Mac Daniel's Advice

Upgrade a SuperMac to Mac OS 9

- 2000.10.23

Q: Can you offer any advice in upgrading my Umax SuperMac S900 to Mac OS 9 from 7.6.1? Umax is not supporting anything above 8.0. My hard drive driver is FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, so I am unable to install Mac OS 9.

A: First, make sure that you have as much RAM as you can afford, since your S900 (or J700) has 8 RAM slots. Use 168-pin DIMM chips - just tell your reseller which Mac you have, and he will find the right chips. Mac OS 9 uses more RAM than any previous version of the Mac OS. It won't hurt to give your computer some breathing space. OS 9 requires a minimum of 32 MB physical memory with Virtual Memory set to 40 MB; you will need more to run your software.

Before you install, find out which software updates are necessary for Mac OS 9 compatibility. You should visit the company sites related to your software and check out Version Tracker for details about updates.

Back up all your data and make sure that you leave nothing out. You need a solid backup in order to make everything work since the next step erases all the data on your hard drive.

Next boot up from something other than your hard drive and initialize your hard drive with Apple's Drive Setup, which is present on the Mac OS 9 CD-ROM. Make sure to configure your disk the way you like, since this is the only time to create partitions.

This will insure that Apple drivers control your hard disk (necessary for use with Mac OS 9), and it will also create new directories, refreshing your disk like never before.

Now you can install Mac OS 9. I highly recommend that you follow the tight instructions offered by Umax to get everything to work. Go to the link I just mentioned and make sure to use their advice wisely. The page was intended for Mac OS 8.5 but some tips still apply for Mac OS 9. After doing that, your Mac should be running Mac OS 9 just fine. Now you can restore everything from backup.

Further Reading

  • Moving to Mac OS 9, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 9/28/00, which also covers installing OS 9 on a SuperMac S900.

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