But for posterity: the magic sauce was the Leopard install disc after all. Disk Utility still hid the "install mac os 9 drivers" option when partitioning, but after some googling, I relied on some trusty Terminal commands
Thoughts?
My thoughts are: WyTF do people ask questions then not read the answers?
I wrote: "Disk initialization and partitioning are separate processes.
You init a disk first, installing drivers if desired, then partition it afterward but you are not required to."
Disk Util did not "hide" the OS9 drivers option while partitioning - it didn't allow it because it has to be done first.
Again, it has to be done first. it has to be done first. it has to be done first.
Otherwise, you eff up the disk and get unpredictable results exactly like you have now.
If you get a kick out of using Terminal, then learn it first. Otherwise, you're a monkey with a chainsaw.
I
did read your post, and even took action based on it! At worst, I misinterpreted your words, but I honestly don't think I did.
You confirmed my suspicion that erasing a single partition wasn't going to solve it, since it didn't make sense to me that one partition could contain the information for how to read the other partitions.
After I read your post, I started to search for man pages that explained how
diskutil
works, since I had a hunch that it is what powers Disk Utility. I came across this:
https://ss64.com/osx/diskutil.html and
https://www.unix.com/man-page/osx/8/diskutil/, which sparingly use that word. But I did read them, and learned that
diskutil
once provided options for enabling the disk to be used by OS9.
That was confirmed by the tutorial linked here:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=5345.0Put simply,
diskutil
's
partitionDisk
verb partitions the
whole disk (the last partition soaks up any excess you didn't account for).
It wasn't clear to me from your original reply at the time, but if you intended for me to initialize the disk using the tool in the OS9 installer, my concern was regarding my harddrive size: 400GB is bigger than what OS9 can apparently instantiate on a MDD FW800. (
http://macos9lives.com/mac%20os%209%20lives_003.htm). So I booted up my Leopard installer and used
diskutil partitionDisk
, and installed Leopard, then finally successfully had the MacOS9Lives installer work, followed the instructions, and rebooted. Now I am here, where I can only boot into OS9.
Where do you feel I ignored your suggestions? I am gathering you wanted me to use the OS9 tool to initialize the disk first, but again, that wasn't clear to me.
(I really did not appreciate the tone of your post btw. I've read a lot and am piecing this together. I know I'll probably get stuff wrong, but thats the whole point of learning this stuff and documenting as I go along!)