Ive been doing alot of research on installing macos 9 onto my emac (1,4ghz ppc 768mb ram), and ive came to a conclusion that it will not boot the install disc, and theres no "install os9 drivers" option on my tiger cd. So my question is if i take a pre-installed os9 HD image can i install it to the emac with some sort of image recovery tool? and will it still boot? also im pretty unfamiliar with classic mode, i understand that it allows me to run classic software on osx, however id like to use the desktop and finder from classic (even in a seperate window) is there anyway to do that without a 3rd party emulator (sheepshaver)?

thank you

OS9 is not supported on the eMac G4, full stop. I have looked in to it myself. Classic itself is outdated and hardly used, which is why it was removed from 10.5+. Although I have never used Classic in 10.4 (my PowerMac G4 runs OS9 and OSX in a dualboot config), as far as I'm aware it is a full OS9 emulator, providing you install OS9 on it.

I haven't used Classic in a long time, but I believe there is a window which lets you use the old Finder.
The eMac G4 did support classic, but only up to the eMac/800 model. Your last resort would be to try using SheepShaver (which, in my opinion, is really [censored] on the Mac, it always froze on my MacBook, but that was a long time ago, it may be better now), a free emulator for OS 9.

Unfortunately, you have the newest eMac. If you had the original one from April 2002, you could run OS 9.2.2.

The only thing I can really tell you is to find an G3-based machine. (Like soulman) I dual boot OS9 and OSX on my PowerMac G4.

(Its not real hard to find G3's anymore. I picked up two iMac G3's DV Edition yesterday for free.)

Also... What are you using your eMac for that you need OS9 for?

dang lol well the reason is, id like to dual boot, cause frankly I love the os9 feel much better than osx. actually im not a big osx fan at all. just personal preference i guess, i got an old blue g3 imac 333mhz and 64mb ram runs it good but it also runs 8.6 better which is what id like the primary os to be. to be honest if i could just install beos on them i doubt id never use osx lol

If you want an eMac that can boot OS 9 you need to find a 700 MHz one or an 800 MHz nvidia graphics model, as those are the only 2 that can boot OS 9.

The fastest Mac capable of booting OS 9 is the 1.25 GHz G4 2003 Mirrored Door Drive, single processor.

Man, I bet that'd fly like the roadrunner on cocaine.

Do the same rules apply for 8.6 ?

I'm no Mac expert but I highly doubt Mac OS 8 will install on a PowerPC G4.

I believe the fastest for OS 8.6 is the G4 500 MHz AGP Graphics.

Thanks a ton compgeke , now i know what to look for before i start buying old apple computers. the emac only cost me 20 bucks :)

Its hard to find eMacs around here. I personally would tell you to install Mac OS X Server on it and use it for a file server. Ive heard they are pretty good for that.

To be honest, pick up a Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet). Ive got the Dual Core 450mhz and Mac OS 9.2.2 flies on it. Ive owned several 9.x systems and Ive never had one as loyal as my PowerMac.

I've came across 2 eMacs, one I gave to my friend (800 MHz with 1 gig ram, running Leopard via installing from another mac with it in target disk mode) and my 1 GHz one that turns out to be a prototype S:.

My eMac G4 is a 1.42GHz with 1GB of RAM usually although I did have some fun with Leopard on 256MB lol. Also my bad, didn't see that the 800MHz eMac supported 9.2.2 in that table.