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Installing macos 9.1 on Power Macintosh

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Broad-issue

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Apr 12, 2023
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Hey! I'm new to Macintosh stuff. I'm trying to figure out how to install 9.1 on a Power Macintosh 5500. Currently, it is showing a blinking floppy icon. I downloaded the ISO and burned it to a DVD, but I'm not sure if I need to boot to that (or if there's any keys I need to hold down at boot) or if I can insert it when I see the blinking floppy icon. I've tried inserting some random Macintosh floppies I have, but they all got rejected. Let me know what I can do about this! Thanks.
 
OS 9.1 is a bit much for a 5500, I would recommend 8.1 or 8.6 instead. You can go as far back as 7.5.5 if you need to use floppy disks. Mac OS 9 is really only good on late 604 or G3/G4 machines, it's a memory pig and runs slow on older macs. If you need to boot from a floppy, look for the System 7.5 Network Access Disk here: https://igsi.tripod.com/mac/index753.htm You'll need another Mac to make this disk.

Usually a Mac with a built in CD-ROM drive will try to boot to it if no bootable floppy or hard drive is seen. Sometimes you have to hold down the C key.

Those old CD-ROM drives are also sometimes very picky about the burned media you use, you may have to try a few different brands and different burn speeds. I've had trouble with CD-Rs that were burned much past 8x speed.

The drive being dead also isn't out of the question. Drives from that era are known to have laser diode failure, or the diode gets so weak that it can't accurately read discs anymore.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
OS 9.1 is a bit much for a 5500, I would recommend 8.1 or 8.6 instead. You can go as far back as 7.5.5 if you need to use floppy disks. Mac OS 9 is really only good on late 604 or G3/G4 machines, it's a memory pig and runs slow on older macs. If you need to boot from a floppy, look for the System 7.5 Network Access Disk here: https://igsi.tripod.com/mac/index753.htm You'll need another Mac to make this disk.

Usually a Mac with a built in CD-ROM drive will try to boot to it if no bootable floppy or hard drive is seen. Sometimes you have to hold down the C key.

Those old CD-ROM drives are also sometimes very picky about the burned media you use, you may have to try a few different brands and different burn speeds. I've had trouble with CD-Rs that were burned much past 8x speed.

The drive being dead also isn't out of the question. Drives from that era are known to have laser diode failure, or the diode gets so weak that it can't accurately read discs anymore.
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Thanks for the help. Now that I think about it, do they even accept DVDs? I have a bunch of DVDs around because most CD-R discs are just slightly too small to burn Windows to, which I have to do fairly frequently. I'll try holding down the C key and see if that helps. I saw online that this mac would support 7.5.5-9.1, so decided to try 9.1, but I will try downloading and burning 8.1 to see if that works.
 
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