Installing MacOS9 HDD drivers using terminal in OS X

[DieHard]

So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
https://postimg.cc/SXMSNq6x

I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...

Another alternative is to Burn and boot this:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html

and run the drive setup 2.1 to partition

[GaryN]

I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...

Well……… D-OH!

[macdougy]

So I rebooted into the MacOS9Lives CD to try to do DieHard's suggestion in the Disk Setup. It did not recognize the whole harddrive (only ~130GB), and did not offer me the option to install the necessary driver:
https://postimg.cc/SXMSNq6x

I am so sorry, apparently the "boot" part of out install has the older drive setup 1.92 (even though our 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version), so don't use the one on the root of the CD when you boot, instead double click our drive image and navigate to the drive setup 2.1, that one will see the whole hard drive past 128GB...

Another alternative is to Burn and boot this:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html

and run the drive setup 2.1 to partition

So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!

Unfortunately, I'm still arriving in boot hell when I boot into OS 9 after installing.

I've tried replacing the PRAM battery. It didn't help.

I'm wondering if placing the OS9 partition first is causing an issue? Does it matter which order I install OS 9 or OS X first? Anything else I can try?

[DrNo7]

You "boot hell" happens when you have only OS9 installed or after you have OS9 and OSX installed?

If you have both, try to reboot into OSX after installing OS9 and go into system preferences > startup to select the OS9 partition and then trigger a reboot.

If you have only OS9 installed at this stage and it does not boot, it would be interesting to share details about what happens and what does not (that could point us out to what is missing as a step. I.e.: have you removed the muliprocessing extension from the system folder before rebooting (as it is a known offender on single-CPU systems ?

Stay strong, the success is drawing closer

[joevt]

I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure. I partitioned a new SATA SSD this way. I probably want to compare the OS 9 drivers on the new SATA SSD with the OS 9 drivers I have on the SCSI/ATA disks in my 8600 and B&W G3, and also maybe parse the OS 9 partitions using the info from https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn/tn1189.html to see what's included.

[GaryN]

I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure.

I think this confirms what I guessed before:

This is more interesting… I'm going to guess that the drivers option doesn't appear because the Leopard Disk Utility "knows" you're trying to format a disk in a FW800 machine and that's not allowed - which is why there's a special OS9 System and Installer for it in the first place.

Just as you don't see the OS9 option on a FW800 MDD, you also don't see it on a G5 for the same reason. HOWEVER:
joevt has shown that by getting the drive out of the machine, the OS9 option reappears. So that's another way.

I'm still not sure that you're getting the fact that you absolutely MUST add the OS9 drivers during the initialization before partitioning!
You cannot add drivers to just one partition. They go on first and affect the entire disk.

[joevt]

The OS 9 drivers are a set of partitions in an Apple Partition Map formatted disk. I suppose it would be possible to add these to an existing disk. If they need to be the first partitions, then you may need to shrink and move the first partition. Maybe iPartition.app on modern MacOS can do that. Otherwise it could be done with some commands.

In the attached output, I examine the partition table of my newly created SATA SSD in the FireWire enclosure and I copied the drivers to a file for examining/comparing later. I'll try booting from it tonight in my Power Mac 8600.

[macdougy]

I have a Quad G5 running Leopard. The Partition tab in Disk Utility.app doesn't show the Install OS 9 Drivers checkbox for internal SATA disks but does show the option when the SATA disk is in a FireWire enclosure.

I think this confirms what I guessed before:

This is more interesting… I'm going to guess that the drivers option doesn't appear because the Leopard Disk Utility "knows" you're trying to format a disk in a FW800 machine and that's not allowed - which is why there's a special OS9 System and Installer for it in the first place.

Just as you don't see the OS9 option on a FW800 MDD, you also don't see it on a G5 for the same reason. HOWEVER:
joevt has shown that by getting the drive out of the machine, the OS9 option reappears. So that's another way.

