partition.
4. Install OS9

You should never have any directory issues.
Tiger is the best compromise for a limited-capability machine (like an iBook) running OSX.
It has most of the good features of OSX, can run TenFourFox, the ONLY up-to-date browser and/or Safari Webkit.
There's just no good reason to go further backwards than tiger IMO…Earlier versions just get buggier.

[Europa]

If you do this IN ORDER:
1. Install Tiger
2. Partition the drive. name the second partition "OS9" or whatever.
3. Immediately set Spotlight prefs to EXCLUDE the entire OS9 partition.
4. Install OS9

You should never have any directory issues.
Tiger is the best compromise for a limited-capability machine (like an iBook) running OSX.
It has most of the good features of OSX, can run TenFourFox, the ONLY up-to-date browser and/or Safari Webkit.
There's just no good reason to go further backwards than tiger IMO…Earlier versions just get buggier.

Ok, thanks! By extension, would this mean that I could also avoid directory issues if I disabled Spotlight all together? I don't really use it anyway.

I forgot to mention this initially, but it's an iBook G3 that I bought. One of the 500 MHz models. The RAM ceiling is 640 MB. Would those specs be good enough to run Tiger comfortably you'd say? Or would you recommend sticking to strictly OS 9 for this?

[GaryN]

Ok, thanks! By extension, would this mean that I could also avoid directory issues if I disabled Spotlight all together? I don't really use it anyway.

That's a yes but it's probably easier to just lock it out of OS9 it's one click.
All you have to do is select the OS9 partition in System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy
Personally, I like Spotlight. The only minor annoyance is when it sometimes decides to update its index right after startup, grabbing CPU cycles. If left to itself though, it gets it together and does that less and less.

I forgot to mention this initially, but it's an iBook G3 that I bought. One of the 500 MHz models. The RAM ceiling is 640 MB. Would those specs be good enough to run Tiger comfortably you'd say? Or would you recommend sticking to strictly OS 9 for this?

FWIW, I ran Tiger and OS9 on a G3 Desktop with about that much memory for quite a while and it was fine.
Running Tiger and 6 big apps simultaneously could cause a memory shortage… Of course, running Jaguar and 6 big apps is a guaranteed kernel panic…
It's a basic iBook. Common sense goes a long way.

* I have iFreeMem in the menu bar. It will help you get the most out of what memory you have in OSX. Google it.

[Europa]

Ok, thank you very much! That's a good point about Spotlight.