Let me preface this by saying I am a die-hard X fan - been using it on my work machine since the beta <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> I do web design/development so it is a god-send.
The thing I find intesting is that twice in the past 2 months I have come upon problems which could ONLY be solved by booting with an OS 9 startup disk. I tend to screw with my machines quite a lot - at one point my RAID mirror got corrupted and through my ingenuity I actually managed to get my system to the point it would only boot into Open Firmware - and at that point it would crash - in OF! Through days of fsck-ing around the only solution in the end was to boot from the OS 9 CD (trust me - that machines guts were spread out all over the floor - there was no other way).
Same thing with a black screen after sleep issue with an old Wallstreet powerbook. The prescribed (and only) solution is to boot into OS 9, put the machine to sleep, and wake it back up.
I am more than ready for OS 9 to die (and would love to be able to remove even classic from my machines) but I am a leery. Just the fact you can't use the installer to boot to a desktop (only to the installer or Disk Utility) means if your install becomes screwed your options are limited. The new Unix voodoo can accomplish a lot of things you could never do from a troubleshooting aspect in 9 - but there are also new limits that have been introduced.
But now that I've seen the beauty of a Unix based OS, theres no way in h3ll I would ever go back to 9 (but you might see me asking lots of questions in Linux forums )
[ 01-17-2003: Message edited by: The Pie Man ]</p>
I am now at the point where I am actively considering dumping my OS 9 System Folder altogether: all the apps I use are now running under OS X, and I fancy having the drive space back...
I'm looking forward to 10.3 where I probably won't have a separate 9 install anymore. I have no use for it, and at the university where art students are issued iBooks, OS 9 is what causes all of the problems.
I think OSX really rocks. Its perfected in my opinion for the general user who doesnt do much. I havent used OS9 in a very long time, I attempted to install OS9 on to my TiBook with OSX only but couldnt so havent bothered.
<strong> The thing I find intesting is that twice in the past 2 months I have come upon problems which could ONLY be solved by booting with an OS 9 startup disk. I tend to screw with my machines quite a lot - at one point my RAID mirror got corrupted and through my ingenuity I actually managed to get my system to the point it would only boot into Open Firmware - and at that point it would crash - in OF! Through days of fsck-ing around the only solution in the end was to boot from the OS 9 CD (trust me - that machines guts were spread out all over the floor - there was no other way).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Great post Pie Man! I too have had problems with OS X startup discs and had to boot an OS 9 disk utiltity to fix. Yesterday I had an external Firewire drive which wouldn't mount. Disk First Aid wouldn't fix it, and I have no idea how to run fsck on an external device. So I started the machine off a DiskWarrior CD, and fixed all the drives problems. After than, booted up in OS X, and the drive worked fine.
Now, like you, had that machine not been able to boot in OS 9, I would have been screwed.
Comments
The thing I find intesting is that twice in the past 2 months I have come upon problems which could ONLY be solved by booting with an OS 9 startup disk. I tend to screw with my machines quite a lot - at one point my RAID mirror got corrupted and through my ingenuity I actually managed to get my system to the point it would only boot into Open Firmware - and at that point it would crash - in OF! Through days of fsck-ing around the only solution in the end was to boot from the OS 9 CD (trust me - that machines guts were spread out all over the floor - there was no other way).
Same thing with a black screen after sleep issue with an old Wallstreet powerbook. The prescribed (and only) solution is to boot into OS 9, put the machine to sleep, and wake it back up.
I am more than ready for OS 9 to die (and would love to be able to remove even classic from my machines) but I am a leery. Just the fact you can't use the installer to boot to a desktop (only to the installer or Disk Utility) means if your install becomes screwed your options are limited. The new Unix voodoo can accomplish a lot of things you could never do from a troubleshooting aspect in 9 - but there are also new limits that have been introduced.
But now that I've seen the beauty of a Unix based OS, theres no way in h3ll I would ever go back to 9 (but you might see me asking lots of questions in Linux forums
[ 01-17-2003: Message edited by: The Pie Man ]</p>
<strong>- aliases becoming less dependent on file paths (ugh)
</strong><hr></blockquote>
...and symlinks.
The 'unix bits' can't use aliases, and the 'GUI bits' can't use symlinks (which are pretty much the same things).
This should be smacked even if we have to go to HFS++ to do it, just plain not that tough.
Must be over a year since I have used OS9.
<strong> The thing I find intesting is that twice in the past 2 months I have come upon problems which could ONLY be solved by booting with an OS 9 startup disk. I tend to screw with my machines quite a lot - at one point my RAID mirror got corrupted and through my ingenuity I actually managed to get my system to the point it would only boot into Open Firmware - and at that point it would crash - in OF! Through days of fsck-ing around the only solution in the end was to boot from the OS 9 CD (trust me - that machines guts were spread out all over the floor - there was no other way).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Great post Pie Man! I too have had problems with OS X startup discs and had to boot an OS 9 disk utiltity to fix. Yesterday I had an external Firewire drive which wouldn't mount. Disk First Aid wouldn't fix it, and I have no idea how to run fsck on an external device. So I started the machine off a DiskWarrior CD, and fixed all the drives problems. After than, booted up in OS X, and the drive worked fine.
Now, like you, had that machine not been able to boot in OS 9, I would have been screwed.