Blessing Cloned OS 9 System Folder

Yes, I did use Disk Utility and had the checkbox checked. Good question! What a bizarre mystery. I'm trying to avoid re-installing OS 9 if at all possible.

All drives are set to Cable Select, including the one from which I cloned. Also, I've cloned the System Folder first with SuperDuper (first time using it); then when I realized I had this problem, I tried Carbon Copy Cloner (which I've used successfully several times cloning bootable OSX drives) thinking maybe something had gone wrong with the first clone.

From what I understand, the fact that the cloned OS 9 volume is showing up successfully in the System Preferences and can launch Classic Mode with no problems means that the System file is actually blessed. I just can't figure out what's stopping it from being bootable.

Yes, I had no problems booting OS 9 from the original OS 9 drive on the IDE bus, and the cloned OS 9 drive was also on the same bus, so I'm not sure why the bus would be a problem. Stranger things have happened with computers, though!

I think you are asking me to switch the physical location of the OS 9 cloned drive with my OS X boot drive, yes? ... so that the OS 9 cloned drive will be on a different bus (or, at least, on the same bus as the working OS X boot drive)?

I will try it. I hope I can do that this morning. If not, it will be probably mid-evening, so if you don't hear back from me, that's why. I appreciate your sticking with it here!

Ok, to give you the results of that test, I have a few more bits of info as background to give you now.

I have 4 hard drives in this machine. Believe it or not, I have several operating systems (versions) on these drives. (The reasons for that are outdated, but I haven't gotten around to deleting the unneeded OS's.) Only one OS per partition, though. (Having these multiple OS's available has never caused a conflict, as I would expect them not to conflict.)

So, I switched the drive docks rather than unscrewing/re-screwing HD's. I get the same results as before, only when the cloned OS 9 drive failed to boot, the G4 re-booted into Panther. I have to assume that's because that drive must be in the same physical location as my Tiger drive was before the switch, and the computer looked to that location as the last known boot setting on that bus.

Is it looking like I have to take the time to re-install OS 9 from a proper CD?

The original OS 9 boot was on a partitioned 200GB; this cloned one is on a partition that's about 230MB (it's a 500GB Maxtor split into two partitions)! Interesting. I never knew there'd be that kind of problem.

Ok, so here's what I want to try then. I'm going to re-partition the new 500GB into 3 sections and put OS9 onto something considerably smaller (less than 120GB as you indicated).

As a side note to this new light, I tried copying the System Folder from my wife's G4--an install that is only 2 months old from a CD. I tested it on her machine and it booted fine. Her System Folder on my cloned OS 9 volume didn't work either (although, interestingly, it showed up as a boot option upon rebooting with Option Key pressed). The result of trying to boot it from Startup Disk was a floppy icon with a Question Mark in it. No good.

So, Simon, I'll try the 3 partition idea, see how that goes, then move on to the Master/Slave thoughts you suggested. I like to try these troubleshooting things one at a time so I can have definitive answers on what works and what doesn't. I'll see if I can do this this evening.

Thanks to both of you!! I'll write back when I get this done.

The 500GB is ultra-ATA. The reason I bought this machine was because it was going to be the last OS 9 bootable machine made. At the time, I had way too many OS 9 programs I still used a lot to trust Classic Mode to work.

I was messing around with iPartition instead of re-cloning/re-partitioning my drive. I created a 10GB partition with it (checking the checkbox that is supposed to make it OS 9-friendly) then dropped my wife's relatively new OS 9.2.2 System folder on it. Still didn't work! So then I tried fresh-installing it onto that new partition (in Classic Mode, of course, since I don't have a working 9.2.2 to boot in), starting with 9.0 then upgrading with on-disc upgraders I have. During my 9.2.1 upgrade, the "Installer Engine unexpectedly quit" before it finished! Ugh!!

Do you happen to know if the 9.2.2 install discs that are sometimes available on Ebay are machine-specific or even bootable? I was considering doing that to have a bootable 9.2.2 readily available just in case.

I still have to try the master/slave relationships you mentioned, but what strikes me odd is that my original OS 9 boot volume (which worked fine) was on the same configuration that it is now with everything being Cable Select (well, that is was before I switched drive docks around--I haven't put them back in their original spots yet. Though it seems unlikely, that could be a variable in this mess).

Beyond that, it seems my only other hope is to use the Software Restore discs that came with the machine. That's a pain because it will only restore to the boot drive, which would mean I'd have to install OS X onto that new partition in order to get OS 9 on it!!! I could just abandon the idea of having OS 9 on a separate partition and put it on my boot drive, but I think that volume is not <190GB (I'm not on that machine right now to re-check it).

I wouldn't even care about OS 9 at this point except there's a version of After Effects with certain plug-ins that I sometimes need, and that version is prone to crashing in Classic Mode.

Going to the beach today, so it may be either tonight or tomorrow that I even have a chance to mess with this again.

First of all, much thanks to all of you who helped here!

The biggest key in this puzzle was Simon's note that OS 9 needs a certain volume size in order to work. When thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense because we're talking about a very old operating system which was used during a time when OS's had serious restrictions on how it could be installed, etc.

Sorry if the following is a little long-winded, but I want to make clear what worked for anyone else who finds this thread because they're in a jam like I was.

So, I put my drive docks back where they were. No difference in booting the cloned OS 9. I never did re-work the master/slave relationships because I wanted to see if I could get this to work without touching that since I had a working OS 9 with "Cable Selects" only. (In addition, I found in my G4 manual that came with the machine that Apple recommends leaving these drives in Cable Select, for whatever that's worth.)

Then I used my MDD System Restore CD's. I learned, by the way, that you cannot use those CD's while booted in Tiger--it just doesn't function properly. It's a good thing I still had my Jaguar install (the original install that came with the machine) on another partition because that's what was needed to run the System Restore (though maybe it would've worked in Panther, I don't know).

More background info: I had a non-bootable OS 9 on that Jaguar volume ("Macintosh HD"). Somewhere along the line it just went kaput for some reason. I had the bootable OS 9 on the volume I've been speaking about in this thread (volume called "Lennon"), so I just left the Mac HD OS 9 be.

So, when I first ran System Restore while booted in Jaguar ("Macintosh HD"), the original, Apple-installed OS 9 System Folder was still there. After running System Restore, I still had a non-bootable OS 9 on that drive! So I renamed that System Folder to "Previous System Folder" and ran System Restore again. It created a new System Folder that is bootable!

So, I booted in OS 9 from that volume, then copied (on the Finder level) that new System Folder over to my newly-created 10GB partition (called "Nesmith"). Finally, I have a bootable OS 9 on "Nesmith"!!

For giggles, I tried copying that fresh System Folder onto the cloned OS 9 drive, and sure enough it failed to boot, presumably because that volume's size is 222MB (greater than 190MB, as Simon pointed out).

I should point out that Simon said, "If you want the other drive partitions to be viewable under OS9, they'll also have to be < 190Gb." In my case, I had no problems seeing Volumes that were greater than 190GB while booted in OS 9. Your mileage may vary, however.

Unless anyone needs clarification on something (I tried to be thorough), the problem is solved! Thanks again to each of you for helping me out! This forum is awesome!