I have a computer museum, sort of, off to my right: a couple of the last PowerBook 17s, a pair of WallStreet G3 PowerBooks, and a 7100 desktop, plus an ancient LC.
Back in the distant days when the WallStreet was my current computer, I periodically upgraded the hard drive to larger and faster models, transferring the various partitions (I always had multiple partitions). Also, at some point I stopped using the battery and opted for a second internal hard drive in an MCE expansion-bay enclosure.
WallStreet computer #1 has MacOS 10.3.8 on its internal hard drive, along with various partitions containing MacOS 8 and 9 variants. They are all bootable. In the MCE expansion bay hard drive sits an older drive containing MacOS 10.2.8 and MacOS 9.0.4. The 10.2.8 is only theoretically bootable: to boot it, I would need to remove it from the MCE enclosure, stick it in a regular internal HD caddy, and use it as a regular / stock internal hard drive. (Mac OS X cannot boot from an expansion bay connection, although MacOS 8/9 can).
WallStreet computer #2 did have a clone of the MCE drive as its internal HD, and could therefore boot MacOS 10.2.8. Then that hard drive froze up on me.
I could, theoretically, clone the copy of 10.2.8 that’s on the MCE enclosure but… it’s been years and I’ve forgotten some of the necessary techniques! The WallStreet is an “old world” box and any drive, in order to boot MacOS X, has to be “old world blessed”. I thought I remembered how but my attempts did not result in a bootable hard drive. (MacOS 9 is easy, you just copy the damn System Folder by dragging and letting it copy).
Well, Jaguar (10.2) installation CDs are cheap so I bought one and installed to an empty HD. Worked fine. Went to Software Update to bring 10.2 up to 10.2.8 only to discover that Apple Computer no longer hosts the updates :smack:
I still have the Jaguar partition on the MCE drive enclosure. I could take it out of that enclosure and use that as my boot disk, should work fine. Except that the MCE enclosure is sort of on its last legs (bent metal parts, worn-out connectors) and I’m loathe to mess with it; I like having the aux drive in WallStreet #1. Can’t acquire any MCE or competitor VST enclosures to replace it. Besides, that drive may also fail some day (they do that, eventually). What I’d really like to be able to do is what I set out to do: clone the drive (with Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect, both of which worked “in the day”) and then “oldworld bless” the cloned drive so it will actually boot.
I don’t suppose anyone remembers better than I do, step for step, click for click and keystroke for keystoke, how the hell to make a bootable clone for an oldworld PowerPC laptop?
