How do I install the old system onto a partion?

[Nancy]

I upgraded to Leopard and so far my life has not been (completely) ruined, but I would like to install a pre-X system onto a partition to access older software.

I bought an external drive (to use Time machine, which isn't actually working properly for me but I'll ask about that another time), and I have partitioned that so I have a partition available to hold an old system.

How do I install it?  I haven't been brave enough to just pop the old disk in and start the process in case it messes with my current system and doesn't give me the opportunity to choose where the new (old) system goes.

[Dan Millar]

Well, be brave and just pop it in - the Tiger Installer that is! When you come to the install process, you are given the opportunity to choose which volume/partition you wish to install onto. Choose your shiny new partition and click on options and choose erase and install. Once it is installed, and all the apple updates have run (give yourself a couple of hours!), the only thing left to do is tell your mac which partition to start up from. Use the Startup Disk utility to set your preferred startup disk, and when you wish to override that choice hold down the "option" key at immediately upon powering up your Mac and you can use the Startup Manager to select your boot disk.

Write back when you get back around to the Time Machine question, and good luck!

Dan

[Dan Millar]

Upon rereading your post, I realize I mistook your question - you want to install OS 9! Well, same basic idea, but you must boot your Mac with the Install disc it came with, not your shiny new Leopard disk. This is so you can run Disk Utility to format the partition on the external drive with OS 9 drivers (little tickbox in the disk utility under the partition tab - "Install OS 9 drivers". Then you can reboot your Mac and insert your software restore disk and run the SoftwareRestore program to install OS9 - select your OS 9 partition and choose ONLY OS 9 when prompted for your restore options. I have NOT tried this booted from Tiger yet, so I can't guarantee that would work - but if your Mac is older, you may have an OS9 installer, or you'll have to find a generic OS 9.2 installer - but it WILL work one of these ways.

Dan

[Nancy]

Ooooo, sounds complicated!  Thanks for the info, Dan.  I think I'd actually have to install system 8, as I never had system 9 except as the classic version with system X.  Unless I can somehow use my old X disc (I can't even remember what animal that was- or maybe it was just an X?  It was the first X.) to scrape version 9 off of it?

Say, what keys do I press to boot the computer off of a system disc again?  Now that you mention it, I do remember doing that back in the old days!  (I used to be pretty good with all the tricks of Mac systems until system X, and I never figured that one out, it is just so different and doesn't fit with the intuition I'd developed with system 8 and earlier.)

My time machine problem seems to be fixed, not that I've done anthing to promote a repair, it was spontaneous...

Thanks again for the help, much appreciated!

[Dan Millar]

Well, that's even weirder because OS 8 has some issues with large hard drives - over 128Gb is not do-able. But you can certainly try it - be warned the startup disk cannot be set from OS X to boot from OS 8, and vice versa.  Making my head hurt thinking about it.

Yes you could... ahem... scrape OS 9 off your old OS X disk, follow the previous instructions for restoring or installing OS 9.

Hold down the "C" key to force booting from the internal CD/DVD - same as always!

Good luck with Leopard - get the 10.5.2 update that just came out - Time Machine is awesome!

Happy Mac'ing

Dan