I’ve got a PowerPC G5 Mac with two 500G hard drives. On the primary hard drive is OSX.4.7. There are times when I need to work on an OS9 desktop, especially the way that open windows look and fit on the desktop. So I thought I’d just install OS9 on the second hard drive, and just use it as my startup disk when necessary. So I’m trying to install 9.1, then updating to 9.2.1.
The installation process seems to proceed normally, then I get a message saying “Problems were encountered accessing the file ‘DigitalColorMeter’ on the disk ‘Second HD’. Please move the file to another folder and try again.” Where should this other folder be, and what should it be called? I tried simply moving the file somewhere else, and that didn’t work.
Is there any solution to this, or can’t I have OS9 on a G5 at all?
If you want to emulate MacOS 9 in the built-in environment called “Classic”, you can do that on a G5 Mac, or any other PowerPC Mac.
The easiest way, by far, is to make a diskimage of your OS 9 System Folder from an earlier Mac that already had Classic working for it. From then on, you just transfer the diskimage, instead of having to reinstall it. (And, as a diskimage, it’s one file to back up and keep multiple copies of, rather than managing a folder full of files that are more vulnerable to other things happening to them when you aren’t running Classic).
To deploy a diskimage of OS 9 as your Classic OS System Folder, doubleclick it, let it mount, then open the Classic PrefsPane and designate that System Folder as your chosen bootup volume for Classic purposes. Unmount the diskimage. From then on, the Classic launch process will auto-mount the diskimage as part of its boot procedure. The rest of the time, those files are unmounted and therefore impervious to anything that goes on.
When you create your OS 9 diskimage, toss some huge files onto the System Folder to make the diskimage larger than it would otherwise be (gives you room for temp files and room to grow in). After diskimage is created, dump the huge files and empty trash.
To make a diskimage from a folder, if you don’t already know:
Launch Disk Utility
File/New/Disk Image From Folder… <navigate to your OS 9 folder>
Even some of those won’t boot into OS 9. The titanium PowerBook was the last one to boot OS 9. All of the aluminum revisions require OS X and won’t boot OS 9, which is usable only in the Classic emulation environment.
panache45, sorry but it’s a no-can-do situation. If you really, really need native OS 9 stuff, you’ll have to use an older computer that can still boot it. What do you need that using Classic within OS X won’t supply? Are you having problems with drivers that won’t work right in Classic or something?
