Recently I thought I'd take advantage of some extra time to unpack my neglected Macs since their recent move. I started on trying to make a sort of OS 9 server from my old, upgrade B&W G4, but wasted a few days troubleshooting data corruption issues. So I decided to focus my attention on a FW800 box I have on hand. I prefer my G4s to be of the dual-boot variety! What happened a few years back is that I wanted to replace my dear departed MDD, and bought a FW800 (OS X only...) by mistake. This was due to sellers lack of knowledge, coupled with my inability to keep my different auctions straight. Since I didn't really need another slow OS X box it hasn't seen much use.
But I never bought the excuse that the FW800 having FW800, USB2, or other extras really rendered them unable to boot OS 9. Apple rendered them unable to boot OS 9, because they were trying to get rid of it! I had gotten so far as a halting OS 9 boot on it once before years ago, and was ready to give it another try. This was extremely convenient timing, as about a day before, iMic from ThinkClassic had released a utility called Identity Toolkit which allows one to easily reset the Open Firmware definitions of the box for booting. This can also be done directly from OF, which is what I tried before. The box needs to be set to be bootable as MacRISC2 - which I think is the class of New World systems which are dual-bootable. The later G4s which boot OS X only are shipped as MacRISC3. Once I restarted, this allowed me to use my Panther partition to format my other drive with OS 9 drivers. Where to go from there? That day, DieHard on MacOS9Lives posted an install CD which used a boot ROM that iMic had modified. Apparently, the ROMs had resources which specified whether or not it would be bootable within a certain machine, so he had isolated these, replaced them with generic values, and fixed their checksums.
This was what was needed! I have been able to boot from the modified ROM without any troubles. It works like a normal MDD install in all respects I have been able to observe. Graphics, PCI cards, USB, FW400, sound all working normally. File system integrity is solid. Only slight problem is that my OS 9 partition is not appearing in the boot options menu at startup, but I haven't bothered messing with this. It is great having a fast OS 9 box again!
Just be aware that the generic ROM won't prevent you from installing OS 9 on a system it might not have full compatibility with (no drivers). I knew that the FW400 and FW800 MDDs were extremely similar. If you try this with something else such as a Mini or an Xserve, there might be lots of setup involved to get something like a normal OS 9 system, if it's even possible. But anything which uses the same sort of chips will probably work without difficulty. I have read that people have had some success booting OS 9 on G4 iMacs, iBooks, and PowerBooks.
But I never bought the excuse that the FW800 having FW800, USB2, or other extras really rendered them unable to boot OS 9. Apple rendered them unable to boot OS 9, because they were trying to get rid of it! I had gotten so far as a halting OS 9 boot on it once before years ago, and was ready to give it another try. This was extremely convenient timing, as about a day before, iMic from ThinkClassic had released a utility called Identity Toolkit which allows one to easily reset the Open Firmware definitions of the box for booting. This can also be done directly from OF, which is what I tried before. The box needs to be set to be bootable as MacRISC2 - which I think is the class of New World systems which are dual-bootable. The later G4s which boot OS X only are shipped as MacRISC3. Once I restarted, this allowed me to use my Panther partition to format my other drive with OS 9 drivers. Where to go from there? That day, DieHard on MacOS9Lives posted an install CD which used a boot ROM that iMic had modified. Apparently, the ROMs had resources which specified whether or not it would be bootable within a certain machine, so he had isolated these, replaced them with generic values, and fixed their checksums.
This was what was needed! I have been able to boot from the modified ROM without any troubles. It works like a normal MDD install in all respects I have been able to observe. Graphics, PCI cards, USB, FW400, sound all working normally. File system integrity is solid. Only slight problem is that my OS 9 partition is not appearing in the boot options menu at startup, but I haven't bothered messing with this. It is great having a fast OS 9 box again!
Just be aware that the generic ROM won't prevent you from installing OS 9 on a system it might not have full compatibility with (no drivers). I knew that the FW400 and FW800 MDDs were extremely similar. If you try this with something else such as a Mini or an Xserve, there might be lots of setup involved to get something like a normal OS 9 system, if it's even possible. But anything which uses the same sort of chips will probably work without difficulty. I have read that people have had some success booting OS 9 on G4 iMacs, iBooks, and PowerBooks.
