How to run OS9 and OS10 at same time

S

Susanne

Registered
My apologies if this has been addressed, but I didn't see it in a cursory search.

Being a great believer in holding off upgrades as long as possible, I now am getting ready to switch to OS10, but cannot yet upgrade all applications. Can I run both OS9 and OSX (or OS10) at the same time?

Thanks, susanne
 
Yes. It's called "Classic". Basically, when you open an OS 9 app in OSX, it will open Classic (OS 9) and you can have your OS 9 and OSX apps running at the same time. Some VERY old apps may not work in Classic mode though...
 
Susanne, there are 10,000 applications for OS X already .. maybe there are freeware or shareware applications that do what you need to - instead of using all of them in Classic.
Which applications do you still need in Classic, or what wold the replacing applications do? Maybe someone of us can help you find some alternatives to OS X, trying them does not hurt.
:)
 
Susanne,

The Classic system runs virtually every Mac OS 9 application via a kind of emulation, which is known then as Classic. Indeed, this is not the first time Apple does this, since OS 9 acts as an emulator when running old native Mac OS 8 and lower version applications. This has a problem with performance, but since computer CPUs are faster than before, it is very likely not to be noticed by the user.

If you have to run old applications (may designed for OS 7/8) which do not run under Classic, and want to keep Mac OS X alive (that is, not rebooting into a new partition) there's an appz called Basilisk II. It is a 68k Macintosh emulator capable of running OS 8 at a very reasonable speed. BTW, it is free.
 
guilly said:
The Classic system runs virtually every Mac OS 9 application via a kind of emulation, which is known then as Classic.
Click to expand...
Well not quite an emulation, and there was no emulation in OS 9 to run OS 8 applications. In OS 7 and 8 there was the ability to emulate instructions from the old Motorola 98000 series microprocessors so applications written prior to Apple's adoption of the Apple/Motorola/IBM PowerPC microprocessor could be run.

OS X actually runs a copy of OS 9 that is separately installed on your HD as if it were an OS X application or task. That task can in turn run OS 9 applications so long as they do not directly access the hardware. (Any application or extension that attempts to directly access hardware will cause OS X to immediately terminate the offending application, which as far as OS X is concerned, is OS 9 a.k.a. the classic environment.) Since both OS 9 and OS X were written to run on the PowerPC microprocessor family CPUs, no emulation of any kind is necessary. OS X does add some additional resources to OS 9 and traps out most OS 9 extension and I/O calls and passes them to the equivalent OS X function for processing, thus rendering most OS 9 extensions superfluous in the classic environment.
 
dktrickey said:
That was the old 68000 series microprocesors (not 98000). . .

:)

Doug
Click to expand...
You are absolutely correct, of course. They tell me failing memory is one of the first three signs of getting older - I forget what the other two are. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top