Help! Trying to install OS9 is a nightmare. Nobody has solved my problem.

[paul.graber]

Hi all. I am new to this forum as I have been on several others to try and get my problem solved to no avail such as macrumors.
I have a 1.25GHZ MDD 400 FW G4 with two 250G HD and an ATI 8500. Your so called holy grail of G4's. It's been more like a holy nightmare if you ask me but I digress. What I want to do is install OS9 on one HD and OSX.5 on another HD and be able to dual boot from them. I do not have the original restore disks as it has been a nightmare to even try and locate them. No luck on ebay either. I have full retail versions of OSX, OS8, OS9.0 and am working on getting OS 10.4 as I think it might solve some of my issue, though I do just want to boot straight into 9.2.2 not 9.2.2 within X. I have found some restore disk that I thought worked but once the G4 boots from them it does not see my HD's so I guess those are out. Waste of $20 on ebay but it was worth a shot. OS 10.5 installs just fine. I even downloaded the OS9general from mac garden but that has not helped at all either as far as getting 9.2 installed. Help advice anything at this point. I know I need the restore disk but I cant find them and in fact I dont even know what part number to look for as all G4 restore disk look kind of the same. I know MDD is a diff animal but this sucks if you ask me. It seems other G4's are so much easier to do this with. I am so so frustrated at this point and ready to toss my mac out the window.
Any advice to get my machine dual booting will help! thanks in advance.

[Graveyard]

Are the hard drives connected using a pci sata adapter by any chance, or are they ide drives?

[supernova777]

hey paul...
visit the thread: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=305.0
i installed 9 on my mdd using this os9general.dmg

u should be able to install 10.5 no problem from a retail disc
and then restore this os9general.dmg
to the os9 drive u want to boot from.

or u can use this freshdraginstall file
which has even more recent versions of driver files for video etc

i have an mdd dual 867mhz with an 8500 that dual boots between osx panther + os9.2.2
and i installed using these files... i had tried many times previous to that to install with retail discs and it drove me bananas;)

what did u do with the os9general.dmg? u have to use disk utility and restore it to a physical drive from the image file
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5848 <-- read this re: single partition dmg's
also:
make sure u partition the os9 drive in 2.. with no partition size being larger then 190gb
and then restore the dmg to the first partition on the drive (id reccomend two 128gb partitions)
i personally would name the first of the os9 drive partitions "os9" and then the 2nd i would name "data"
and restore the dmg to the first os9 partition so it can be selected as the startup disk

u can review the info here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=397.0
aswell for clarity re: partition sizes

[paul.graber]

I will give this a shot. Both drives are indeed IDE and are connected via the ribbon where the hard drive cage is. Not where the CD/DVD connects. The problem I have found also is using OS 10.5 to format the drives. Remember the OS9 drive will have to be formatted with 10.5. So will there be any OS9 drivers on the partitions if it's formatted by OS 10.5?? Remember I can't run anything classic once I am in 10.5. This has been a limitation as well. Unless I buy 10.4 which if I can avoid I would like too.

Also can I still boot OS9 without the restore disk??? I have had some in other forums say absolutely not.

[paul.graber]

OK in restoring the drive with the source being os9general.dmg I am getting the error: Restore Failure. Could not validate source - error 254

Imagine that!

[paul.graber]

I am allow having trouble downloading anything from your site. As it keeps saying restricted access. Yes I have registered.

[supernova777]

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=551.0

visit here and take note of the username + password for downloading

i knew this would confuse people when Diehard implemented this security method
its meant to keep other sites from directly linking to our content as we will have control to change this universal downloading username + password

alot of users are getting confused because they try to use their same username + password as logging into the forums..
which ends up in the frustration  we can see here happening with Paul

[paul.graber]

Awesome. Thanks. Let me download the right file this time and give it a go.

[devils_advisor]

not every mdd can boot into os9 thats what i had to find out. check out every mac about that and find out if you stuck with classic or if you mdd is os9 bootable. i can give you a full recovery set wich includes both os versions if your mac isnt the one which cant boot into os9. another way to find out is the way i did it. i found a bootable os9 cd i think it was 9.2.1 and it booted just fine but i couldnt install from the cd. but at least i knew he can handle os9 and boot into if i got the right version which is in my case that 9.2.2 image from that recovery set. by the way i would keep osx hidden. make it a journaled partition without os9 drivers or you get more trouble than you like/can handle. my experience was combined with osx it crashes alot for no reason.

[supernova777]

devils: yeah he was trying to format the disk without os9 drivers as he only had leopard .. i gave him the first cd of tiger install to use disk utlity from that becuase it can format os9 partitions properly

[paul.graber]

Well My Leopard does have OS9 drivers. I partitioned and restored os9 general. To my shock it worked and was bootable.
However I had to partiton the droive to smaller segments. I will keep playing to check stability and let you all know. So far though good. Thanks to everyone. I will keep you all posted. Hopefully my 8500 radeon will work now as well.

[supernova777]

great news paul sounds like u are on the road to getting there;)

[Protools5LEGuy]

Some more info about MDD and OS 9
http://vintagemacmuseum.com/reinstalling-mac-os-9-on-a-powermac-g4-mdd/
and more http://vintagemacmuseum.com/mac-os-9-isnt-dead-yet/

I suppose DieHard install should be more advanced than http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-922-powermac-g4-mdd