That takes a few minutes, then mounts a volume called OS 9 Content onto the desktop. Open /Volumes/Restore\ CD/.images/OS9General.dmg I was able to mount (open) this disk image to the desktop via the following Terminal command: Inside there are several files including OS9General.dmg. The OS 9 software is in a hidden directory called. I suspected this was included on the set of four CDs somewhere, but it isn’t a Finder-visible file.Ī bit of sleuthing in Terminal helped find the mystery location. He just needed a bootable OS 9 System Folder.
#POWERPC SOFTWARE ON G4 MAC OS#
My client didn’t need Mac OS X, nor was he interested in first installing OS X 10.2.1 on his tower before restoring the OS 9 image.
#POWERPC SOFTWARE ON G4 INSTALL#
Fortunately there were, I contacted my colleagues at the studio and arranged to get a set of the install discs.
#POWERPC SOFTWARE ON G4 FULL#
My last job before running Oakbog full time was as IT Manager for a recording studio, and we ran ProTools hardware and software on these very Mac models! We had about 5 of those systems at one point, so I suspected there were plenty of CDs still buried deep in drawers. Off-the-shelf I did not, but fortunately I knew what he meant and where to get one. The problem was his installation of OS 9 was unstable so he was looking for the original installer. He had a dual 1.25GHz MDD with some older ProTools hardware, and preferred to run the software in OS 9 rather than OS X. Recently I was contacted by a client who was looking for just this. The install CD I used is Apple part number 691-4078-A.) (Note: only MDDs without FireWire 800 ports can boot into OS 9, models with FireWire 800 ports require OS X. You need the bundled discs if you want to reinstall a bootable OS 9 on this machine. The MDD uses a model-specific version of Mac OS 9.2.2, newer than what was included on the last retail OS 9 installer. No OS 9 installer was provided, rather that was available as part of the Software Restore CDs bundled with the Mac. These machines came set from the factory to boot into Mac OS X, with OS 9 also loaded on the hard drive. They never pushed this option on the Apple Store but it was a consistently strong seller. The last of the G4 towers, this model was originally introduced in 2002, briefly evolved into an OS X-only configuration with FireWire 800 in 2003, then returned to the original design for another year.ĭue to the need for some customers to run Mac OS 9 for several years after the introduction of OS X, Apple continued to sell this configuration online in parallel with the PowerMac G5 for over a year. The PowerMac G4 MDD was Apple’s last Mac capable of dual-booting into both Mac OS 9 and OS X.