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Optimizing Classic for OS X

Many people claim that their Classic environment takes several minutes to load and, in general, performs poorly. What many people don't realize, however, is that Mac OS X is capable of installing all the extensions necessary for a very basic Classic Environment to operate. Generally, people use a full installation of Mac OS 9.1 as their Classic environment. This installation, however, includes many extensions whose functionality is provided by Mac OS X. Having these extra extensions installed leads to longer boot times and instability. I suggest performing a customized installation of OS 9.1. In the installer, choose "Customize" and deselect everything except "Mac OS 9.1". Now choose to customize the Mac OS 9.1 installation. Choose only the core system software and the control panels recommended by the installer, then proceed with the installation. Install Mac OS X on the same partition. When you are finished installing Mac OS X and the updates, I suggest that you run Norton Disk Doctor 6.0 and Norton Speed Disk (choose to optimize for Speed Disk 3.2). Classic should boot in less than a minute and many programs will run FASTER in Classic than they do while booted into OS 9. You may need to manually install some extensions required by specific applications. Finally, if you need the Classic environment for resource intensive applications such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I suggest that you just use Mac OS 9 -- it will save much frustration in the long run.

Check out this forum at MacOSX Hints for some more suggestions on optimizing OS X Classic.


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