If SheepShaver won't boot from MyMac, you may need to "bless" the System folder on MyMac: Open the System Folder, drag the files "Finder" and "System" out of the System Folder and back in and close the System Folder. A blessed System Folder will show its System Folder icon.

Of course all of this will only work if this PowerMac G4 installation is compatible with the emulated machine.

Still easier: Using SheepShaver in MacOSX it is probably possible to view the content of the restore CD in MacOSX, mount the disk image in the configurations folder in MacOSX and copy its content to the SheepShaver boot volume mounted in MacOSX. Possibly you can even copy the disk image from the CD to macOSX and use it as boot volume for SheepShaver (with little space on the volume left for your own files, though).

Note for readers of this topic: This topic started with a hack to enable using a model specific system install CD in SheepShaver and now it has shifted to using a model specific software restore CD. Many Macs came with both a model specific install CD and a software restore CD.

I want to start off by saying thank you for your quick responses. I am one of those mac users that have appreciated the classic os9, but now that my old g5 computer is fried, I was left to buy a new mac. I am really disappointed in this new intel mac and the apple industry for totally eliminiating support for this operating system. I have nothing but os9 application programs, that have costed me almost a total of $2,000. I'm not ready to give up on this emulator. So forgive me for asking these technical questions, but i just want to get this right.
So can you explain to me how to "bless the system folder" I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.

"Blessing the System Folder" is an old trick. If a System Folder does not show its special icon, has only a generic folder icon, it cannot be used as a System to boot from. This happens sometimes when a system is copied instead of properly installed. "Blessing" the System Folder will correct that, the icon will appear and the volume with the System Folder can than be used as startup disk.

The simplest way to "bless" the folder is to open it and close it. If that does not work, one can try a more elaborate proceeding like I explained above: Open the System Folder, drag the files Finder and System out of of the System Folder, drag these two files again back into the System Folder, and close the System Folder. Now the correct icon should be visible.

If you still are not able to start up, there may be a different problem. For instance, if you created the disk image with Disk Utility on your Intel Mac, you can install or copy a system onto it, but you cannot boot MacOS from it.

BTW: You could have seen the end of support for MacOS coming for years. "Classic" in MacOSX was just a temporary provision to ease the transition to MacOSX.

I'm sorry, but it is still is not working. I would like to know if there is a mpeg video or something more visually explaining thoroughly (step by step) on how to do this. I have gone to other website that show illustrated picture like uneasysilence and other ones i have found on google, and still it doesnt work. I feel there is a step missing here on all of the examples. All this terminology is getting nowhere for me. Can someone or anybody do a short avi or mpeg of how to do this. Thank you....

I will try once more. I cannot explain it more simple than this. If you do not understand the explanation, than I can not help you any further.

Note that this is a procedure that is not certain to work!
If you want to be sure to have a working MacOS9 system in SheepShaver, you should use a regular universal MacOS 9.0 or 9.0.4 install CD, not a Mac-specific install CD or restore CD.

- Setup SheepShaver with a proper ROM file, you apparently did that, because you could boot from the CD.
- Make sure you have created a separate folder to be the shared folder and that in SheepShaverGUI or SheepShaverPrefs "Unix Root" is defined as the path to that shared folder.
- Set in SheepShaverGUI or Prefs "Boot From" to "Any".
- We will start with a fresh volume, so remove earlier volumes (like your MyMac volume) from the Volumes list (and delete the corresponding files from MacOSX).
- Use SheepShaverGUI or SheepShaverPrefs to create a new volume of sufficient size for your needs, preferably 500MB minimum. Be patient, creating the image file may take a while. (Do not use Disk Utility to create the image!)
- Insert the restore CD.
- When the CD is mounted, launch SheepShaver. SheepShaver will boot from the CD.
- Before the desktop will appear, the MacOS system will see the new volume and ask to initialize it. Name the volume (for instance again "MyMac") and choose "Mac OS Extended" for the format.
- On the MacOS desktop you will see from top to bottom the icons of the CD, your volume "MyMac" and the "Unix" icon that will refer to your shared folder.
- On the CD look again for the icon of the image file "Power Mac G4 HD.img" in the "Configurations" folder and double-click that icon.
- The image will now mount on the desktop as volume "Macintosh HD".
- That volume has also a couple of aliases on the desktop, "Browse the internet", "iMovie", etc. You can ignore those.
- Double-click "Macintosh HD", it will open in a window. I do not know the exact content of this "Macintosh HD", but there will be folders "System Folder", "Applications", "Apple Extras", "Internet" and more.
- Drag all folders (and other items if present) from the "Macintosh HD" window onto the icon of "MyMac" volume in order to copy them from "Macintosh HD" to "MyMac". (The content of "Macintosh HD" will thus be copied to "MyMac", not "Macintosh HD" itself as you did before.)
- After copying is finished, open "MyMac" and inspect the content of its window and compare that with the content of the "Macintosh HD" window. Alle items from "Macintosh HD" should now also be in "MyMac".
- Pay special attention to the System Folder in MyMac. It should display its well known special MacOS icon. If it does not, try opening and again closing the System Folder to force it to show its icon (that is the "blessing" I wrote about).
- If everything appears to be OK, shut down SheepShaver.

