[Solved] Downgrade 9.2.2 to 8.6/fixing trackpad

[vladimir86]

Hello there and thanks for letting me in!

Some time ago I got a Powerbook G3 Wall Street on Ebay so I could thinker a bit, learn about Mac and play some old games, it has been working fine, but I did the stupid thing about installing 9.22 without having a restore CD.

Since then I lost some functionality, as 9.2.2 doesn't include a trackpad control panel (I want tap to click, as the button is a bit "mushy" and uncomfortable). I already installed lots of software so I sucked it down till last week, when my poor hard drive finally died after 22 years of heroic service and probably previous abuse. I replaced the HD with a CF card and proceeded to reinstall, but seeing that there is no way of having the trackpad control panel option I donwloaded a 8.6 G3 restore image.

There started my grief: I don't own a mac, so I don't have a proper way of handling toast or dmg files. I use Linux and BSD, and was able to convert dmg to iso, but after burning the cd I found it wasn't bootable, all I got is the 9.2.2 bootable cd, but I can umount it if I boot from it. 8.6 works as far as I don't try to boot, but I can't force umount the hard drive to install...

Really, all I want is the bloody trackpad control panel thing to get tap to click, but I don't seem to find how. I would prefer if I could also just install the image, but I am not sure how.

Anyone could tip me over any possible solution? That would be awesome.

Thanks in advance too!

[vladimir86]

Auto reply:

After a bit of headbanging I managed to solve it:

Installed OS9,22 making two partitions: all disk minus 1GB and 1GB scondary
Copied all the 8.6 contents into the secondary partition, rebooted into the 9.22 install disk
formated the main partition  and started the 8.6 setup
Installation was almost as normal, but had to deselect "using disk utility", as it wouldn't give me error otherwise.

Now I can use my trackpad! I have lots of software to find, including a proper web browser (sadly classilla is not working with 85% of the websites I regularly used anymore because of modern TLS, but I might try lynx). Should be easy now that the "Hard drive" is a CF card that can be mounted on my main computer.

Hope this helps someone!