I'm still not sure that you're getting the fact that you absolutely MUST add the OS9 drivers during the initialization before partitioning!
You cannot add drivers to just one partition. They go on first and affect the entire disk.

I don't think you've read what I wrote.

I followed the instructions DieHard gave and did in fact install the OS9 drivers during initialization (completed from the MacOS9Lives disk setup 2.1) and OS9 did see the partition.

I can boot OS9, just as before... It just can't boot into anything else without resetting the PRAM, disconnecting the hard drive, and using an OS X install disc to set autoboot to false and force open firmware to open at boot. 🤷

I will try some of these other suggestions tomorrow!

[GaryN]

I don't think you've read what I wrote.

I absolutely DID read what you wrote. It was: "So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!"………period.

I'm ready to throw in the towel. This has become a shell game of Drive setups, Firmware commands, unidentified drives and partitions.
I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800. Perhaps they can describe what they did exactly and you can try following that.

Additionally, I have questions about the OF commands to be stored in NVRAM described by the venerable Greystash. I'll preface this by noting that his "being correct percentage" is probably considerably better than mine. Anyway:

I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9?  * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…

[FBz]

I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9?  * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…

Very well-stated Gary.

I do wonder if macdougy is using the old alt/option-key boot (upon restart from OS 9) to then choose the Leopard partition (unseen?) as the boot drive… as many do on Mac Minis (and others) now dual booting OS 9 on multi-partitioned drives / machines?

And unfortunately, I no longer maintain ANY FW800 MDDs (still have many remaining carcasses) and I never attempted any dual-boot OS 9 + OS X etc. setups when I did. *The loss of the FW400 ports under OS 9 was more than I could accept. SO I opted instead to rob their PSUs, CPUs and heatsinks… moving them into original FW 400 MDDs / mobos. (The loss of the MDD single FW800 port was much more palatable.)

Also. Have endured many previous problems here successfully installing Leopard, period. Until I got an actual Apple, Leopard install disc. *Maybe 3-partition macdougy’s drive and install OS 9 and Tiger… leaving the 3rd partition for attempted Leopard - AFTER successful testing / booting with Tiger?

I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800.

Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)

*Somebody please stop me beforehand.

[DieHard]

Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)

*Somebody please stop me beforehand.

Yeah, I'll stop ya... At this point, and many topics ago, we have discussed for over 10 years that the best "Dual Boot" scenario is a "Dual Drive" scenario, the whole partition and load both Mac OS 9 and OS X on a single drive approach is NOT for the squeamish or the Newbie and there are variables that have to be addressed to avoid problems.  With storage being cheaper that a meal for 3 at McDonalds, I think we have to put this to bed already

[macdougy]

I don't think you've read what I wrote.

I absolutely DID read what you wrote. It was: "So this worked for getting OS 9 to see all the partitions. Thank you for that tip!"………period.

I'm ready to throw in the towel. This has become a shell game of Drive setups, Firmware commands, unidentified drives and partitions.
I think we need some input from those who have successfully installed Leopard and OS9 on a FW800. Perhaps they can describe what they did exactly and you can try following that.

Additionally, I have questions about the OF commands to be stored in NVRAM described by the venerable Greystash. I'll preface this by noting that his "being correct percentage" is probably considerably better than mine. Anyway:

I always thought that the trick to booting unsupported machines was to locate and alter a "list" of allowed models in NVRAM, adding the unsupported one to the list. The OF commands shown in the mac-classic article describe "altering" the CPU-version property to something different than what's in the machine. While this may work just fine to get OS9 to boot, is it possibly causing macdoughy's issue where Leopard is no longer "seen" at the next boot after running OS9?  * Jeez, that was difficult to simply express in a sentence let alone understand…

Thats some awesome history you've brought up!

You are also confirming my thought process here, which I really appreciate. There is something other than the partition drivers holding me back from booting into different OS's freely - I just don't know what yet!

You "boot hell" happens when you have only OS9 installed or after you have OS9 and OSX installed?

