What is the last Mac built that I can boot up in OS 9 and OS X

Thanks for the clarification Brody. Wasn't sure since I wiped it off my system w/o ever using it when I purchased my comp. I knew it came w/classic.

1999 G4/PCI-"Yikes" Came as 350/400/450 speeds, were wonderfully overclockable, upgradeable, & stable. It's the last G4 bootable in 9 , that maxes out with Tiger 10.4.11. My Yikes is still running marathons, & is maxed out with jumbo SATA's, a multi usb 2, fw 400/800 card, a Vid card, (thank you OWC), and I just got a Sonnet G4/1000 Zif to install. If you have an essential 9 app to run, and it won'r do classic, this is the one! My MacPro 8 core has no prob hanging out with it either.

The last G4 that is bootable in 9 was not the Yikes. It was the 2002 MDD 1.25 Ghz dual processor.

And that machine is also Leopard bootable, whereas the Yikes is not without some forceful prompting.

Only G4's and G3's can boot of system 9

Plus if you have leopard you cant do it!

Just Panther and Tiger!

I remember the old days where you had to do disk swaping to get anything done!

"Only G4's and G3's can boot of system 9
Plus if you have leopard you cant do it!"

I have 10.5.6 and 9.2.2 on separate partitions, and can boot from either one with no problem. The drive was formatted with the option to install OS 9 drivers checked.

Huh, interesting. I booted my G4 to a FW drive with a clone of my old Powerbook's internal drive (with leopard) once. It took 10 minutes to open Preview with a 2 MP image, and was extremely slow in general. Of course, it's a 400 Mhz Sawtooth... I suppose I need a Quartz Extreme video card to use Leopard?

Don - an OS 9 retail disc won't work with earlier macs? What about my Sawtooth (which is missing the original OS 9 disc) or my ancient Powerbook 5300? I believe I can boot the old 5300 (running 8.5) with a SCSI CD drive I have and install OS 9 via retail disc...

Hi, Daniel -

...an OS 9 retail disc won't work with earlier macs?

Read what I wrote above carefully. I did not say that.

The original question asked "What is the last Mac built that I can boot up in OS 9 and OS X" - and that is what I answered. The listings I gave were for the last models bootable in OS 9 in the various Mac families; I made no mention of earlier machines. None of the last OS 9-bootable models can use a retail OS 9 Install CD of any version.

The last desktop G4 that can use a retail OS 9 Install CD is the original QuickSilver G4, released in 2001; since it shipped originally with a model-specific version of OS 9.2, it can use a retail OS 9.2.1 Install CD.

The various retail OS 9 Install CDs that the earlier Desktop G4s can use are -

G4 (PCI) - any
G4 (AGP) - any
G4 (GE) - possibly 9.0.4, certainly 9.1 or 9.2.1
G4 Cube - possibly 9.0.4, certainly 9.1 or 9.2.1
G4 (DA) - 9.2.1 only

Other earlier machine family models have similar variances. Typically the OS 9 version that shipped with a machine is a model-specific one, and is the earliest version that machine can use; if there is a later version retail disk available, that is usually usable.

This Apple KBase article lists the compatibilities of the various OS 9 versions vs. machine models; of importance is note (3) which often appears in the first column of compatibility for a given machine model -
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1835

According to that article, a Powerbook 5300 model can use a retail OS 9.0, 9.0.4, or 9.1 Install CD, but not later versions. Given that there was a fundamental improvement in the OS 9 utilities Drive Setup and Disk First Aid with the OS 9.1 release, that would be the preferred version.