Installing Mac OS 9.0.4 (retail) on iBook G3/500 (M6497)

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum and searched for an accurate answer to the issue I'm facing before posting, but couldn't find a 100% match thread. Hope you guys could give me a hand here:

I've recently acquired a used iBook G3/500 (Dual USB - Tr) of eBay. The exact model number is M6497 and the Apple Order Number according to everymac.com is M7698LL/A. See here https://everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/specs/ibook_500.html

I mainly purchased this unit in order to boot and run Mac OS 9 natively, along side with the more modern Mac OS Tiger 10.4.6 for PowerPC which is capable of running the classic environment from within OS X.

The iBook itself arrived with the original (grey) discs for restoring this very model to the factory settings with Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar, but I purchased separately (off eBay too) both Mac OS 9.0.4 in the retail box, and the Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.6 family pack in a retail box as well. So theoretically, I shouldn't have any problems installing from the installation discs as they're not specified for a specific model.

Now, the problem I'm having is that I couldn't manage to make this iBook to boot to the OS 9.0.4 disc, only to Tiger. I tried holding C upon boot when the OS 9.0.4 disc is loaded in the optical drive, and also to hold ALT in order to see all the boot options. No matter how many times I tried or what I did, the OS 9.0.4 disc just doesn't boot nor show up in the boot menu. On the other hand, the Tiger disc does flawlessly. Now I must say here that the original OS 9.0.4 disc is intact and loads correctly from within OS X. I also tried to make a full image of it just to make sure that all the sectors on the disc are readable. Everything went successfully. Just can't boot into OS 9.

This is very frustrating as I double-checked that this model is capable of booting into OS 9 and spent quite a lot on the iBook itself, and also on the original retail discs. Just in order to enjoy the classic environment natively and to run games from that classic era.

From that point I just tried to run the classic games I have from within Tiger, but it just say that I don't have OS 9 system folder preinstalled so it could use it to run Classic.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!