If you have both, try to reboot into OSX after installing OS9 and go into system preferences > startup to select the OS9 partition and then trigger a reboot.

If you have only OS9 installed at this stage and it does not boot, it would be interesting to share details about what happens and what does not (that could point us out to what is missing as a step. I.e.: have you removed the muliprocessing extension from the system folder before rebooting (as it is a known offender on single-CPU systems ?

Stay strong, the success is drawing closer

Both OS9 and Tiger installed. When I reinitialized the drive according to DieHard's suggestion ^, I installed Tiger instead of Leopard (just snappier). No option in Tiger's Startup Disk section of System Preferences to choose OS9 disk.

My boot hell only occurs after I boot into OS9. Even if I have auto-boot? set to false, after booting into OS9, it just always boots into OS9, ignoring holding OPTION/ALT at chime, C, CMD+OPT+O+F, etc. etc. I can only reset the NVRAM with CMD-OPT-P-R and either set auto-boot? to false with an OS X install disc in Terminal or CMD-OPT-O-F at boot once cleared. It's like OS9 is overwriting the NVRAM / Open Firmware options when it boots.

Another interesting artifact is that once I boot into OS9, video takes longer to intialize at boot for all subsequent boots. I believe the video card is an ATI 9000 [Pro?].

Sorry. Hopefully someone meeting the above requirement will chime in? IF not, I may painfully “reconstruct” a FW800 MDD after this week* and give it all a go. (Oooooh, BLACK FRIDAY!)

*Somebody please stop me beforehand.

Yeah, I'll stop ya... At this point, and many topics ago, we have discussed for over 10 years that the best "Dual Boot" scenario is a "Dual Drive" scenario, the whole partition and load both Mac OS 9 and OS X on a single drive approach is NOT for the squeamish or the Newbie and there are variables that have to be addressed to avoid problems.  With storage being cheaper that a meal for 3 at McDonalds, I think we have to put this to bed already

Might just.

[macdougy]

I am getting ready to give up.

Over the last few weeks I have:

• Bought an external IDE HDD enclosure with FW400 connection.
• Bought another HDD, 80GB.
• Using the Tiger install DVD's DiskUtility, ERASED each drive to one partition w/ installed OS9 drivers
• (When I ERASED the smaller drive, I used HFS Extended)
• (Partitioned the 400GB drive w/ partitions of 120GB for Tiger, 100GB for TBA and 153GB for shared data)
• Got both HDD installed and recognized
• Followed the instructions from https://mac-classic.com/articles/mac-os-9-on-unsupported-systems/ for setting up NVRAMRC in OpenFirmware
• Installed Tiger
• Installed from MacOS9Lives for Unsupported to the smaller drive
• Even tried DiskWarrior rebuild on OS9 HDD from Tiger.

And.... I still need to reset the PRAM to get back into Tiger.

I can boot into OS 9 no problem, both the install live disc for unsupported hardware and the resulting installation on the computer. But in either case, it renders the system as unbootable UNLESS I set the startup disk using the control panel to the OS9 drive. Setting the Tiger install as the system startup disk from the OS9 control panel renders it unbootable.

I've also tried the drag and drop method w/ DiskWarrior followup from OS X (suggested by a member in a PM).

I am this close to ordering a FW400 motherboard and moving on with life. I am tired of fighting with this thing.

I really appreciate all the helpful advice everyone has tried to give me here. I feel bad that I haven't left a trail to an answer, at least yet. Anybody got anything else?

I really feel like the key is in this clue... that even merely booting off of the MacOS9Lives CD without touching a hard drive renders the thing unbootable without a PRAM reset.

[macdougy]

After some further messing around, one new clue that helps a little:

If I boot into OS9, I can get the system to consistently boot into OS9 by setting the startup disk to the OS9 partition. (Without doing that, the display never wakes up, even when trying to boot back into OS9).

