Re-installing OS 9 without an optical drive

What model is your Mac? (iBook, PowerBook, Power Mac, iMac) Be specific and tell us what you can about the case design, color, etc.

What's the processor speed (in MHz) ?

Does it have Firewire? Do you have access to a Firewire optical drive? (buy, rent, borrow)

I believe that would work.

Do you have any idea what software is missing? You might want to try the old standby that is the safe-boot (boot with shift held down), this sometimes will shut down trouble causing extensions, if it works, you can use the extensions manager to see what is enabled/disabled, and try to find out what the trouble is (disabling everything that you've downloaded, and adding them one by one is an annoying, but almost certain way to find the trouble if it boots in safe mode, but not with extensions enabled (or doesn't sleep, etc.)) (of course, since yours boots, and just recommends a reinstall, you could do the extensions troubleshooting without the safe boot, just boot into OS 9, and see if disabling extensions with the extensions manager helps. (I would guess that you've accidentally drag/dropped an extension into a folder either outside the Extensions folder of the System Folder, or into a subfolder within Extensions, and all you'd have to do is find where (not as hard as it might seem, even without Spotlight))

You also might consider just making an image of the disk in some format you can make/mount (I would use Disk Utility, and .dmg, for an OS X, and I believe you could use Disk Copy, if all you have is OS 9). I've installed software from disk images mounted on a machine, before, onto other volumes (I think I remember installing off of a disk image, onto a disk image) If you need to boot, though, and have a flash drive that'll hold the system, I think that should work.

Some models are able to boot from USB, some are not. I believe the ones that can have USB 2.0.

Again, knowing which Mac we're dealing with would make a big difference here. The OP did not specify.

My Dual USB G3 iBook boots from USB and its 1.0.

Not sure, personally, but if you look down in the responses to this comment (do a search for "USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports/drives have always booted OS 9, on any Mac that can boot into OS 9"), there's one that says the Mac with USB 1.1 or 2.0 have always been able to boot from them, but I don't know from personal experience.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061017084322177

I looked both computers up on "everymac.com" (very handy site), and they both are supposed to be compatible with a PC II card, so you could pick up one of those, and ...

Did a google search, and came up with these, though I wouldn't say they fit the "cheap" requirement, there's probably a similar solution that does.

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Type_II_PC_Card_Mobile_Hard_Drive_5GB/DP-PCM2_5GB/p/25445
http://www.google.com/products?q=pc+II+card+drive&btnG=Search+Products&show=dd&sa=N&lnk=next&start=10

For that kind of money one could get a PC Card Compact Flash reader and a 4-8GB CF card and be solid state. No guarantees from me on of the Pismo will boot from it, though.

http://www.insanely-great.com/features/010823.html

Search for "Compact Flash/CF Type II/Smart Media"

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1061)-SanDisk_Ultra_II_CompactFlash.aspx

Which, by the way, will be blazing fast memory that you can use for other purposes across many platforms, but specifically, on the two computers you have.

if you get a generic USB CD-ROM Drive (can be USB 1.1 or 2.0) Just hook it up to the USB Port and hold down the "Option key" when you hear the chime, that is, after you put the OS 9 cd in it the drive tray. Then select the CD.

The Pismo CAN boot from USB. so it's not that hard. It will work, go on and try it!

I stumbled upon Gamba's site (not updated in four years but still there!) Many of the links are dead including the Mac Driver Museum :^(.

I am trying HFVExplorer 1.3.1. I am having a little trouble as it can read all the Mac OS 9.1 disk but it writes to the SD card as .bin, .hqx or resource fork or data fork only. Can't seem to find a way for it to just copy it as a Mac file.

I 'erased' the SD card with the Pismo, hoping HFVExplorer would then recognize it as a Mac disk, but nothing. I wonder if I should use Drive Setup to format it?

EDIT: 4:52PM
Drive Setup says 'unsupported drive' or something like that...

EDIT: 6:49PM
Tried MacDisk 7.2 and the trial version will not copy files larger than 1MB, so that won't work.

Using HFVExplorer I was able to get all the appropriate software to the Pismo but in extracting the .bin files with StuffIt, it also extracted every single item from every tome so I now have THOUSANDS of little files in my Mac OS Install folder on my Data partition! Of course I can't boot from a folder so this won't work anyway, I was just hoping I could piece all the OS stuff I copied together properly, copy it BACK to the SD card and then boot from it, but I guess it is still PC formatted so that won't work...

Have I really been working on this for four hours?!?

The Pismo will need the Mac OS ROM file on the drive, which the 3400c won't likely install.

I've had an external USB 2.0 Plextor CD-RW for several years. I haven't made a lot of use out of it, but it has come in handy for a few very specific situations. One of which was plugging it into a 1U server to load an OS as the case didn't have room for an optical drive (2 3.5" bays and a big blower up front). Even an older el-cheapo external CD drive might be pretty handy to have hanging around.

