As of the posting of this tip, the Mac OS 9 downloads on Apple's support site are not fully available.
This tip of a method of obtaining the downloads was suggested by sdfox7. Special thanks to them for decoding
Dec 10, 2006 The download is designed for use under OSX; the file format it arrives in, a.dmg disk image file, is a direct indication of that. None of the standard Apple Disk Copy versions that come with any version of OS 9 can open/mount such a file format. Question: Q: Apple has released a universal Mac OS 9.2.2 install for free! Mac OS X Leopard Install DVDVersion 10.5.42Z691-6232-A. Downloaded the iso image and proceeded to burn a DMG onto a USB drive's partition. Download 9 Files.
how to discover old downloads.
Mac Os 9 Universal Iso Download Free
Locate the support.apple.com website for the download. In the case of most of the system downloads for Mac OS 9, there is this link:
and
In event the link doesn't work, go to http://web.archive.org/ to find it. For this link, the example site is:
If you are looking for the 9.2.2 download, the direct link from that page is
Clicking through
First on the page you will find North American English, 9.2.2, 21.3MB.
When you right click, or control-mouse button the download link and select copy link, you obtain:
Edit this link to reveal just the file name and not the path going to it and paste it in your favorite search engine. In this case, the file name is:
Mac_OS_9.2.2_Update.smi.bin
Searching you'll find that this link has that download.
As it happens, the website:
has the download links for all the Mac OS 9 updates and others.
You can use a similar method for many other downloads of older software.
As I also found out, .bin files even Mac OS X 10.9 understands. .smi files Disk utility won't open in Mac OS X 10.9, but it will convert to .dmg files.
If you copy the contents to a USB Flash drive of the same name as the dmg file (without the suffix), it can hold the installer in question and connect older Mac OS 9 machines to run the installer from. Just make sure the USB drive is formatted HFS+ no journaling, or FAT16 and under 4GB in size.
The other thing to note, is that no Mac running Mac OS X 10.3 or higher supports the old style floppy disks of under 1.4 MB. The beige PowerMacs were the last that supported the 800k floppies with the single notch on the the corner. If you have floppies with two notches on either corner of the label, then they are 1.4 MB.
1.4 MB floppy looks like:
400k and 800k floppy look like:
Note how the 800k only has one notch for the write protect tab, and no other opening on the other corner.
The thread I learned about this method isLinks for Mac OS 9 Downloads are faulty!
Other older knowledgebase links can be found by this tip's methods:
Some of the articles linked to for these updates may refer to the old knowledgebase format which may yield links you can convert with archive.org,
as described below:
Note: the ii.net mirror that used to be linked to no longer exists.
(There's no video for Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal (2002 edition) yet. Please contribute to MR and add a video now!)
What is Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal (2002 edition)? This is a Bootable Universal install CD of Mac OS 9.2.2, US English. Suitable for most G3 & G4 Macintosh models (not all of them). Mac OS CPU Software 4.9, includes the Mac OS ROM file v9.2.1 Note: This 2002 version is the best. For later G4's models such as MDD, please use this install CD ISO for unsupported G4's. Altough, there is a newer version of Mac OS 9.2.2 universal boot disk compiled in 2013 that is supposed to support most G3 and G4 models, it really doesn't boot a lot of them, while this 2002 one does. See also:Mac OS 9.2.2 'boot kit' for booting your G3 or G4 from an USB stick macos-922-uni.zip(422.03 MiB / 442.53 MB) Mac OS 9.2.2 universal (2002 edition) CD image / Zipped 4381 / 2014-08-14 / 4d5cedf3c6d16fa5dbcec450f96a6a18597bcee7 / / emac-ati-drivers.img.sit(2.4 MiB / 2.52 MB) 2003 G4 eMac 1.0 GHz drivers update for Mac OS 9.2.2 / DiskCopy image, compressed w/ Stuffit 299 / 2014-08-16 / 2016-08-11 / ce2f3e6530a7b74fddfb68b72b0ca90d3ac36487 / / USBSupportBeigeG3.sitx(210.52 KiB / 215.57 KB) Beige G3 USB support driver update 261 / 2015-10-02 / 2016-08-11 / ae9e65e9f534811c02bd6034a313873f4f74fd4b / / USBSpprt_BeigeG3.sit(203.37 KiB / 208.25 KB) / compressed w/ Stuffit 32 / 2015-08-13 / 471d38d732779e96ed1a9b91b029e2655e135c00 / / Architecture
Architecture: PPC It won't install on USB 2.0 Macs, but will fit most (not all) G3 and G4 models: Power Mac G4, Power Macintosh G3, iMac, iBook, PowerBook G4, and PowerBook G3 (except the original PowerBook G3).
Emulating this? It should run fine under: QEMU |