Mac OS 9.1 boot from CD failure

[macavenger]

Originally posted by dricci
And as far as I know, to boot from the option key, you can *only* choose entire drives, not partitions. To change boot partitions, you have to use the startup disk control panel in OS 9 or the System Prefs in OS X.

No, the option key at start up works fine with separate partitions on the same drive. I have mine set up that way, and it works.

[Ianf]

Dricci, I'll try to get my hands on that hardware test CD, thanks for your suggestions.

macavenger, what was the exact process in terms of partioning and installation you went through to get both OS'es working on seperate partitions?

Finally, I don't have to set one of the partitions to "bootable" like I do in linux or the windows world do I? It must automatically make the first partition bootable, as I don't see this option anywhere.

-Ian

[Captain Code]

Originally posted by Ianf

Finally, I don't have to set one of the partitions to "bootable" like I do in linux or the windows world do I? It must automatically make the first partition bootable, as I don't see this option anywhere.
-Ian

You're having some strange problems. It's usually OSX that's more picky about the hardware, not OS9.

You can boot off of any HFS+ partition as long as it has an OS installed on it and that OS supports your hardware.

[kbeartx]

Ian -

I think you have more than one problem - the UFS partition is likely one of them, and I suspect that you either have a bad (defective, damaged) OS 9.1 CD or you are running into a prob I have seen with the 'New World' macs (anything newer than the Beige G3s) - there is a PROM on board that gets updated every time the OS is upgraded, and then you cannot install or even boot to any older version of the OS, regardless of what shipped on that machine. This is true even if you completely wipe or replace the HD - so if at some point in its life, that iBook had, say, 9.2.2 installed, then you can never again use it with 8.6, 9.0, 9.04, 9.1, 9.1.2, or 9.2.1.

Another possibility - I remember a bunch of OS 8.x CDs that would give you a bus error crash at boot every time, unless you enabled AppleTalk before you rebooted. I have not heard of this with 9.x, but it's easy enough to find out, and it might be the case.

hope this helps,

Kbeartx

http://www.techsurvivors.net

[MACSRNOT4DUMEES]

[QUOTE=kbeartx;103084]Ian - there is a PROM on board that gets updated every time the OS is upgraded, and then you cannot install or even boot to any older version of the OS, regardless of what shipped on that machine. This is true even if you completely wipe or replace the HD - so if at some point in its life, that iBook had, say, 9.2.2 installed, then you can never again use it with 8.6, 9.0, 9.04, 9.1, 9.1.2, or 9.2.1.

Another possibility - I remember a bunch of OS 8.x CDs that would give you a bus error crash at boot every time, unless you enabled AppleTalk before you rebooted. I have not heard of this with 9.x, but it's easy enough to find out, and it might be the case.

hope this helps,

Kbeartx

This is closer to what I am experiencing with my iBook 500. I bought it used and did not immediately start with the (known good) OS 9.1 CD and wipe the drive and begin from new. Instead, I saw that there was supposed to be an OS 9.2 system on the HD. I tried to boot from it as Start Up Disk in OS 10.4.? showed it to be present. (Assume nothing!) When I booted into OS 9.2 I got the flashing question mark. Then the computer wouldn't boot off of the 9.1 CD, but would go so far 1st telling me that I needed to restart and disable extensions I have OS 10.4 on DVD and 10.2 & 10.3 on CD so I tried them. Booted fine w/ 10.2 ran a verify disk and verify permissions. Disk turned out OK but permissions were all screwed up. Apparently the person that sold this on ebay just transferred a disk image onto the HD. (They were not fresh, clean installs) I'm pretty confident that there were key elements missing from the OS 9.2 folder and as such there was no foundation for the OS 9.2 system to boot up properly from. I like the eprom concept and I'm going to try and find a reset button somewhere withing this iBook that will hopefully restore it to square 1. For a 12" laptop, I'm fairly impressed with it, and don't mind expanding my knowledge base to allow for any idiosyncrasies it might have. If anyone has done a hard reset to an iBook dual USB, maybe they can share it here. I don't believe that it is impossible to put OS 9.2 back on the iBook, so if I am successful, I will return here and post my triumph.