which mac was the last to run on OS9

Depends whether you want to boot OS 9 or run it in Classic mode.

The last Mac that could boot OS 9 was the Power Mac "mirrored drive doors" (PowerMac3,6) - the FW 400 model, not the FW 800 one.

Any Mac that can run Tiger can run Classic...

http://www.apple.com/support/tiger/classic/

Any Mac that can run Tiger can run Classic...

Slight amendment. Any PPC Mac that can run Tiger... Intel Macs cannot (there is a utility called Sheepshaver that supposedly enables Intel Macs to run OS9.0 and earlier but is is tricky to install).

It's easy to transfer data by just copying files.

You may find that for most purposes a Classic capable Mac will do everything you have in OS9. I very rarely boot to OS (even though I can, and for the few times a year I run an OS9 application I can just do so in Classic). The main exceptions are if you are big into OS9 games, or have special hardware with OS9 drivers.

in your "basketball" series the last imac that could boot into os9 was a 800mhz 17" model that was introduced in july 2002.

Is there any way to transfer data from an OS9 machine to a OS 10?

1) Probably the easiest. Get a flash drive & copy data to there. Copy to new machine.

2) Set up an ethernet connection between the machines & run ftp. If no router, you may need to connect the machines with a crossover cable.

Apple products that require an Ethernet crossover cable

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2274?viewlocale=en_US

I was able to upload files by using an FTP server.

I used PureFTPd Manager 1.7 with Mac OS X 10.4. this download does include the server software. I did have to create a FTP user.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/networking_security/pureftpdmanager.html

I had to boot the classic machine after configuring PureFTP

I used fetch:

http://fetchsoftworks.com/downloads.html

I used version 3. Previously, I used version 4.

You can use any web browser to download from Mac OS X when you turn on Web sharing. This is how I downloaded fetch.

3) Do both machines have firewire?

If you have a second Mac computer, you may want to try to copy over as many files you can. One way is to use target disk mode.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8443.html

"Installing OS X 10.4 'Tiger' on DVD-Challenged Macs Using FireWire Target Disk Mode"

http://lowendmac.com/misc/06/0710.html

Here is a picture of a firewire port:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/IEEE_1394_Firewire_PCI_ Expansion_Card_Digon3.jpg/800px-IEEE_1394_Firewire_PCI_Expansion_Card_Digon3.jpg

John wrote:

The last Mac that could boot OS 9 was the Power Mac "mirrored drive doors" (PowerMac3,6) - the FW 400 model, not the FW 800 one.

And those were all single processor, 1.25Ghz units. We have two.

If shopping for that computer and you need to boot OS9, you MUST get the original disks with it. You cannot use a full retail OS9 installer disk to make a bootable OS9 volume on that model. The disks had a special version of OS9 required by that config. If you don't get original disks, they are nearly impossible to find separately. Apple has been out for several years.

Any OS9 installer can make a system folder for the Classic emulator to use, however,

Not all OS9 programs work in Classic emulation. I have an older CAD program whose OSX updates don't retain critical features I require, and running the pre-OSX version of the software under Classic emulation resulted in improper rendering. Only works booted into OS9. Office 98 was sluggish under Classic but not under a OS9 boot. At work, however, OS9 versions of MS Outlook and FileMaker Pro seemed unfazed by running in emulation.

You have to try the important programs you use under Classic emulation to see if they are fully functional and, if not, you will have to find an OS9-bootable unit.