Installing MacOS9 HDD drivers using terminal in OS X

[FBz]

Without going into my usual amount of detail here… the best and easiest approach to this is likely as Greystash explained over on Mac-Classic.com. Two drives (HDDs or SSDs - or a mix of both) segregated with ONE on the ATA-66 and the OTHER ONE on the ATA-100. If I were to keep this FW800 assembled in this manner, I’d put the “OS 9 loaded” drive on the ATA-100 and OS X drive(s) on the ATA-66… giving the “Unsupported” OS 9 the benefit of the better connection.

I cheated a little on my OS 9 install here, using two optical drives installed on a reconstructed 1.42 GHz DP FW800 machine - one with the Unsupported installer and the other with MacTron’s OS 9 Rescue & Install disc. [ http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1657.0.html ] With that, after booting with the Unsupported disc (instead of using Drive Setup 1.9.2) I used Drive Setup 2.1 from MacTron’s disc to partition a 500 GB Hitachi HDD into 3 partitions of 155.25 GB each. Thinking that I could later install Tiger & Leopard on those 2 remaining partitions. (Nope.)

Anyway… likely that a simple copy of Drive Setup 2.1 on a USB stick or maybe even a mountable external drive, could enable this partitioning of a larger (500 GB or even larger) drive?

After partitioning, installation and booting of the Unsupported OS 9 on the Hitachi, I was then unable to install Tiger or Leopard on either of the remaining 2 partitions. (No matter how many times or ways that I tried). Considered removing the drive and then attempting the T&L installs within a FW 400 MDD - and then moved back into the FW800 afterwards?

Instead, I already had an SSD with OS 9 and Tiger pre-installed. So, moved that into the FW800. (Even though it did not have a version of the Unsupported OS 9 present.) This booted immediately into Tiger.

I then added the 500 GB Hitachi drive (w/ the Unsupported OS 9 present) to the same ATA-100 ribbon cable, and again… it would boot into Tiger BUT NOT the Unsupported OS 9 present on it OR the SSD. THEN, moved the SSD to the ATA-66 and I could then boot from the Unsupported OS 9 on the Hitachi - AND also the Tiger install on the SSD (on the ATA-66 cable).



Note that the 2nd partition on the Hitachi HDD (above) is named Jaguar. Figured that as the FW800 originally shipped with OS 10.2.3 - that I’d try Jaguar. BUT that didn’t / wouldn’t install either! ALSO, neither of the OS 9.2 “flavors” on the Inland SSD would boot.


ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

Sure, I spent MORE time on this. Removed the Hitachi from the FW800 MDD and placed it in a 1.0 GHz Quicksilver. (Likely that other, non-FW800 G4s could also be used.)

Then installed both Tiger 10.4.6 and Leopard 10.5 with Apple retail discs. At the beginning of each install, opened Disk Utility and reformatted the target install partitions for these OS’es as: Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Something that was not possible with the Hitachi during previous attempts with the drive in the FW800 MDD.

Then the 500 GB Hitachi went back into the FW800 MDD.

Booted into OS 9 on the FW800, both new OS installs appear as viable choices in OS 9’s StartUp Disk control panel AND can be selected for reboot (which both did / do). However, once booted into either Tiger or Leopard, getting back to OS 9 requires a cold boot while holding down the option key at Startup and then selecting OS 9 from the boot picker. The OS 9 partition does not appear as a choice for a Startup Disk under either OS X version.

This approach does not require a 2nd drive on the ATA-66 and will even allow larger drives (if you first use Drive SetUp 2.1 when initially formatting the single drive on the ATA-100 for the Unsupported OS 9 install).

One other thing…
Seems that booting between flavors of OS X - back to OS 9, corrupts the Date / Time and requires a reset. Booting between OS X’s however, does not. I’ve a similar problem booting between OS 9 and OS X on the G4 Mac mini.

So, there’s my two cents.

And I thought this wasn't going to be wordy.

[macdougy]

Wow, thanks for all the work you did, FBz!

When you say you could not not into OS X, I am curious if it was due to your display not walking up?

Cheers.

[FBz]

"When you say you could not boot into OS X, I am curious if it was due to your display not waking up?"

Short answer, NO. Never.

IF I formatted, multi-partitioned and then installed (US) OS 9 on the HDD or SSD first [within the MDD FW800] it would not even allow any install or any version of OS X afterwards… on any of the remaining partitions. *Well, maybe once.

