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Mac OS from scratch, on MAME 0.232+ (or a recent Git pull). (post 1/2)

Prereqs: the Apple Legacy Recovery CD-ROM, which you can get from Macintosh Garden. WARNING: Internet Archive has a version of the CD which does not work properly - it boots, but the file association with the .scr scripts doesn't work.

First, create a hard disk image. I'll give instructions for one that's around 500 MB, but you can go up to at least 1 GB without MacOS getting upset.
For an uncompressed CHD, enter chdman createhd -c none -chs 1023,63,16 -o myhdd.chd. If you're on Linux, BSD, or modern macOS, you can easily create a non-CHD raw image with dd if=/dev/zero of=myhdd.hdv bs=1000000 count=500.

Second, start MAME with the hard disk image you just created and the Legacy Recovery CD-ROM mounted on the Mac IIci driver: mame maciici -ramsize 8M -hard1 myhdd.chd -cdrom "Apple Legacy Recovery Oct 1999.iso" (use myhdd.hdv instead if you chose that route to create the image).

The system will start up and you'll see a Finder desktop like this:


Double-click the "Legacy Recovery" icon:


And then double-click "Disk Utilities" and then "Formatting Software":


Next double-click "Drive Setup 1.5":


Click your hard disk image, which will show as "<not initialized>" and then click the "Initialize.." button:


When this warning comes up, you can pick "Custom Setup..." if you know what you're doing and want to partition the hard disk in some special way, or just click "Initialize" to get a single partition the full size of the disk:


You should get this success:

MacOS from scratch (post 2/2)

Select File -> Quit to exit Drive Setup, and close the "Formatting Software" and "Disk Utilities" windows.


Double-click the "Mac OS" folder and then the folder for the System version you wish to install. I chose System 7.1.1 here as a good choice - it's reasonably up-to-date, but doesn't use a ton of RAM like 7.5, and runs all the way back to the Macintosh Plus. (If you are unsure what versions will work on a particular model, double-click the "System Software by CPU" folder and then navigate to the model you'd like to run).


Double-click the "Net Install.scr" file to launch Disk Copy and mount all of the installation disk images.


Click "Agree". After a few moments the installer will launch. This will look different depending on the version you pick, my screenshots here are for System 7.1.1.


Click Ok to get to the main installer screen (for some versions you may go directly here):


The defaults are usually OK. Make sure it's "Macintosh Family system software" or "System Software for all Macs" or something like that (the phrasing differs per System version) to ensure the resulting hard disk can boot on any supported Mac.


Once the installer is done, you should see this success:


Choose "Quit", and then choose "Shut Down" from the "Special" menu to cleanly shut down the system:


Quit MAME and then restart it without the Legacy Recovery CD-ROM mounted. It should boot up into your installed System version:

Reminder: this thread is for OS install guides only. Posting questions here may result in a ban, please create a new thread for support issues instead.