So in summary: If I clear the PRAM, I can boot into anything (OS X, OS9, Open Firmware, multi-boot / disk selector screen w/ OPTION at chime, etc). If I reboot from OS X, I can likewise boot into anything. If I boot into OS9 and set the startup disk to OS9, I can reboot into only that OS9 partition - attempting anything else, whether holding OPTION or CMD+OPTION+O+F or setting the startup disk to OS X from the OS9 control panel, the display never wakes up on boot, and the system is rendered unbootable with the only way to fix it is to reset the PRAM (CMD+OPTION+P+R at boot for two chimes).

It seems like booting into OS9 changes my Open Firmware configuration - if I had auto-boot set to false, OS9 changes it to true again. It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9. Please tell me somebody has a thought on that?

[Protools5LEGuy]

A CRT normally is better to troubleshoot.

(Almost) Any resolution works.

It seems to me that something corrupts PRAM and the boot order you say is needed.

Have you tested the PRAM battery. Those kind of erratic behaviour is what I find in my G3 B&W Rev.1 without the battery+PRam reset

[macdougy]

A CRT normally is better to troubleshoot.

(Almost) Any resolution works.

It seems to me that something corrupts PRAM and the boot order you say is needed.

Have you tested the PRAM battery. Those kind of erratic behaviour is what I find in my G3 B&W Rev.1 without the battery+PRam reset

I replaced the PRAM battery a few weeks ago. Only briefly disconnected from the wall since, to remove the hard drives. No power disruptions in my area.

... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...

[GaryN]

... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...

Are they white? They may be for Airport. I'm presuming the little fan is plugged in right next to the battery?

I don't blame you for wanting to chuck the motherboard. If I was an Apple tech servicing this issue, I would have already tried exchanging the mother with a known-to-be-good one.

Your symptom "It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9" might not be a symptom at all. When my MDD boots into OSX, the screen doesn't light until OSX has been recognized and started loading, as evidenced by the big apple appearing simultaneously in the screen center. With OS9 (and earlier) you typically see the screen light up first and then see the Mac happy face / OS9.2 box as the boot System is located.

Distilling everything described so far, it appears the issue now boils down to OS9 being unable to successfully reset the boot to anything in the startup Control Panel even though it may appear to do so. Note the pic below of my OS9 Startup panel. The left-hand "Name" column shows all the drives/volumes. The right-hand "Version" one shows the bootable Systems on those Volumes. Note that I could easily have a drive named "OSX" and select it without actually having a bootable System on it.
If OS9 doesn't "see" an actual System as evidenced by the text in the Version column, selecting that OSX-named volume is the same as selecting no other boot System at all and the computer simply boots back into OS9 again just as you describe. So, you should be able to see "OSX 10.4 build xxxx". If you do, I just typed all of this for nothing. If you don't, I don't know why that is exactly but it does indicate something about why you can't get back to OSX without resetting the PRAM thereby starting over from scratch.

Note that the other thing I would try as an Apple tech would be to install something other than Tiger… i.e. Leopard 10.5 just to see if it works.
By now it should be obvious that a LOT of computer troubleshooting is typically done by substitution and that's easy to do "at the factory" so to speak. At home, not so much.

Note also that the other thing I probably would have tried by now in your situation would be a shock treatment achieved by dropping the whole damn thing out of a second story window.
But hey, that's just me…
 

[refinery]

... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...

On a FW800, there will be three sets of wires:
1 for the modem (typically black)
1 for the airport express card (typically white)
2 for the bluetooth card (typically blue, but ive also seen them in white as well)

[FBz]

EXACTLY which Mac OS 9.2.2 install disk was downloaded? [The link provided on
Mac Classic ( https://mac-classic.com/articles/mac-os-9-on-unsupported-systems/ )
is for the Mac mini.]

Download successfully used here on a 1.42 GHz DP MDD previously…
                                   http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2143.0.html



*Addendum:
Yes, other downloads ARE also available via that Mac-Classic.com link (one needs only
to scroll down for the FW800 MDD iso) BUT before I reassemble a 1.25 GHZ DP FW800
machine here for testing… there was this question concerning which file was downloaded.
Easy enough to check via downloaded iso file sizes.

