Simple if you know how....booting off a CD?

imac davidimac david
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi,



a friend has one of the old DV iMacs running OS9.0, and I wanted to upgrade to 9.1 to fully utilise Appleworks 6 (as per the recommendation that came with A6 documentation).



However, to upgrade to 9.1 the instructions tell me to boot off a CD ROm, which I think you do by holding down the 'c' key as the machine boots up.



Only thing is, I can't then eject the disc to insert the disc with the 9.1 upgrade as the iMac tells me the CD Rom is needed as it is running the system software!



I don't want to download the upgrade from Apple as she only has an extremely slow dial up internet connection.



So can someone tell me where I'm going wrong? How do I boot off a CD Rom, eject it, insert the upgrade CD Rom, perform said upgrade, and re-boot?



I'm very new to Macs, having purchased the new iMac a few months ago and have only played with OSX, and since NOTHING has gone wrong I haven't needed to find out about this kind of stuff before.



Any help approeciated!



Cheers



David

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    pevepeve Posts: 518member
    [quote]Originally posted by iMac David:

    <strong>Hi,



    (...) Only thing is, I can't then eject the disc to insert the disc with the 9.1 upgrade as the iMac tells me the CD Rom is needed as it is running the system software!



    So can someone tell me where I'm going wrong? How do I boot off a CD Rom, eject it, insert the upgrade CD Rom, perform said upgrade, and re-boot?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    hi david!



    booting your mac from a cd means that the system your mac is running on comes from the cd - and therefor cannot be taken away.



    there are several ways to do a system install/upgrade:



    1) insert upgrade cd and copy everything to the desktop of the mac - then boot of os 9 cd and open the installer on your desktop (this should work).



    2) backup all data to a external hd or burn a cd - then get a mac os 9.2.2 cd (friend) and install a clean system - then put data back from backup.



    3) switch to mac os x - backup all data to a external hd or burn a cd - then get a mac os x cd (friend) and install a clean system - then put data back from backup.



    no 1 should do.



    but if i can i allways do a backup and reinstall the system. good time to sort out what i want backup'd (what is important) and i trust a clean install more (i never had big troubles with my mac's).
  • Reply 2 of 3
    blueflameblueflame Posts: 89member
    To add to the three options above, if the OS 9.1 CD you have is an official Apple CD, then it should be bootable. Simply boot with the upgrade CD, rather than the OS 9.0 CD and perform the upgrade to your HD (the Apple CDs come with the entire system on them, and are generally bootable - a way to check this without restarting is to see if the disc has a system folder on it, if it does, it is bootable). However, if the CD is just a burned disc with the OS 9.1 updater on it, then you should try option number 1 as given above.



    Blueflame
  • Reply 3 of 3
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    To add to this, you do not need to boot off a CD to install 9.1 on top of 9.0. The only reason you would need to boot off a CD is if you plan on formatting the hard drive first. Otherwise, simply boot off your HD like you normally would, insert the 9.1 CD, and run the installer. When it's done it will tell you to restart.
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