Trouble installing OS 9 on Cube!

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Hi, anyone who can help me out would be greatly appreciated. I'll try to keep this short--I used to have a cube, it died and was reincarnated as a really cool fishbowl, and I loved the computer so much that I just recently bought a second one used without an OS and/or system discs for a really good price. My old system discs for the first cube are long gone, but I came across a backup disc that I made of OS 9.01 many moons ago but never tested it, and I would really like to install it, its a disc image file with all the goods on it, but I cant seem to get the cube to boot past the flashing question mark/floppy disc of death... Ive tried burning it again, the "C" key trick, everything Ive found online doesnt seem to work, and I think I may have to just go get a new OS. Thanks for your time!

[ElDiabloConCaca]

The Cube requires Mac OS 9.0.4 or later to boot -- you cannot boot from an OS 9 disk whose version is prior to 9.0.4.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Ah ha!

Thank you so much for the super speedy response!
I dont suppose those upgrades from 9.0 are available anywhere for free from Apple or otherwise (legally)...I suppose this offers a pretty good explanation as to why I cant install. I guess this must be a disc that I made for another one of the macs around my place...So a clean install of 9.2 would boot it, then?

Either way, it looks like I am going to get stuck buying a full retail of Tiger! (Ultimately, I was planning on getting there, but not before a few hardware upgrades and such...) Im just trying to get the thing running on something!

Maybe Santa will drop a fresh retail of Tiger in the stocking this year.

Thanks again for droppin the knowledge! Much appreciated!

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Actually, I think I've made a mistake! I have Mac OS 9.1, ( I had previously said I had 9.01)...still wont boot though. Any ideas? Do I need to re-burn this again? I believe it was made using OS X disc utility, if that helps at all...

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I can't tell whether you're burning it right or wrong, or whether the image was made correctly or not. Impossible for anyone but you to tell -- you can describe the exact process you took to create the image and subsequently burn it and that may help us determine if it's the image or not, but that still won't be definitive in determining if the image/burn is good or not.

Best bet is to try booting from the original CD, not the copy. If the original CD is not available (which I see from your first post it isn't), OS 9.1 can be purchased online, although I think it's pretty expensive for retail 9.1 CDs.

This is probably the only way to tell if it's your image or your computer that's causing the problem.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Thanks for all the help, Jeff.

Im not too sure if Ive burned correctly or not, I reburned it using Tiger Disc Utility on my other mac, and still no dice. Get the same floppy/question mark icon, seems like it wants to boot, but cant...Ive tried burning the image with toast titanium 6 as well, but I get an error that says I cant burn while the image is mounted, and it forces me to close the image. Regrettably the original disc is long gone, obviously a fresh copy of Tiger would be the best choice, but I just dropped an arm and a leg on holiday gifts and a round trip plane ticket from Tokyo to New York (ouch), so buying tiger is not an option for another month or so, and thought that if I could get 9 to boot at least I could use the cube!

Just another thought, probably not possible since there is no OS installed, but since the image mounts fine on my other Mac, is there a way to install it remotely using Target disc mode or a direct firewire connection? Ive also got a straight LAN wire that I use for installing/running CD/DVD discs as Ive got a really tiny Vaio laptop with no disc drive, but that might be a PC to PC function only...just a thought!

Also thought about mounting it with Alcohol 120 and burning it on my PC disc writer with Nero, but PCs rarely solve much when it comes to mac discs...

Thanks for all the help!

Bryant