- Remove the CD
- Launch SheepShaver. It should now start up from "MyMac" if the copied Power Mac G4 system is compatible with SheepShaver.

I can describe how to do that in Windows:
- Setup SheepShaver with a proper ROM file, you apparently did that, because you could boot from the CD.
- Set in SheepShaverGUI or Prefs "Boot From" to "Any".
- We will start with a fresh volume, so remove earlier volumes (like your MyMac volume) from the Volumes list (and delete the corresponding files from Windows).
- Use HFVExplorer (or use Disk Copy in an OS9 Mac or in SheepShaver, then copy the disk image out to your Windows harddisk) to create a blank HFS (or HFS+, if you use Disk Copy) disk image.
- Mount this image in SheepShaverGUI or Prefs.
- Insert your recovery CD or mount your recovery CD image, start Sheepshaver.
- On the MacOS desktop you will see from top to bottom the icons of the CD and your new volume.
- On the CD look again for the icon of the image file "Power Mac G4 HD.img" or something like that (For example "iMac HD") in the "Configurations" (name maybe localized) folder and double-click that icon.
- Because normally a copy of Disk Copy is on any OS9/8.6/8.1 recovery CD, the image will be mounted as "Macintosh HD" on the desktop.
- Copy all files and folders from the Macintosh HD to your new empty disk.
- Check the System Folder on your new disk to see if it is blessed.
- Remove the "Apple Audio" extension in the System Folder:Extensions on your new disk if you use an OldWorld ROM otherwise it will disable the sound.
- If you use OS9 recovery CD, and when possible, you can replace all Open Transport extensions to those extensions from Mac OS 8.6 or any network connection may be disabled or even cause the emulator to crash.
- If you can now start from the new disk image, Install Quicktime 4.1.2 (optionally).

Or if you use HFVExplorer you can even mount the recovery CD (usually HFS) and copy the Power Mac G4 HD.img to your harddisk and try to boot from it.

Hey i finally got it to work, i think my problem to begin with was that i was using start up disks from a g4 and Imac. The only way to get this to work was to use an actual os 9 installation disk. Thanks for all your help.
I do have another question, how do i get apple talk going, because i have printers that are connected to my network. Please advise.

Hi,

I'm sorry to inform you appletalk will not be working with mac os 9. So you can't connect to those printers. If you have tcp/ip printers in your network, or can share a USB printer on a windows machine, you might have more luck.
Another option is to use the PrintToPDF printerdriver (from http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/pdf.html ) and print the resulting pdf files from another machine in your network.

One nifty solution using the PrintToPDF driver is to copy the resulting file to a folder in OSX and have a folder action print the file.

Best,
Cat_7

My Mac OS 9.0.4 OS install disk is localized for the iMac DV.

I could not get the 06 November 2010 build of SheepSaver to accept a disk image at boot, whether mounted or not. The solution posted by LinuxDream seems to be for SheepSaver for Windows, from the graphics in the SheepSaver Settings file. I do not know how to make .iso images in Mac OS X 10.6.4.

So, what I did was to copy the Install Macintosh Software file on the install CD to the Shared/Unix directory, mounted the iMac Install CD, and launched SheepSaver.

From there, I was able to use ResEdit to make the needful changes in the Install Macintosh Software file on the Unix drive and save them. Then, I launched the modified installer instead of the one on the CD, and was able to install OS 9.0.4 successfully. The installer that worked, despite residing on a different mounted volume, cheerfully found and used all the files it needed on the mounted original CD.

Thanks so much to everyone who made this possible. I've been wanting to used VERY expensive 4th Dimension 6.5.1 which I own on a modern machine for four years, and today I finally got it to work. I wish I'd found these forums a looooooong time ago.

My Mac is a Spring 2010 13" MacBook Pro (so-called MacBook Pro7,1).

Thanks for this addition to the originally described hack. I never imagined that the (patched) installer could run from a different volume using the files on the CD.

(The original hack will work with any read/write image made of the CD that SheepShaver can read, it does not need to be a .iso file.)