OK, looks like I’ve left out details I didn’t think I had.
Very important information: The CD is not a burned copy and is not third-party software. This is an Apple branded OS9 CD, which is a more recent release and, according to the materials packaged with it, contains OS 9.1. The CD itself identifies its contents as “Version 9.1”
I have not been able to boot from the CD. The computer boots from its hard drive like normal no matter what I do. I’ve tried setting the CD as the startup disk. No dice so far. The computer does, however, recognize the CD and show me the contents of said CD, but when I double-click the installer I get the error message “This program will not run on your computer. See the documentation for details”.
According to the “About This Macintosh” window, I have 147,456K of “Built-in Memory” and 296,600K “Total Memory” - If I’m doing the math right, I have 147MB of physical RAM.
Near as I can tell I don’t have a burner on this Mac. I also lack the funds to buy a burner at this point.
Now the best part, from the “Before You Install” document: “If you are ubgrading from Mac OS 8.1 or earlier, you cannot perform the installation unless you start up from Mac OS 8.5 or later” What the heck does this mean?
That means it will not want to install OS 9 into the existing System Folder unless the existing System Folder has OS 8.5 or later, which in your case it doesn’t.
Will it let you do a Clean Install? (Click all of the “Options” checkboxes that come up).
Other things to check on:
a) When you insert and mount the CD and open it (or it may be “open” by default when you insert it), you may see a single file at the top that says something like “Install MacOS 9” – in italics, perhaps? Switch the view to List View and scroll down and see what all is on the CD. The main installer may be a “metaprogram” that calls other installers in a consecutive order, and by checking the entire contents of the CD you may find that by running installers directly you may be able to use the disk.
b) If the CD is designed to be bootable even though you can’t get your computer to boot from it, that implies that it holds a valid bootable System Folder on it somewhere. After making sure you can boot from something other than the hard drive (even a floppy will do, but this part is important), try disabling your current system folder on your hard drive by moving the Finder out of System Folder and putting it somewhere else; rename your System Folder to something like System Folder Old; then copy the System Folder from the CD to the hard drive by dragging it there. After it finishes copying, if it does not have a folder icon that includes a smiling Mac face, open it, pull the file Finder out onto the Desktop, then put it back in. (That’s called “blessing the System Folder”. It sets the boot blocks so the Mac ROM code will see it as bootable). Then reboot. If this works, you will have booted from a copy of the System Folder that was on CD, which is probably MacOS 9, although probably a stripped-down copy. If you can do that, you can probably run the installer at that point.
I think we’ve diagnosed the problem here. I’ve come across this issue while updating legacy systems. That part of the documentation simply tells you that the Installer program will not work under any earlier OS than 8.5. While OS 9 can be installed over any previous system, that Installer program itself isn’t going to execute under an OS earlier than 8.5.
The OS 9 Installer program itself requires certain features of OS 8.5 or above to run. In the OP, you mentioned that the current system on the computer is System 7.5.3. If you try to run the Installer program under a 7.5.3 environment, then the program will give you the error as described and quit. This I’ve experienced before.
This problem is solved if you can boot from the CD (which you cannot seem to do). Once you start up from the CD, the computer will be in an OS 9 system environment, which would allow the OS Installer to run and begin copying the necessary system files to your HD, replacing 7.5.3 with 9.1.
I have not encountered a situation where it refused to boot from CD. This is certainly the more pressing issue, as I believe your original problem will go away once you successfully boot from CD. So, you mention setting the CD as startup disk does not work. Nor does holding down C. Very odd.
Does the computer attempt to detect a bootable CD first before resorting to the hard drive? Did it show a question mark icon during the startup sequence before the Happy-Mac icon?
Can the computer start up from any bootable disk at all? If you have an emergency boot CD from Norton Utilities or somehow get to a copy of any bootable CD, try testing the computer using one of those. If there is an issue with the computer booting from a CD-drive, this will isolate the problem.
The retail OS 9 CD should contain a bootable System Folder. If possible, find that folder and replace your current System folder. Make sure you can boot from, say, a bootable floppy before you try this though. Once that’s done, you should be able to restart into a minimal OS 9 environment, giving the Installer a proper OS in which to run.
You should be able to either run installers individually or copy the CD’s system and boot with that.
As a very last resort, you can use a program called Tomeviewer (freeware). It will let you open the compressed files that the installer uses and you can install them manually.
Don’t do that unless you know exactly which parts of the system you need, and all other options have failed.
OK, new problem. I tried copying the system folder off the CD and using it instead of the 7.5.3 system folder as suggested in a couple of posts above. I now appear to be screwed.
On startup, as soon as the “happy Mac” goes away and the Mac OS splash screen shows up (it now shows up as OS 9.1, BTW), a message box appears saying “The system software on the startup disk only functions on the original media, not of copied to another drive”. There is a button marked “Restart” which, if clicked, restarts and brings you right to the same place.
We need to find out why you can’t boot from the CD. You should open the case and find out what kind of CD-ROM drive is installed. It’s the topmost drive, so you don’t have to remove anything else besides the steel case cover.
YOU DID FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS AND MADE SURE YOU COULD BOOT FROM AT LEAST ONE THING OTHER THAN THE HARD DISK BEFORE DOING THIS, yes?
Boot from the floppy (or other bootable media). Put the original Finder back in the original System Folder. You should be back where you started from at that point.
Don’t worry, if necessary I’ll mail you a bootable floppy.
Did you as of yet try holding down the following key combination as you boot?
Command-Option-Delete-Shift
This normally tells the machine “bypass the normal boot drive sequence and look for something else to boot from”. Perhaps you can boot from the CD using this. It worked on my Mom’s 6100 with a 3rd-party CDROM drive that didn’t respond to holding down the “C” key.
Well, I thought it had booted from the floppy…maybe I didn’t make the bootable floppy correctly?
From what the error message says, it seems to be copying the system folder off the CD that it doesn’t like. I get a System 9.1 splash screen now, but that’s as far as I get.
Command-Option-Delete-Shift doesn’t seem to work. The only keyboard boot command I’ve been able to use is holding down shift to turn off the extensions on boot-up. Maybe it’s a keyboard issue?
What (just so I know I’m doing it right - there are Macs at the community college where I’m taking a class at night) does one do to create a successful boot disk? I can take a blank CD to school tonight and do it with no problem but I wanna make sure I do it right.
Ask if they have a floppy called “Disk tools” and use the utility called “Disk Copy” to create a copy of it. IIRC, it has a system, finder and maybe a CD driver, as well as the invisible files Desktop DB and Desktop DF. Older versions of Norton Utilities had a feature that would create a startup disk for you.
Thanks for the offer, Handy - everything should be ok if I can just get past the current problem and get the Mac to boot up all the way…sounds like I need someone to burn me a bootable floppy at this point.
At this point, you almost certainly need a Disk Tools floppy (or perhaps some external SCSI drive to plug in, but that seems less likely to be available). Until you get one, you can try zapping the PRAM (cmd-opt-P-R) and then booting from the CD (if you haven’t already) but that doesn’t seem likely to work.
Have you opened the case yet to find out what type of CD-ROM it is?