I appreciate the comments, and I will look into ASM. I have been doing things a certain way since early 1985 and its rude of Apple to pull the rug out from under me.
I spend about 12 hours a day on the system, and its often either read a manual or do work--deadlines, you know. I hate to stop work to fuss with a manual.
That's why I still use Word 5.1a, Xpress 5.01, Photoshop 5.5 and Illustrator 6.0. But you should see the books and technical reports I can crank out with that combination!
The absolute only thing I use OSX for is Keynote, for speeches. And even then I do as much as I can in Classic.
When I can't get anything to run in Classic I'll have to retire I guess.
I understand. The only reason I keep Classic around is one single application: Pagestream4.1. It is a desktop publishing program that came out of the Amiga/Atari world that still blows Quark, Pagemaker, and Indesign out of the water. When it becomes available in OS X, OS 9 will be deleted from my system.
You won't have to retire... most of the upgraders I have worked with in graphics have had about a two week learning curve... and then say they would never go back to OS9.