How to boot off FireWire on PowerBook g4 12” 1ghz

[snes1423]

I would like to run OS9 on it even with the limited capabilities so that I have a os9 laptop for development

[DrNo7]

Hi snes1423,

Even if using a FW drive is tempting to keep things separated (as drive swapping is a pain on the PB 12), it could be easier to start with a partition on the internal drive to make sure everything works as described by the guide for unsupported machines (it can already proved to be tricky).

Then once it works internally, I would think that it is as simple as cloning the internal drive to the FW drive (as Macs have been booting off FW drives since the iMac G3 days).

And if you are reluctant to touch your internal drive, you can also burn the latest unsupported macs os9 disc and do a test run booting off the disc. Then once it boots properly and behaves okay, you can use the os9 installer to format and install on the FW drive.

Have fun and keep us posted of your progress

[snes1423]

how would I partition this on jaguar? and restore it I have 15gb available how much space do you recommend for os9

[IIO]

when formatting an OS9 boot drive the boot volume must be APM, HFS, have OS9 drivers enabled, and may not exceed 192 Gb in size - just as for internal disks.

works with up to 10.4.11, in 10.5 disk util no longer writes the OS9 driver.

it might also be a good idea to leave journalling off.

[snes1423]

Alright so i got it to work but i am stuck at millions of colors and games such as shadow warrior and duke nukem 3d do not work due to them requiring 256 colors

[teroyk]

Alright so i got it to work but i am stuck at millions of colors and games such as shadow warrior and duke nukem 3d do not work due to them requiring 256 colors

Shadow Warrior should work after 3dfx patch and with Macglide in OpenGL rendered full colors. I haven't tested, because I don't play games anymore.
3dfx patch for Shadow Warrior:
file sw_u_3dfx_sit.hqx in https://legacy.3drealms.com/downloads.html
MacGLide:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/macglide/

EDIT: please come back here to tell if it works.