Switching between OS 9 and OS X at boot

Nov 23, '04 08:31:00AM

Contributed by: t3hl33t

If you want OS X during boot and have OS 9 selected as the startup disk, hold the 'X' key while booting. But if you want OS 9 and you have OS X selected as the startup disk, holding '9' won't get you anywhere. But hold Command-S instead (which launches in single user mode), and then type:

 bless -folder9 "/System Folder" -use9
 reboot
This will restart your computer into OS 9 without it having to fully start up on X. To make it even easier, make a script that does this, put it in the root of your hard drive and chmod it so it is executable. However the default shell is not bash (anyone know how to change it so it is?).

DO NOT try this on a Mac which is not meant to boot OS 9 -- you will need to reset the PRAM to get it to boot again (or boot off another volume) to get back to X, as you will see the "Can't find valid system folder" icon flashing.

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