Nekochan Net

Is it possible to dual boot Mac OS 8.5 and 9 on a G3 B&W?

Dead easy. You install two IDE drives. Then use "Startup" in the control panel to switch between.

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4xRS6K 2xHP9K 6xSUN 1xDEC 14xMAC 7xPC 2xPS2

Agreed, but can't you also create two partitions on a single drive, or is there something special about that model?

You can have multiple partitions but classic MacOS can only have one HFS partition per physical disk.

My B+W G3 multiples boots Classic 9, Darwin 7, Darwin 8 and Tiger, but only has one HFS+ partition for Classic 9.

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4xRS6K 2xHP9K 6xSUN 1xDEC 14xMAC 7xPC 2xPS2

Am I misunderstanding something? For example, I have a PowerBook 1400 that dual boots OS 8.6 and 9.1 using a single drive with two HFS+ partitions. Also, I'm certain that my old SE/30 had no problem with multiple HFS-formatted partitions on single drives under System 7.

This is what I was thinking about do, but I didn't know if it works or not. Thanks.

How do you select between the two? I must be wrong then, perhaps they added that when they added IDE support....

But was either partition bootable?

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4xRS6K 2xHP9K 6xSUN 1xDEC 14xMAC 7xPC 2xPS2

I use the "Startup" Control Panel to select between the two. (Specifically, I use the MacOS 8.6 Startup Control Panel, regardless of whether MacOS 8.6 or 9.1 is running. There is an obscure, machine-specific bug in the MacOS 9.x Startup Control Panel that causes the control panel to crash when launched on a Powerbook 1400. Apple never bothered to fix it.)

99% certain of it, but I'll need to replace the PRAM battery on my old SE/30 to verify it. Perhaps you are thinking of the restriction against having more than one System Folder on a single partition?

No problem having multiple partitions AFAIK, I've had partitioned drives in many of my macs.

It's also possible, though not supported to have multiple System Folders. You can change the name of them or throw them into other folders. The problem becomes "blessing" the System Folder. You can use 3rd party utilities, I think the one I used a lot was "System Picker." You can also do tricks like move the "System" file out of the current System Folder and then open the System Folder you want to use (just open it like any other folder in the Finder) and it usually becomes the System Folder.

If you go the route of multiple System Folders on one partition use a 3rd party utility and expect something to go weird once in a while, but I had reasonably good luck in the old days.

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<--challenge S

Yep - that's correct.

I remember those old tools. I wish I knew half as much about current systems as I remember about 10-20 year old systems.

You're not the only one. I just fired up my Mac Plus an hour ago. The little machine is still kicking butt after all these years. 7 second boot up with 4mb Ram, and System 6 on an external Rodime20 hd. Played some Shufflepuck before putting the little beast away.

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Macintosh IIfx running A/UX 3, 160mb hd, 8 mb ram, Radius Truecolor 24 Graphics Accelerator
Macintosh SE/30 running A/UX 3
Apple iMac DV+ 450mhz, 256mb ram, Panther
Compaq Presario 1210 Laptop dual-Booting choice of Win 98 or Damn Small Linux
Compaq Evo T20 former Thin Client running Damn Small Linux
Sun Ultra 5 ,270mhz , 256mb ram, Solaris 9
Acer Aspire 5734z, 2.3ghz Pentium 4500 dual core, 3gb Ram, Dual booting Windows 7 or Zorin Linux
HP Laptop, 1.1 ghz Duron cpu, 384mb ram, Puppy Linux
Power Mac G4, 450mhz, 768mb ram, OS 10.4.11

Nice machine! Shufflepuck! That brings back some memories!