Always do clean, fresh OS installs here… never any drag & drop, etc. when setting up any machine for testing or use. It did allow (once) an install of Tiger in this manner but upon reboot afterwards, the old circle-with-line-through-it appeared onscreen. Then, attempted my usual practice of erasing the target partition and formatting as Extended (Journaled) from whichever OS X install disk I was using - and the machine would freeze upon any attempted opening of Disk Utility. Maybe… some Terminal command(s) or Open Firmware ritual could get around all of this? (And if you’re ever successful, you’ll share?)

Greystash’s two-drive scenario still seems best practice for those without another non-FW800 machine, to “build” a single drive to be placed into the FW800 MDD. So build your OS X based drive first in the FW800 MDD and remove it. Then insert another drive to install Unsupported OS 9 on. Then determine which drive to attach to ATA-100 and which to attach to ATA-66. Of course these can be moved back and forth per specific need(s).

Tried Another Route

Yesterday, also attempted the *reverse-sequence install approach (OS X Leopard first) within the FW800 MDD (*Leopard - Tiger and then the Unsupported OS 9) using the FW800 MDD to format and partition a single drive AND Leopard DID install successfully BUT did not provide the option of using / installing OS 9 drivers. AND did not allow install of Tiger on a 2nd partition after the Leopard install.

FW800 MDD then did allow booting from the Unsupported OS 9 install disc but as it would have been necessary to reformat and partition the entire drive again (with Drive Setup 1.9.2 or 2.1) which would have erased the already successfully installed Leopard partition… I did not install (US) OS 9.

So, back to the Quicksilver again… where booting from the Leopard install disc (first) DID ALLOW installation of OS 9 driver(s) when erasing & multi-partitioning. Then installed Tiger successfully and didn’t need to use Drive Setup 1.9.2 or 2.1 before installing Unsupported OS 9.

In essence, again “building” a single (three partitioned) multi-boot drive in the Quicksilver, then to be placed back into the MDD FW800. However, this approach yielded a machine that does not maintain correct Date & Time settings in any OS after shutdown or after any subsequent reboot(s). And yes, there’s a fresh & tested battery installed. Machine now seems less stable.

SO after all of this, any wonder that I don’t maintain a FW800 MDD here and have swapped out all of their PSUs and CPUs into FW400 MDDs? I won't / don't miss the use of the FW800's solitary FW800 port. [My hat is off to Greystash.]

Do please let us know which approach you finally have success with (or settle upon) and your process.
This PSU and CPU are going back into a FW400 MDD.

Cheers.

[macdougy]

Thanks again FBZ, that is some heroic work! I can totally understand basically only using FW400s, official support for OS9 is lovely. 

I am pretty sure I've narrowed down the problem to the NVRAM parameters. When I boot into OS X and use CMD+CTRL+<POWER BUTTON> to get the screen to wake (after having booted into OS 9 and not reset the NVRAM) I get three different NVRAM parameters that are different: boot-device (understandably), prev-lang:kbd (set to en:0 only after booting into OS 9), and aapl,pci, which is long and complicated. It seems very likely to me that its this third parameter that is causing the display to not wake up.

In particular, after booting into OS9, it starts with a string of text looking like /offscreen-display%00gprf and continues in a long and complicated fashion from there. I actually think it's effectively the same string as when I reset the NVRAM, just with more at the front.

I have some tests I can run to see whether it's specifically that value that is breaking things, but I would effectively have a solution if I could write an nvramrc that sets this value. I've spent hours looking for such arcane knowledge, anybody here have any suggestions?

Another thought I've had is that the 9000 Pro might have the two display connectors in one thing the 9200 had going on, and whether some sort of adapter that forces it to display through the same single connector as OS9 does might also be a fix?

[joevt]

What kind of display are you using? A multisync CRT would be best because it supports many resolutions.

aapl,pci is where nvram properties for devices are stored on New World Macs.

I suppose it's like the AAPL,PathProperties nvram variable on an Intel Mac. Each property has a device path, a name for the property (gprf for graphics preferences of a GPU) and a value. I wrote a script called gfxutil.sh to read that on Intel Macs (it uses gfxutil to parse the info). People use the OpenCore or Clover bootloader on Hackintoshes to add or modify device-properties for many devices instead of using AAPL,PathProperties.

