Mac OS9 on a Mac Mini, (native boot)

#1 Tue, 3 Mar 2015 - 22:29

I just noticed this tidbit from thinkclassic os9 on unsupported Mac's...

Mac Mini's Logic Board is based around Apple's Intrepid northbridge, which is supported under Mac OS 9.

How cool would it be to run Mac Os9 on a 1.6ghz G4 mac mini?

Native? I think pretty awesome!

The cool thing is, I know they already got the radeon graphics 9200 working in the Power Books.

Pretty sure the 15" and 17" Powerbooks are already partially working!

Not trying to steal attention from their thread over there. Just thought maybe some of guys here might want to know whats going on incase you didn't already know.

Cool Stuff!

#2 Tue, 3 Mar 2015 - 22:35

That would be cool to see. I just ordered an OS 9 CD last week to use with my TiBook, and it could be fun to make it work on other stuff.

#3 Wed, 4 Mar 2015 - 21:45

Here's hoping. I have a 1.4 GHz G4 Mini on which it would be cool to run OS9.

#4 Wed, 4 Mar 2015 - 23:43

That would be awesome, imagine the speed!

#5 Thu, 5 Mar 2015 - 16:09

From my PowerBook/iBook experience, I can run OS9 and many of its apps (FreeHand is a must for me) on top of OSX on my PowerBook G4 BUT I can not select it on my boot options. However I can select OSX / OS9 as boot options on my G4 iBooks. On both machine sets (I have a few iBooks and PowerBooks) the Classic system Panel icon is there.

Never understood why.

Edit Addition: On my G5 Tower (2.1GHz), OS9 also works on top of OSX, but I never tried to boot it up from OS9. Talk about wickedly fast!

#6 Thu, 5 Mar 2015 - 16:12

You can't boot AlBooks, G4 iBooks, or G5's from OS9 without hacks.

#7 Thu, 5 Mar 2015 - 16:18

Interesting, TheWhiteFalcon. That maybe true, I'm not arguing your statement. The thing is my G4 iBooks can and do boot OS9. Maybe I hacked them years ago, I don't remember. I do know that half of these machines I have are SSD or SSD/CF as bootable drives in them, so I was "hacking" back then a few years back.

#8 Thu, 5 Mar 2015 - 18:44

Elfen said:
The thing is my G4 iBooks can and do boot OS9.

Pictures or it didn't happen.

#9 Thu, 5 Mar 2015 - 20:17

Gorgonops said:
Pictures or it didn't happen.

Pretty much. Those machines have an entirely different ROM version than the ones that can boot OS9.

#10 Thu, 12 Mar 2015 - 16:32

this is super exciting, I would love to get OS 9 running natively on my G4 mini. It mostly sits unused since Classic mode isn't really that functional for older music software.