How to reload OS in old ibook?

[santuitman]

Hello all
I have received an old ibook G3 600mhz dual usb. I would like a clean install of the original OS's .It has OS 9 and OSX. I have all of the install disks, I just don't know the correct way to format the drive and reinstall to get both OS's again. I thought there would be something on Apple or in the manual but can't seem to find anything.

Thanks in advance
BRian

 

[Eug]

Stick in the install disc, reboot, and hold down C. The instructions should be listed on the install disc.

 

[santuitman]

Hmm
OS 9 first I would assume and that would have disk formatting tools as well?

 

[Tyranicus]

Out of curiosity, why do you want to install OS 9? OS X will have Classic which can run most OS 9 apps.

 

[santuitman]

Well, OS9 is "free" as I have the disc but I also thought you had to install it as well to get the classic OS look and feel in OSX

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: santuitman
Well, OS9 is "free" as I have the disc but I also thought you had to install it as well to get the classic OS look and feel in OSX

There is no way to get the OS 9 look in feel in OS X, at least certainly not by installing OS 9. You might be able to find a skin for OS X that would work, but I am not sure why.

 

[Eug]

I can't remember which one, but one of the discs should have an disk formatting program on it already.

OS 9 is completely unnecessary. Even back in 2001, I didn't use it.

If you really want to install both OSes, install OS X first, and then install OS 9 on the exact same disc. You don't need to partition or anything. OS X feels quite slow on the iBook G3 600, but it's way more stable than OS 9. OS 9 is quite zippy... until it crashes and loses all your data. Plus the last version of a functional browser is MS IE 5 I believe, and I don't think you can download it anymore.

If you have a reasonable amount of memory, you might want to try to find a copy of OS X 10.4 Tiger somewhere. It is the last supported version for that iBook and it's uber stable. You can still dual boot OS 9 AFAIK, and OS X 10.4 also supports OS 9 Classic, which allows you to run OS 9 apps from directly within OS X.

 

[santuitman]

I guess I didn't say that quite right. If I duplicate the dual install that is on the ibook now I can have OS9 and the classic setup as well as OSX and that setup. If I just install OSX it sounds like it will be OSX with the ability to run older programs in "classic" mode

 

[Eug]

Actually, you still need to have OS 9 on there to run OS 9 Classic mode within OS X. However, this can be a bit flaky at times, and the best way to run OS 9 apps is to reboot into OS 9.

But what OS 9 apps do you actually want to run? Remember, that OS is long dead. It's almost like installing Win 98 on a Win XP machine, just because you want to run some old useless Win 98 app that was dead years ago and has no XP support... not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[santuitman]

It looks like I've got OS 9.2.1 and OSX10.1 install cds plus the software restore disks. I'm just surprised they don't tell you how to reload them but I guess Macs don't crash as much!
I believe it only have 128m of ram plus the 128m soldered in.
Oh it seems my replys got out of sync.

 

[Eug]

256 RAM only? OS X is going to be painful. Even 10.1 is painful with 256 MB. Just run with one app at a time. OS 9 is fine though with 256.

640 is OK for OS X.

 

[santuitman]

Uh huh, 256 total. It's vintage 2001-2002 original box and manuals even

 

[Eug]

So, Newegg sells 256 MB SODIMMs for about $30, and 512 MB SODIMMs for about $56.

384 MB (128 + 256) is tolerable for OS X... that is if you can tolerate the slow G3 CPU.

 

[santuitman]

I'll have to look for some ram but I can reload OS and see how it does.
Thanks for the suggestions