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The OS X Mail application is a nice, capable email client, but I don't use it because I still spend a lot of time in OS 9, and Mail of course doesn't support OS 9. When the time comes that I've entirely switched to OS X, I will most likely start using Mail for at least some of my email management, but that date is some distance off into the future yet.

In the meantime, I find it convenient to use third-party email clients that support both OS X and OS 9, and that can access a common set of the mailbox files from either version.

My main email solution is Eudora. I've been using Eudora for many years through various versions from Eudora Light 1.5 on up, and it's a testimony to the wonderful backwards compatibility of this program that mailbox files created in that ancient version on my old Mac Plus can be read by the latest Eudora 5.1.2 for OS X with no hassle.

I am currently using Eudora 5.1.2 in 0 S and X, anf Eudora 5.1.1 in OS 9, and both reference the same Eudora Folder, which is located in the Documents Folder on one of my OS 9 partitions. All I had to do to set this up was to remove the Eudora Folder created by the application installer from the Documents Folder in my Home Folder in OS X, and replace it with an alias of the Eudora Folder on the OS 9 partition. This allows me to switch back and forth between OS X and OS 9 with the same email message files, address book, etc., seamlessly accessible, and with constant configuration. Any changes or updates are applied comprehensively.

The same routine also works fine with SweetMail and does Nisus Email.

With SweetMail, I just replaced the Mail Spool folder in need SweetMailSpool folder in the Preferences folder in my Mac OS X Home folder with an alias of the Mail Spool folder in the SweetMail 2.2 Classic folder on my OS 9 partition. This works as slickly and seamlessly as the Eudora workaround does.

With the Nisus Email, I replaced the Nisus Email folder in the Documents folder of my OS X Home folder with an alias of the Nisus Email folder on my OS 9 partition. In this case, the Classic Nisus Email application lives in the Nisus Email folder, but that doesn't seem to cause any problems. However, while this aliasing workaround should theoretically work fine in reverse for Eudora and SweetMail, ie: with the OS X ones serving as the master folders, the location of the Classic Nisus Email application in the Nisus Email folder (the OS X application resides in the Applications folder) would pe problematical with the Nisus client.

One big caveat here: If you have email files already created in your OS X versions of these applications, you will need to salvage them before you replace your OS X mail folders with aliases from the OS 9 side. In all three cases this can be done simply by dragging the existing mailbox files over into the master Fuller, but because at least some of them will have the same names as files already in the master folder, you will need to rename them first.

WindowShading

From Patrick

Hey there I just read your article so will that ever be a feature of X?

I hope so

Thanks,
Patrick

Hi Patrick;

I hope so too. The folks at Unsanity Software have proved that it's doable, but the question is why didn't Apple include it from the get-go.

I'd like to think they can be persuaded, yet. In the meantime, WindowShade X works nicely.

Charles

Dual booting

From Mel

Charles,

Like you I mourn the passing of dual booting with OS X and 9 on newer Macs. I am so happy that I bought my Power Mac G4 when I did because I use dual booting all the time. I have OS 9 on one hard drive and OS X on another. It's really great to have best of the new and old in one place.

And like you I've been using dual booting on previous Macs for several years. With my old Mac IIsi, I dual boot into either System 6.08 or System 7.1, again both from different hard drives. One of the main reasons why I bought a Power Computing clone in 1997 is the fact that they sold them with Mac OS 7.6 and BeOS! To me this is the ultimate in dual booting as we were able to boot OS's from 2 different companies.

Too bad that is all gone now.

Aloha,
Mel from Hawaii

Hi Mel;

I had OS 9.1, OS 9.2, and SuSE and Yellow Dog Linux (successively) installed on my WallStreet's hard drive. Terra Soft is selling Macs loaded with both the Mac OS and YDL. Of course, one downside of Mac/Linux dual booting is that one system can't read the other's files, and I assume that was the case with Be/Mac dual booting as well?

Charles

Dial-up connection problems

From Herb L. Singleton

Hi Charles,

With regard to dial-up problems on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, you ask "I wonder what causes it in either OS."

Have you ever tried swapping out the modem scripts?

I remember when I upgraded from OS 9 to OS 9.1, I suddenly had a terrible time with my dialup connections on my Pismo. After a little investigation, I realized that Apple had made some changes to the modem script. I swapped out the modem script for the older 9.0 version, and everything worked fine again. I later had this problem during one of the OS X (10.0.x) updates. I swapped the modem script with one from my Classic partition and all was well again.

If you find that your OS 9 connections work well, but your OS X connections have problems, try copying your OS 9 scripts into /Library/Modem Scripts or /System/Library/Modem Scripts.

Herb

Hi Herb;

Good advice. As noted, I've never had this problem in OS 9, either with the stock Apple modem scripts or any of the Mac Modem Magic scripts that I've used.

If it happens again, perhaps trying some alternate scripts is worth a shot.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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