HELP - putting MacOS 9 on 12" PowerBook G4 1GHz

[Hopfenholz]

Hi guys

Just discovered this site and am very excited about installing 9 on my 12" PB G4.

But I'm falling at the first hurdle! The download site for the special MacOS 9 CD for unsupported macs is not working. I can log into the file area and see the image, but can't download it. I just get a web server error when I click Doanload.

Can anyone help?

Cheers,

Joel

[snes1423]

hows your progress going

[Hopfenholz]

Hi,

I’m so glad you asked I was beginning to give up hope! Here’s what’s happened:

- PowerBook G4 12” 1GHz model 6,2 1.5GB/150GB had

- won’t boot from macintosh garden 9.2.2 universal iso burnt to CD (this CD will boot my Lombard G3 so I know it works)
- can boot from Panther 10.3 CD and run Disk Utility: no mention of OS 9 drivers anywhere
- OS9 CD doesn’t show in Startup Disk or on boot loader when you hold down option on startup

- after much digging on here and on thinkclassic.org (iMic’s thread) I tried booting into open firmware and issuing the commands to spoof the model shown here http://www.thinkclassic.org/viewtopic.php?id=46&p=2

- if I do this, and then boot with mac-boot command, suddenly the OS9 CD shows up in Startup Disk - progress! However I cannot boot from it.

- after lots of experimentation, I learn that if I boot into OF and do those commands, and then following that (ie without restarting again) boot from the Panther CD and run Disk Utility, suddenly the MacOS 9 disk drivers option appears in Disk Utility - who knew?!

So now I have OS9 disk drivers installed, but I still can’t boot from a Mac OS 9 CD whatever I do. Tonight I managed to download the “Unsupported” CD from this site, burnt it and tried that. Having partitioned my HDD into 2, one with Panther and one for OS9, I tried to use the CD to restore onto the OS9 partition but it failed with a “can’t write to startup disk” error.

My next step is to remove the HDD from my PBG4, fit it into my Lombard, boot from the unsupported CD and install from there, refit the HDD to the PBG4 and see if it works...

Any tips gratefully received!

Joel

[snes1423]

Look in the comments section for a guide 

[Hopfenholz]

I think I have read every guide going... any more specific pointers gratefully received.

[Hopfenholz]

Thanks very much to SNES for the tips... I finally got there!

The open firmware commands relating to PowerBook model identifier were enough for the G4 to “see” the OS9 CD and attempt (unsuccessfully) to boot from it.

However, interestingly, when booting with these commands my Panther OS X install DVD also offered OS9 drivers. We were moving forward.

When I added the extra open firmware command to do with PowerPC G4 type (see https://youtu.be/glCo9j5CB8o And read the comments for the full commands) suddenly I could actually boot from the MacOS9 CD and run the installer.

My PowerBook is a 1GHz with the 7447a processor - I think if it had been an 867MHz with the 7445 processor this would have been a lot easier.

Finally, having installed OS9, I was hanging at 95% booted. Extensions off made no difference. The fix was to delete the Multiprocessing folder and all the ATI drivers from the Extensions folder.

Still to fix: limited to Thousands of colours so no graphics drivers (I thought we had NVidia working on this and ATI was the problem? This mac has a GeForce 5200 2 Go) and also she won’t sleep. I get a nice dialogue box explaining that “you do not have the required system software to enable sleep”. Oh yeah and no Airport.

Any tips on these very gratefully received :-)))

Joel

[snes1423]

I have a question for you actually how did you suddenly get thousands of colors 

[Hopfenholz]

It had that as soon as I booted, I didn’t need to do anything. I don’t have backlight control though and really need it!

[snes1423]

yeah i am having the exact same issues as you not sure what to do about it it is not recognizing the hardware 

[Hopfenholz]

What exact mac are you using?

Can you boot from the MacOS 9 CD?

[snes1423]

i did exactly what you did with the same steps from the same video as i gave you

[Hopfenholz]

So what stage are you at? What happens when you boot into OF, issue the commands and then the cd boot command with the CD in?