Installing OS X and OS 9 On Same Machine

[RHITMacMan]

I know that OS X uses MacOS 9 for the classic apps, not sure sure exactly how since I haven't installed OS X and used it yet. What I was thinking about doing is this. I would like to be able to use OS X sometimes and OS 9 part of the time. Meaning, I would like to boot through OS X, part of the time for taking full advantage of OS X. Then I would like to boot through OS 9, to use things that do not work well with OS X yet, like apps, utilities, extensions, etc.. I'm planning to partition my hard drive, one partition with OS X and the other with OS 9. If I do this, I would be able to do as I want correct? I would also be able to see and retrieve stuff on either partition from either booting through OS X or OS 9. Let me know what you have did to make this possible. I would also take any tips for partititioning an HFS+ volume that already contains data without whipping it, or is this not possible.

Thanks in advance..

 

[RHITMacMan]

After reading though some other posts, I think I found some answers to a few of my questions. I guess from what I can gather, OS 9 and OS X can live happily together on the same partition allowing you to boot up through either system even when on the same partition. So I guess my question now, is how much success have people had with this? Has any had problems while booting up into OS 9 bypassing any trace of OS X? I would want to do this to be able to use system extensions and control panels that only run under OS 9 and some classic apps and utilities that don't work well under the classic implementation of OS X.

I'm still thinking about making a partition on my hard drive for my old OS 9.1 though. I figure I can afford the space, since I have one of the new dual-533 MHz G4 machines with a 60 GB hard drive. I know friends of mine have partitioned their FAT32 windows hard disks, to allow them to install two systems on their machines like Linux and Windows, or Win 98 and 2000 without whiping/destroying/erasing any data from the drive they partitioning. Is the analogous possible on the MacOS with HFS+ volumes or must the drive be totally erased before making partitions? OS X uses HFS+ as its standard disk format right? I heard that it supports others as well, is this true? If so, what other disk formats does it support for the main drive structure (where the OS X exists)?

 

[Sisto Zanier]

Originally posted by RHITMacMan
I know that OS X uses MacOS 9 for the classic apps, not sure sure exactly how since I haven't installed OS X and used it yet. What I was thinking about doing is this. I would like to be able to use OS X sometimes and OS 9 part of the time. Meaning, I would like to boot through OS X, part of the time for taking full advantage of OS X. Then I would like to boot through OS 9, to use things that do not work well with OS X yet, like apps, utilities, extensions, etc.. I'm planning to partition my hard drive, one partition with OS X and the other with OS 9. If I do this, I would be able to do as I want correct? I would also be able to see and retrieve stuff on either partition from either booting through OS X or OS 9. Let me know what you have did to make this possible. I would also take any tips for partititioning an HFS+ volume that already contains data without whipping it, or is this not possible.

Thanks in advance..

I've sucessfully installed, on my Mac G3, OS 9 and OS X on the same ATA disk configured as MASTER on bus 0. To do this (after a complete backup ofcourse) I've created, on original 10GB disk, with OS X Disk Utility and from installer CD, two volumes partitions: FIRST 2GB partition where I've installed "Mac OSX" at minimum disk space, only for startup purpouses; SECOND partition for "Mac OS9.1" complete with all extensions and applications I use normally. A second 8.5GB ATA disk configured as SLAVE on bus 1 contains on the same and unique volume partition, a copy of Mac OS 9.1 whitout some extensions, that are in confict with OS X kernel, to use as OS9 Classic with MacOS X, and some folders for OS X applications. Notice that 2GB for MacOS X are insufficent to install Developer Tools too, so you can create this volume with sufficent space.
After a regular Mac OSX boot, I've configured Mac OSX volume as startup volume and MacOS 9.1 on second disk, as Classic OS9 for OS9 applications in OSX mode.If I want to work with complete OS 9, I simply press Option key at startUp, otherwise Mac OS X will be my work operating system.
A little particular notice: due an Apple misunderstanding, a beige desktop G3 cannot use SLAVE disks neither on bus 0 or 1, with MacOS9. There are simply invisibles. Only with other Operating systems as Linux or Mac OSX, this will be possible. So I've worked to much to obtain desired an described results.
P.S. for G3 Beige users : Forget to use floppy disks under OS X
Sincerely