Mac OS - Upgrading to Mac OS 9
- — 22 December, 1999 12:21
1. Start up from the Mac OS 9 CD
It may seem obvious, but you can't upgrade the system on the disk you're currently booting from. If you try, you will crash your Mac, with possibly disastrous results. With the Mac OS 9 CD in the drive, open the "startup disk" control panel, and select the CD from the menu. Alternatively, restart your Mac, holding down the
2. Double-click the "Install Mac OS" iconThis brings up a dialogue inviting you to accept the license agreement and nominate a drive you want to install Mac OS 9 on. The installer will make sure there is sufficient space for a recommended installation of Mac OS 9 and another dialogue box will appear.
3. Perform a clean installation
If there is one piece of advice you must follow about upgrading to Mac OS 9, a clean installation would be it. From the dialogue box telling you that your hard drive is big enough for Mac OS 9, click on Options. There is only actually one option available, and you should click it.
Usually when you update the Mac OS, it's sufficient to have the installer just write a new System file into your System folder and add whatever widgets the new OS requires. With Mac OS 9, far too much has changed for that to be practical. Not performing a clean installation is virtually guaranteed to lead to conflicts between the system and your applications, especially Web browsers and email applications.
Performing a clean installation means that the installer creates a new System folder for you, and renames the old one "Previous System folder". This old System is left intact, so you can move your third-party extensions, control panels and fonts over later.
Note that Conflict Catcher, by Casady & Greene (distributed in Australia by PICA Software, (03) 9388 9588) offers a "clean install system merge" function that makes moving your third-party software from the old system to the new one a point-and-click process. Aside from its many other benefits, this function alone makes Conflict Catcher well worth the price. For best results, install Conflict Catcher before you perform the Mac OS 9 upgrade.
4. Update hard disk drivers
Once you click on Start to begin the installation process, you're presented with a dialogue box asking if you want to update your hard disk drivers. By default, the installer will update the drivers, although it adds a minute or so to the process. Normally you can get away with not doing this, because there isn't that much difference in the drivers from one version of Mac OS to the next. With Mac OS 9, you will save yourself a lot of heartache later on if you let the installer do its stuff.
5. Read the setup assistant carefully
The "wizard" that starts up after the installation process has finished is the Mac OS Setup Assistant. It checks for various bits of information such as your location, your name, what sort of printer you have, and so forth, to customise your computer. Most of this info will be the same as the settings you had before, and you just have to keep clicking on the right arrow to get through it. Some of it, however, presumes defaults that won't match your previous setup, so don't just click on the right arrow and presume everything will work right.
If you do get something wrong, you can always run the Setup Assistant again later.
With that all done, you should now be up and running with Mac OS 9. Some of your applications will no longer work, because you have created a new System folder that won't contain the extensions that they require. Some of these will function properly once you've moved the required extensions from the old system folder to the appropriate places in the new one. Others will require you to re-install them.
