How do I install system 8 on a partition?

[Nancy]

I've been looking all over the internet for a while and can't really find the answer to this.

I still have some software (it's a genealogy program and I didn't save my files to a universal format before installing leopard) that uses the classic operating system.

I think my most recent pre-X system, that I can find the discs for anyway, is system 8.

I tried just now to boot my computer off the system 8 disc, it didn't work (but maybe I was doing it wrong- I held down the "C" key, isn't that the way it used to be to do it?)

So what I think I'd like to do is install system 8 on a partition on my external hard drive- I created a partition just for that when I set up the new external drive some time ago.

How do I do that?  And once I do, how do I boot off that?  Feel free to point me towards a good page that describes it well if it's been done elsewhere (but I couldn't find it!)

Or, is it possible just to boot temporarily off a previous system disc just to open up the old program and save the files into something universal?  That would probably be enough, and then I could get a new program to run the files on.

Man, do I hate obsolescence!

[Dan Millar]

What model of Mac do you have?

Dan