Ross's Mac mini OS 9 CD v9.iso  / 678.4 MB

Mac OS 9.2.2 Unsupported G4s.iso  /  556.1 MB

[macdougy]

*Addendum:
Yes, other downloads ARE also available via that Mac-Classic.com link (one needs only
to scroll down for the FW800 MDD iso) BUT before I reassemble a 1.25 GHZ DP FW800
machine here for testing… there was this question concerning which file was downloaded.
Easy enough to check via downloaded iso file sizes.

Ross's Mac mini OS 9 CD v9.iso  / 678.4 MB

Mac OS 9.2.2 Unsupported G4s.iso  /  556.1 MB

I downloaded the one for Unsupported G4s. It is 556.1MB. Was really hoping for a dumb mistake on my end!

But I have some interesting news after messing around with stuff again tonight. If I change the startup disk in OS9 to Tiger, it does actually boot into Tiger. I know this because I got the idea to test to some shortcuts to see if I could turn it off. CONTROL-COMMAND-<POWER BUTTON> actually WOKE UP the display and showed Tiger all booted up! The system.log in Console says a USB device woke ip the display. Just hitting any old keys on the keyboard does not wake it up, nor does just the power buttn, I don't think.

Rebooting keeps it booting in Tiger, and still doesn't wake the display properly.

This gives me an idea: run a custom script on startup that sets whatever is messed up in the nvram every time I boot OS X. This feels like a viable path, with some research.

... That said, I've noticed I have small wires not connected to anything in the case near the PRAM battery. Nothing obvious to plug them into...

Are they white? They may be for Airport. I'm presuming the little fan is plugged in right next to the battery?

I don't blame you for wanting to chuck the motherboard. If I was an Apple tech servicing this issue, I would have already tried exchanging the mother with a known-to-be-good one.

Your symptom "It also seems to mess with my display being able to wake up, unless you boot into OS 9" might not be a symptom at all. When my MDD boots into OSX, the screen doesn't light until OSX has been recognized and started loading, as evidenced by the big apple appearing simultaneously in the screen center. With OS9 (and earlier) you typically see the screen light up first and then see the Mac happy face / OS9.2 box as the boot System is located.

Distilling everything described so far, it appears the issue now boils down to OS9 being unable to successfully reset the boot to anything in the startup Control Panel even though it may appear to do so. Note the pic below of my OS9 Startup panel. The left-hand "Name" column shows all the drives/volumes. The right-hand "Version" one shows the bootable Systems on those Volumes. Note that I could easily have a drive named "OSX" and select it without actually having a bootable System on it.
If OS9 doesn't "see" an actual System as evidenced by the text in the Version column, selecting that OSX-named volume is the same as selecting no other boot System at all and the computer simply boots back into OS9 again just as you describe. So, you should be able to see "OSX 10.4 build xxxx". If you do, I just typed all of this for nothing. If you don't, I don't know why that is exactly but it does indicate something about why you can't get back to OSX without resetting the PRAM thereby starting over from scratch.

Note that the other thing I would try as an Apple tech would be to install something other than Tiger… i.e. Leopard 10.5 just to see if it works.
By now it should be obvious that a LOT of computer troubleshooting is typically done by substitution and that's easy to do "at the factory" so to speak. At home, not so much.

Note also that the other thing I probably would have tried by now in your situation would be a shock treatment achieved by dropping the whole damn thing out of a second story window.
But hey, that's just me…
 

Thank you for all of this! Build is present besides the Tiger partition. I'll perhaps try Leopard per your suggestion, its a good one. And your description of what you see during OS X and OS 9 booting matches my experience I think exactly! This further confirms its a display awakening issue.

I finally feel like there might be light at the end of this tunnel. All these suggestions are all super helpful!! =)