Old World Macs had limits on the property length (only 8 bytes!). I wrote a hack to allow unlimited property length so newer GPUs on Old World Macs could store the full size of their NVRAM property. The Power Mac would read the entire thing during startup and the GPU would use the information to set the resolution during startup so it matches the resolution that you were using in Mac OS X. It worked in Mac OS 9 with an extension I made.

In Open Firmware, you can print the aapl,pci properties using PRINT-AAPL,PCI

In Mac OS X, you should be able to see the properties using the ioreg command or IORegistryExplorer.app. The info stored in the property depends on the GPU driver.

In Mac OS 9, you can use Apple's "Display Name Registry" app or maybe "PCCard DispNameRegistry" from the PCCard SDKs. I made my own utility called DumpNameRegistry. It can dump the entire nvram to see if any changes are made. It can do other stuff like clear nvram.

The code for reading and writing the Old World (Type 0) and New World (Type 1) NVRAM properties is at https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1228.15.4/iokit/Kernel/IONVRAM.cpp. The code is for the nvram kext but I think you can use it to learn about both formats of NVRAM properties.

Open Firmware has words for reading and writing NVRAM. If you do it wrong though, you could brick your Mac. You can find the words for reading and writing bytes to nvram in my Open Firmware listings. I don't know if there's any higher level words for writing an entire nvram property. Maybe PRINT-AAPL,PCI will show how to read nvram properties. I haven't checked.
 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya5gfv67eqvrwil/ROMDumps.zip?dl=0

[FBz]

The rather painful saga continues here too (and no, have not yet returned CPU to a FW 400 machine). Still working on the FW800 MDD multi-boot with OS 9 / Tiger and Leopard… on a single drive. Have had some success with disabling Spotlight and Time Machine and will cover all that later, over on this other thread: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6641.0.html

Out of curiosity, when you can boot into OS 9 - have you run Disk First Aid / and if so… what does it report? AND have you re-initialized and multi-partitioned your drive with Drive Setup 2.1 (instead of installing OS 9 drivers via some other method)?

Maybe a return to the basic OS 9 (only) FW800 install to check “square one” performance (without Tiger or Leopard) to see if you still must use those keystrokes to “wake” your monitor. Re-initialize and multi-partition(?) your drive and then re-install OS 9 on the first partition.

NOBODY enjoys repeated re-installs of any OS (believe me). If things change after the solo OS 9 install and you no longer need your wake-up keystrokes, then move to installing Tiger (and maybe Leopard?). IF you’ve re-initialized and multi-partitoned your drive before installing OS 9. NOT forgetting to also turn-off, disable (or totally eradicate) Spotlight & Time Machine in Tiger and then Leopard - as you install each one - as you go. BIG FUN. Of course you may then need to Erase and re-install OS 9 again from the mounted & Unsupported OS 9, Apple Software Restore.

Important Note: Even if the solo OS 9 install works and you’ve no wake-up problems, you’ll need to initialize and re-partition your drive AND then NOT re-install OS 9… before installing Tiger & Leopard. See: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6641.msg49796.html#msg49796



joevt has provided some very good NVRAM & monitor-related info (post above) but before delving into any of that (and perhaps further complicating matters) I’d start over with the basic Unsupported OS 9 installation just to determine if your monitor wake-up problem persists. If not, then proceed from there. But, your choice.

My suspicion(s) in your case are that via Open Firmware and possibly Terminal, that you may have inadvertently “adjusted” something, best left alone. Thus, begin again with a clean OS 9 re-install slate? Everything works then? THEN see the Important Note and link above.

Again, what monitor ARE you using? AND no attemped installs / re-installs with anything other than the bare necessities of: one monitor, keyboard & mouse connected. Remove all other expansion cards, external drives, network connections and peripherals… beforehand. And as far as the ATI Radeon 9000 Pro goes… again never any problems here. The Radeon Pro 9000 was the standard video card on the dual 1.0 and 1.25 GHz FW400 and the FW800 PM G4 and 1.25 GHz MDDs.

Tally-ho!

[macdougy]

My saga has ended, in multiple ways.

After months of trying random things, I finally got it to stick the landing. All it took was an apple studio display (the LCD one of that period)!

I can freely switch between OS's without a hint of trouble with the display waking up.