I did note in the original post that is is a Pismo, didn't say it is 400MHz. Don't know anyone around here with a Firewire CD drive. My Powerbook 3400 doesn't have USB or Firewire, just SCSI and I have a SCSI CD burner, but I guess it isn't going to do much good here.

Does your 3400 have a network port? It seems the obvious way to transfer the files would be to share the install CD on the 3400 across the network to the Pismo. Assuming, as it seems, your Pismo actually has a "workable" OS installation on it, as it sounds like? (You just want to reinstall it clean because it seems "busted" somehow?)

So here's a recipe I haven't tried, but *might* work, assuming you can share the OS CD from your 3400, your Pismo works "well enough" to do some file manipulation, and the OS 9 installer will run from "anywhere", rather then being prickish about only running from the CD or only working on certain machines.

0: Share the OS 9 CD from your 3400. Or... if you're really desperate and your PC is all you have on your local network (your 3400 has no working ethernet or something), set up BasiliskII or Sheepshaver (Instructions on how to do this are outside the scope of this lame suggestion.) and share your CD with it. Should be doable, in theory.

1: Format a big (512MB or bigger) USB key with the Mac filesystem with your Pismo. Drag your "System" folder to it, open and shut it (to bless it), and then try booting from it. (Set it in the "startup disk" control panel, or hold... option? to get a boot menu and select it. I think the Pismo is the oldest laptop that supports the latter.) My 867 Titanium could boot OS 9 off a USB key this way.

2: Once you've verified that, connect to the network share of OS 9 on your 3400. First try this while you're booted off the USB key. If it works, you may be able to install directly across the net to your hard drive. If not, boot back into your local install and copy the installer files to the USB key.

3: If the "install directly from the net share" part of 2: didn't work, boot your USB key again and try installing from the installer files you copied to it.

In principle this *might* work. It all depends on how anal the installer is about checking to see if you're being "evil" or not. I remember OS 7.5.5 could just install from anywhere you'd copied the install files to, but later versions, not so much.

--Peace

Ok, I haven't researched this, but I know that some Macs could boot in target mode via SCSI, it might be a possibility, for on the price of a cable, I believe.

http://tinyurl.com/5f3lrp
http://kb.iu.edu/data/aahs.html
http://lowendmac.com/tf/2k1129.html

Ok, so all you'd need for that is a cable/converter, but man firewire to scsi converters aren't cheap (the ones I've found at least, perhaps there are cheap ones that I didn't find)

Does the PC have SCSI?

Or maybe:

http://www.recycledgoods.com/item/29794.aspx

If you can find a compatible PCMCIA scsi card for the pismo (not sure if the above is or not), as cheap as that one, and get a scsi cable?

(you can always just swap drives, install from one machine, then swap back, or replace the optical drive)

I should have thought of it, since it's a sleep issue

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58416

CUDA reset often fixes many things, highly recommended, as you seem to have bunches of problems with it.

I should have realized it was the Pismo you were having trouble with, not the 3400, since you were talking about OS 9, but it didn't occur to me till now.

I should have realized it was the Pismo you were having trouble with, not the 3400, since you were talking about OS 9, but it didn't occur to me till now.

So, does the PC that you can access Mac Volumes from have Firewire? (you could always get a Firewire PCI card) Then startup the Pismo in target mode, then drag a the system folder in. Um... but you said the PC can't access Mac CDs? That's kind of sad. You could install a BSD or a Linux and access the CD from them, providing you have a way to backup and restore the system to the way you want it. Not sure what OS you've got on the PC, but in a UNIX you can run dd and get an iso image from the cdrom device without needing the OS to mount it (you actually have to unmount the cd),

Windows?:

http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/burningcds/makeanisoimage.htm (or just google "windows cdrom iso image", etc)

So image the cd, whatever way you can, mount the iso, then transfer over a fresh System Folder to the Pismo, booted in target mode, using your PC mac volume mounting software.

Would be one way.

So the optical drive in the 3400 doesn't work, either?

This makes me want to scream, and it isn't even my computer.

It seems like it, as I would have guessed, since it just turns the Mac into a firewire drive, basically, but there are some conflicting posts, which basically amount to "PC's and Mac don't play very well in target mode", but I'm guessing it's all a format problem from those who've posted, and I'm sure you just have to find the right software to be able to mount the drive

(http://www.asy.com/ was the first think I found, but I'm sure there are bunches more, probably free ones (linux and BSD have modules for mounting everything, and usually someone ends up porting it over to M$/etc))

The first hit in the google search mentions this as a security risk, but really, if someone else has control of your computer, just about any security isn't of much use, anyway, and he doesn't mention that you can put a firmware password on, which prevents starting in open firmware, or from CDs, without the firmware password, so really, it just depends on how secure you need to be. (Or using filevault, etc.)

http://tinyurl.com/5ulcj9