Install OS 9 Appleworks on Jaguar?

J

jdeibele

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My wife has an older G3 iBook, the kind with lime green accent panels. A couple of months ago, it seemed like upgrading to Jaguar was a good thing to do since she uses it for web, her iPod, and to download photos from her camera.

So she's been very happy with Jaguar (except for some problems with her HP 952c printer printing properly). But I had done a clean install of Jaguar without installing OS 9 (good thing, too, or else she'd have run out of disk space due to MP3s and JPEGs) since she really didn't have any legacy software to worry about.

The one gotcha seems to be that she does rarely need to use a spreadsheet program. She used to use Appleworks. But I can't get the CD that came with the machine to load since it can't find an OS 9 environment.

As far as I can tell, she should be licensed to use Appleworks (she got version 6 with the machine). Is there a way that I can install the OS X version without buying another CD? I'm used to things like Microsoft insisting that you insert an older version CD before allowing you to upgrade but that doesn't seem to be an option here.

Is there a trick to this or should I just bite the bullet and buy a CD from eBay?
 
Odds are that your installer is a Classic app (I have AppleWorks 6.0.4 which also required Classic to install it) Once it is installed the 6.2.4 update is both free and a native Mac OS X app.

On my PowerBook G3 I did a clean install of Mac OS X 10.2 (without Mac OS 9 drivers as it should never need to be started in Mac OS 9) over what used to be Rhapsody 5.6. I moved a special generic Mac OS 9.2.1 system folder which I had saved as a disk image to a folder within my Applications folder. I set the system preferences to use that system folder for classic. I then ran the AppleWorks 6.0.4 installer in Classic and the 6.2.4 update with Classic turned off.

My Mac OS 9.2.1 system folder is still on my system because I haven't upgraded to native versions of GoLive or Illustrator, and even though Acrobat 5.0.5 runs great in Mac OS X, Distiller 5.0 is still a Classic app. My Classic system folder was also needed for installing the earlier (Classic) versions of my software before upgrading them to the Mac OS X native versions.

Currently my Classic system folder on my PowerBook G3 is 255 MB.

I keep a generic Mac OS 9.2.1 disk image for my clients who didn't realize until later that they were going to need Classic on their systems. I guess what would be most helpful in advising you further would be to know what you have to work with. Do you have the restore CD that came with your iBook? What version of the Mac OS is on the CD? Do you have another system with some form of 9.2 on it that you could make a copy of to move to your iBook? Do you already have AppleWorks installed on another system (must be at least AppleWorks 6) that you could move over? The 6.2.4 update shouldn't need the application to be Classically installed, just that it is there. That's the type of information would be helpful in coming up with a solution.
 
I do have the system restore CD that came with the iBook. It's OS 9.0X - I did a couple of OS upgrades on the machine before we replaced 9 with X.

I don't have another Mac in the house. And neither my wife nor I are that savvy about the inner workings of 9 or X. My big concern now is that adding anything besides Appleworks will cut down on the amount of disk space available on her machine. I'm actually a bit reluctant to add Appleworks because of the disk space it will take.

So it seems like it might be better for me to bite the bullet and buy a native OS X CD.

Thanks very much for the detailed description of how you were able to get things working but I think it's too advanced for us.
 
or bite a slightly bigger bullet and get an external firewire drive. you can get a 40 gb one for around $130 or so these days. sounds like you're goig to need it eventually anyway as your wife's graphic's files keep growing. this would see m like a better use of the money in the long run. you can install drivers and os 9 on the new drive and boot from it, thus being able to install and then upgrade your appleworks. you'll see other advantages like speed increases if you move your swap file to the new disk. you'll also have an alternate boot disk for repairs. uh, the list is longer, but you should see that it would be money much betterspent by now.
 
Only problem with the firewire disk is that it limits her mobility. We installed an Airport card so that we wouldn't have to punch holes in the walls and she's gotten used to using her iBook in the kitchen, the dining room table, in front of the TV, etc.

I do agree that with careful file management (graphics and MP3s and other disk-intensive stuff on the external disk) it should be possible to use her laptop without the external disk most of the time.

I have a firewire CD-R drive already for her to do backups; got this prior to installing Jaguar, which talks very nicely with the Windows and Linux machines in the house but I was never able to get the UNIX Appletalk stuff from Columbia to work.

Think the lime green iBooks have a nice feel to them - the plastic feels sturdy and not slick like most plastic cases do. And it's great having a built-in handle. It's too bad they stopped making them in that form factor.
 
oh yea, with a protable there's no need to have it hooked in all the time, but it would always be there when you need it. of course then you couldn't use it for swap files, but you could probably free up enough space on the main drive to make swap files more managable.

just a suggestion, it's what i would do.
 
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