I recently bought a used Mac dirt cheap and it has OS X 10.3.9. installed in it and OS 9 in it as well. So what does that mean? Can I switch between the two operating systems? I'm new to the Mac world so I hope this makes sense. Any help explaining this would be appreicated.

Macs before and including the 17 inch flat panel iMac (about mid-2002) could boot up under OS 9, and Macs including and after the Power Mac G3 (blue & white) (early 1999) could run Mac OS X, and can probably be upgraded to 10.4.11. On Macs using Power PC processors and using Mac OS X through 10.4.11, OS 9 applications could be run in "Classic" mode on an installation of OS 9. So OS 9 could be there either to boot from or to support the Classic environment. In Mac OS X, you use System Preferences to select the startup disk in the Startup Disk pref pane, or Classic pref pane to setup and start the Classic environment.

You may find the Mactracker application at www.mactracker.ca to be helpful in determining the capabilities of your particular Mac model.

If I upgraded this machine to OS 10.4 (Tiger) would I still have the option to switch to classic mode?

I believe that would be a "yes."

Do you have a need for Classic?

When I went into the Classic Menu in System Preferences. I got this message "No Classic system folder: You do not have a version of Mac OS 9 installed that supports Classic. Install mac OS 9.1 or later." So does this mean that I will have to reinstall OS 9 on my system?

Maybe not. Go to the disk that has OS 9 installed. Double click the system folder named "System Folder" (not "System", which is the Mac OS X system folder). Select the Finder file and do "command (or Apple key)-I" (or Get Info in the Finder File menu). If the version says 9.1 or later (mine says 9.2.2), then you have a version of OS 9 that is supposed to support Classic.

If you do not have at least version 9.1 installed, go -> here

If you have version 9.1 or greater, try -> this If this doesn't work, then you'll have to reinstall.

Good luck.

If this is your first Mac you won't need Classic. You'll probably never run across any application in which you'd need it in order to run, if so there is more than likely an OS X alternative.

The 25¢ tour.

When Apple came out with OS X it was entirely different from OS 9, they were based on two different platforms, like Mac and Windows are different platforms, so OS 9 applications would not run natively in OS X. Apple made the Classic Environment to launch System 9 while running OS X. It let us run System 9 applications, for us that couldn't afford to update to OS X applications, or for applications that did not yet have an OS X alternative.

I haven't run Classic in years, as is the case with most of use here except those in production work of some kind where there never was an alternative to their program, or the upgrade costs to OS X alternatives weren't justified.

So don't worry about finding it and installing it.

If you have an OSX install CD/DVD, I say re-install OSX and wipe OS9/Classic off of there. Classic is dead.

Which iMac did you get?