All it took was buying a FW400 that came with the display to find out. 🤦

Funny thing is that even the FW400 will not wake the display I was using after booting OS 9 either. So there is some weird compatibility problem with that monitor. Nice call out, everyone! Any chance it's to do with its resolution? (1680x1050).

I guess I just get more fast OS9 machines. I won't complain!

Thanks to everyone who stuck it out and added lots of good info. All of your voices were really appreciated. Let it be known, display wake issues can be caused by using monitors that don't work well with these machines..

[caver01]

Facing a similar challenge with my rev.B 1Ghz eMac Combo (no native os 9), and coming to this thread a year late, certain steps were ambiguous to me but I found a solution and wanted to post a followup here to confirm and clarify for others who might be looking for help. . .

My setup is simple: eMac 1GHz combo drive, with a big HDD (500Gb)

My problem is the catch 22:
1. Mac OS9 Lives CD (for unsupported G4) boots fine, but Disk Setup cannot partition more than 130Mb of my big drive
and
2. No OSX install that I have found shows me the "Install OS9 Drivers" checkbox option in Disk Utility.

So I am stuck unable to take full advantage of the large drive, multi-partitioned for dual boot.

After reading a LOT of threads, it seems #2 comes up for people enough to acknowledge it. I understand the option should be there when selecting the whole drive (not a volume within) and that it must be done FIRST (i.e. "Initialize" FIRST as made so very clear above). However, there's just no initialize option in the OSX Disk Utility after trying multiple versions of OSX installs. Furthermore, every screenshot I ever see that includes the "Install OS9 Drivers" checkbox has it on the Partition tab. I have tried Panther, Tiger and Leopard disks (booting each from install discs) and for me at least, I have never seen the OS9 drivers option under any circumstance. Yes, even the "Use a Leopard Disc" advice failed in my case.

Poised to try using a Terminal and "diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 OS9Drivers HFS+ macos9 120G. . ." command to force the drivers to install, I decided to try one last thing before that with the insight above: The MacOS9Lives CD boots and auto-launches the Drive Setup version 1.92 (even though the 9.22 image has the newer 2.1 version).

My solution:
Boot from the MacOS9Lives for Unsupported G4 disc. Close the auto-launched Drive Setup. Navigate to the CD and mount the .img disk image file that is used for installing OS9. Go into the mounted volume, find Utilities and open drive setup in there!

This version of Drive Setup let me properly initialize and partition my 500Gb drive. Of course, it installs the OS9 drivers and I was able to install OS9 on one of my partitions which boots fine, leaving the other partitioned volumes for OSX or whatever I want. Then, I booted from Tiger disc and installed OSX 10.4 on one of the other partitions--and I am off to the races!

Of course, I have disabled spotlight. It seems to default boot OSX, but holding ALT lets me select OS9 whenever I like. Dual Boot working.

This resolved my catch-22. I hope it works for others that are mystified by the missing checkbox for "Install OS9 Drivers" and confirms you are not going crazy! Others like you are not seeing the option either. This is real and it's very frustrating, but here is a workaround.

[GaryN]

Sometimes it's difficult to see the forest fir the trees…

The root of the problem is very simple and basic. All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.
It's just one of the little fun things you get to overcome when you defy Apple's wisdom.

[joevt]

All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.
It's just one of the little fun things you get to overcome when you defy Apple's wisdom.

The "Install OS 9 Drivers" option can appear on my Power Mac G5 and Intel Mac running Tiger or Leopard. It might depend on the drive. I think it works at least for FireWire drives and disk images.

[caver01]

All of those OSX installers you tried, "see" they're on a non-native OS9 eMac and so the OS9 drivers option is simply not presented.

Yeah, that's exactly what I figured. Another approach I considered was to maybe try using the IdentityTool described here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2141.0
That might have done the trick and could be a new how-to technique, but the Box link on that thread is broken. Also, given the minor difference between my RevB emac and the one released 6 months earlier which IS native OS9 capable, isn't this something I could spoof using OF commands? I don't really need the answer to that now, but researching OF tricks was going to be my next attempt.

[coachla]

The Install OS 9 drivers option when using OSX's Drive Setup will only appear if the drive you are formating is an external drive,  i.e.firewire. OSX will not offer that option if it sees it as an internal drive.

[caver01]

Ahhh. That makes sense, and explains the differences of observations among the accounts of attempts to use it. Thanks for that insight.