Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Starting Classic

When Classic is started, it doesn’t actually boot Mac OS 9. Instead, it launches the Classic Startup process, found in /System/Library/CoreServices. In turn, the Classic Startup process looks for a Mac OS 9 system folder on the system. If one is found, Classic will start; if not, you will receive an error message, letting you know that Classic cannot be started because there isn’t a valid Mac OS 9 system folder on your computer.

There are three ways to launch Classic:

Launch a Classic application

When you launch any Classic application (one of the three application flavors the Finder recognizes; see Chapter 2), Mac OS X will automatically start Classic if it isn’t running already.

The Classic preferences panel

Go to System Preferences → Classic → Stop/Start, and click on the Start button to launch Classic.

The table view under “Select a system folder for Classic:” lists every disk or partition on the filesystem that holds a Mac OS 9 System Folder. (If you’ve gone the usual route of installing Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on the same disk or partition, then you’ll see just one choice here.)

Starting Classic when you log on

Select the checkbox next to “Start Classic when you login” to have the Classic environment launch automatically when you log in to your account.

Savvy Unix users will quickly see that there’s a fourth way to launch Classic: from the command line. If you launch the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities), you can launch the Classic Startup process (Classic Startup.app ...