Hi, Sean -
Welcome to Apple's Discussions.
....but I wasn't finding any older versions that actually ran on 9.
You won't, because none are needed. Unlike other OS's (including OSX), OS 9 can be copied via a Finder drag-and-drop process and retain its functionality afterwards.
The easiest way to do this, provided you have a second drive available -
1) Drag the icon of the original (source) hard drive to the new (target) drive; when the target drive's icon highlights (darkens), let go. Finder will copy the entire drive to the target drive.
• The items copied over to the target drive will be placed in a folder on the target drive; this folder will be named the same as the source drive.
• Everything will be copied. This includes anything left lying on the desktop and anything left in the Trash. To accommodate that, two new folders will be created inside the drive-copy folder - one named Desktop, the other named Trash.
2) Since the OS 9 System Folder must be at the root level of the drive in order to be dependably bootable, once the copying is done move the System Folder out of the drive-copy folder so that it is at the root level of the target drive. The root level is the window that opens when you first open the icon of a drive.
3) Do the same with the folders named Documents and Applications (Mac OS 9). For that matter, you can move everything out of the drive-copy folder and to the root level of the drive, just as they were originally.
4) Provided the System Folder is "blessed", it can be test booted to at this point. A blessed System Folder displays the Mac OS dlyph superimposed on a normal folder icon.
• If the System Folder is not blessed, do one or the other of the following -
a. Open the System Folder, double-click the file named Syatem. It will open. Close that window, Close the System Folder.
b. Open the System Folder, drag the file named Finder out to the desktop. Close the System Folder. Drop the file Finder back into the closed System Folder.
Either of those actions should cause the System Folder to become blessed again.
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That's pretty much all that needs to be done.
It may be necessary to "fix" a few aliases. An alias is not much more than an icon with an embedded pathname. When an alias is copied to a different volume, its embedded pathname is not corrected to accomnodate that change - this means any aliases that had been in use will still point to originals on the source drive, rather than to originals on the target drive.
To fix an alias, either -
• throw away the non-functioning one and create a new one using an original on the target drive; or
• do a Get Info (Command-I) on the icon for the alias, and click the "Select New Original..." button. Use the directory services window that opens to navigate to and select a new original on the target drive.
Aliases that may need to be fixed include -
• one for Sherlock, located in the Apple Menu Items folder in System Folder. If a valid alias to Sherlock (which is the default) or Sherlock itself is not present in the Apple Menu Items folder, the Find function in the File menu (Command-F) will not work.
• perhaps one or two in the Application Support folder in System Folder.
• any that the user of the machine may have created.
If you want to know where the previous original for an alias was, so that you can locate a new original on the target drive, do a Get Info on the icon for the alias - the original pathname will still be shown in that window, on the info line labelled "Where:".
Note - if at some time you need to quickly locate the original for an alias, select the alias by clicking it once, then select Show Original from the File menu (Command-R) - the folder enclosing the original will be opened no matter how deeply it may be buried, and the original will be already highlighted to mark it (this is often helpful because you can change the name of an alias without altering its functionality).
