In comparison with OS X, Mac OS 8 and 9 were tiny and simple. Installing or replacing a component was a minor task; here is how we did it.

What it does

With Mac OS already installed, you wish to restore, replace or add a component normally found as part of a larger installation.

What you need

A Mac running Mac OS 8 or 9, a CD-ROM or DiskCopy disk image containing the component(s), TomeViewer 1.3d3.

Potential problems

Sometimes the Installer has to do more than just copy files from the installation tome to your System Folder. If you managed to use the installer, it should have done that properly, but a manual install using TomeViewer may not then work. If you have any such problems, bite the bullet and re-install Mac OS, ideally using the clean install option. Make sure that you keep to a single language localisation – mixing US and International English is not normally too bad, but non-English localisations can result in great confusion. If you’re running Mac OS 9, you may be able to complete your repairs by performing and online software update from the control panel. However, this will not help if you are (for instance) trying to retrograde from a current release.

Further info

Search Apple’s Web site at http://www.apple.com for software installer downloads. TomeViewer is available by FTP from http://ftp.macresource.com/tomeviewer-13d3.sit

Checklist

• Try the Customize option in Mac OS Installer first.
• Turn off all other components for the install.
• If that doesn’t or won’t work, double-click the component’s installer script.
• If that doesn’t work, drop the installation tome on TomeViewer.
• Extract the parts you need and install into your System Folder.

Setting It Up

Your first recourse should be to try to install just the relevant components from your most recent Mac OS install CD-ROM. Run the Mac OS Installer application, and work through the installation sequence to this dialog. You can here install direct onto the volume containing the System Folder you need them in. Click on the Customize button.

The customised installation dialog give you access to all the individual components provided as part of Mac OS. These are broken down into different groupings: turn off all the others, by unchecking them, and then click on the Installation Mode popup to select the individual components from that group that you wish to install.

For example, to re-install the OpenGL components from within Mac OS 9.1, opt for a custom installation mode for the Mac OS 9.1 group, and turn off (uncheck) all the other components. Because these are listed in a hierarchical series, this is fairly quick to do. Be careful not to leave any checked inadvertently when you click on OK and continue with the installation.

Some components, such as QuickTime, are not readily installed from the Mac OS Installer. Look through the folders on the CD-ROM and you should be able to locate their installer script. Sometimes, double-clicking that script can start the installation process. However, particularly with Mac OS 9.1, you will probably see this error message. In that case, you will have to perform a manual install from its file tome.

Drag and drop the installation tome file on TomeViewer, and it will open up its contents as a list like this. You can either get it to extract the entire contents of the tome, or you can select one or more files and extract them into a folder before installing them manually into the System Folder of your choice.

Once you have saved the individual components you need, drag and drop them onto your System Folder. It should automatically put them into the correct folders within – Control Panels, Extensions, etc. However, some may need to be put in sub-folders within those. If you’re unsure, copy the layout of a fully functional System Folder.

Reformatted from the original, which was first published in MacUser volume 17 issue 14, 2001. Not something that you can readily do with the App Store now!