Hi all, been lurking about this forum lately and reliving some nostalgia of old Mac OS 9 memories, haha. I've been trying to install Mac OS 9.2.2 onto a Power Mac G4 Cube for the last three or so days with very little luck. Thought it was worth asking for some advice? I'll give as much information as I can.
I am using a Power Mac G4 Cube with a 40GB internal hard drive and a broken CD drive. Any CD I put into the drive is just immediately spat back out. Through using USB sticks and even a USB DVD drive I have been able to put up Mac OS 9 install disks including the Mac OS 9 Lives versions on this site, but haven't been able to install 9 onto the internal hard drive. Mac OS 9 seems to refuse to detect the internal hard drive, even after multiple repartitions and reformatting, every time as a HFS+ with the OS 9 Drivers box checked. If I do the drag and drop method of installing I simply get the flashing question mark on boot up. If I boot up an Install Disc it will load, but won't detect the internal HD and then immediately crash the second I bring up the Drive Setup utility to try and fix it. The HD works absolutely fine in OS X 10.4, scanning the HD shows that the drive is healthy and no errors are detected. Classic mode also runs fine under OS X. When I was first given the Cube it had 10.4 installed on it but I have since uninstalled it while keeping it backed up on a USB stick to ensure I can boot into it whenever needed to access the Disk Utility and such.
I have tried the following:
- Installing Mac OS 9 Lives by burning the image files to both USB sticks, a USB hard drive with an external power supply and CDs, booting into them and installing within Mac OS 9 itself
- Copying over the files from OS9General.dmg to a freshly partitioned HFS+ internal HD with OS 9 drivers installed
- Resetting PRAM
- Installing OS 9 in classic mode on OS X using the installer application (this one seemed like a long shot)
- Directly restoring image files and USB installs to the internal hard drive through Disk Utility
- Booting the Mactron Rescue CD
I included some photos showing my system and HD's details. Any further suggestions? Is there an issue with the HD or the computer itself that's immediately apparent? Would replacing the HD change anything? Thank you for your time,