How many different OS's can you use on one Mac G4?

[pooprobot]

I've been messing around with my new Mac G4 and have noticed that I really don't own any applications yet that work in Mac OSX. I tried installing MOTU Digital Performer by selecting OS9 as the startup disk, but even still it wouldn't work. I then deleted OSX entirely and it was able to install into OS9. I also have other programs that work only in OS8.6 and not even in OS9. Anyways, getting to the point of my rambling, my question is: Is it possible to install all three operating systems on separate partitions on the same hard drive and keep them separate so they don't interfere with each other and boot up into each as necessary? That way I could enjoy the benefits of each, since it looks like at this point I would be using all three. Is this a stupid idea or is this possible?

[dmann]

You should be able to multiple boot with the three you mentioned, although I am not 100% sure. If you can't get all the software for System 9 then I would probably stay with 8.6 for simplicity. But only if all your other software works correctly in 8.6. I think if you hold down the option(or maybe command) button when you boot your machine you will be able to choose which OS to load, instead of starting up and rebooting into a different OS. Good luck.

[pooprobot]

Thanks for the response. Well I was itching to use OSX's DVD burning features, so I installed OSX again, but in it's own partition. I then installed OS9 on it's own partition as well. I don't know if OSX being on the same partition as OS9 was the reason why Digital Performer didn't install the first time around, but by doing it this way, it was able to install and run fine. As far as sticking OS8.5 on it's own partition, I was not so lucky, I got an error message telling me that it would not work on my system. I know that there must be a way, but I think I'll just let that OS go. Oh well, I'll test out my older programs in OS9 eventually and see what does and doesn't work.

[pooprobot]

If anyone cares, I found out why Digital Performer did not initially install on my harddrive. Per MOTU's tech support:

"The reason that this is happening is because there is a bug in the VISE
installer program that DP uses. If the program sees anything over 60Gb
of hard drive space, it creates a negative number in the available space
indicator in the installer window. The way around this is by doing a custom install and selecting everything but the "Extras" option. Run the installer and then run it again but this time only having the "Extras" option selected."

So my partitioning of the harddrive to separate the OS's didn't really matter. I think I read somewhere that it improves startup times anyways, so it didn't hurt.