reinstalling OS 8.6

[glen]

Stubborn Hard Disk!
I have a 350 Ghz G4 which I upgraded to OSX 10.3.9
It came with OS 8.6

I decided to reinstall OS 8.6 in my G4 in order to use some software that
had so to speak, been left behind.
No such luck, It refuses to boot-up on OS 8.6
It does boot-up on OSX10.2 which I used originally when I upgraded to OSX
Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do to the disk so that it accepts OS 8.6 again?

Thanks
glen

[AHunter3]

Does it boot from the OS 8.6 installation CD?

If you don't have OS 8.6 on CD, where do you have it?

[stefanov]

ehmm... Are you sure that OSX is 8.6-savy? In my knowledge you need to install 9.2.2 and it will work fine. Of course, the hard disk must have been formatted with OS9 drivers enabled. Good Luck!

[voldenuit]

The first two G4s, Yikes and Sawtooth, can boot 8.6, so if it's a 350 MHz G4, that should work.

Unless your old program won't run with that, I'd strongly suggest you use 9.2.2, as provided on your Panther disks. That will enable you to swich back and forth between OS X and OS 9 booting without problems.

[glen]

I have the original OS 8.6 on CD, it can read the CD but it will not boot from it. Could it be that when I installed OSX 10.3.9 it had this effect?
I have now installed OSX 10.2 in the hope that from this OS it would allow me to boot from OS 8.6, but no luck.
Will try from OS 9 - Will let you know
glen

[voldenuit]

You're a lot better off with 10.3.9 - make sure you also install classic.

Then you can boot OS 9 without any problem.

The 8.6 CD should boot, but unless you're really into retro-computing, I wouldn't insist on trying that.

[trevor]

I have the original OS 8.6 on CD, it can read the CD but it will not boot from it. Could it be that when I installed OSX 10.3.9 it had this effect?

No. Installing OS X 10.3.9 (or any version of OS X) will not make any permanent changes in your computer, such that it could not boot from a CD that it previously could boot to.

Probably if you Zap your PRAM and reset Open Firmware, you will then be able to boot from the OS 8.6 CD. (directions (http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269))

If that still doesn't help, there is a faint chance that a firmware upgrade you did on the box blocks 8.6 booting.

Is your PowerMac G4 a Sawtooth (http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g4saw.shtml) with an AGP card slot, or a Yikes! (http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g4.shtml)?

Trevor

[glen]

It has a PCI card, I suppose that makes it a Yikes.
I think that your idea of the firmware update blocking the OS 8 booting makes sence. Any way to deupdate?

[AHunter3]

My WallStreet had no difficulty switchbooting from 10.3.x to MacOS 8.1, let alone 8.6 (both of which I had installed on various partitions).

You may need to switch the open firmware bootinstrux in addition to / before rebooting with the "c" key held down: try selecting the MacOS 8.6 CD as the bootup device in the Startup Disk PrefsPane and confirming that you do indeed want to boot from that before selecting Restart, and then hold down the "c" key.

[voldenuit]

Do you have any compelling reasons to use 8.6 rather than 9.2.2 ?

[glen]

Not life or death, its just that I have a G5 Dual 2Ghz now as my main computer and wanted to access a couple of programs that do not work with OS 9

Reset PRAM and firmware, started up with the OS 8 disc selected in the startup disk prefpanel and held down the C key for good measure.
Still no joy

[voldenuit]

Not life or death, its just that I have a G5 Dual 2Ghz now as my main computer and wanted to access a couple of programs that do not work with OS 9
Not working in classic or not working with OS 9 ?

Anyway, the last thing to try would be to explicitly set the CD as the boot drive in Open Firmware.

The G4 still has its original optical drive ?

[glen]

They did not like OS 9 (the programs)
I seem to recall that OS 9 was a big jump from OS 8 and previous versions

"Anyway, the last thing to try would be to explicitly set the CD as the boot drive in Open Firmware."

How would one do that?
and as an aside how does the Quote thing work?