Mac OS 9 booting on: Mac mini G4 (Detailed Posts)

[FdB]

All Hail Diehard!

Happy to see the return (never really left - did he?) and with even greater resolve and resilience… perhaps related to that of all our beloved OS9 machines.

“Quiet”? (I lurk here many times a day.)

The Mac Minis have now multiplied here like rabbits and just as soon as I wade through this final bunch of portable guitar amplifiers, I’ll be back and recording those samples with a Mini! Currently there are 20 portable amps in-house (and only one continues to avoid resurrection). Without MacOS9Lives, OS9 and everyone’s help here, I would never have ever attempted this deep-dive down this portable amplifier rabbit hole.

And… even now as many may think that OS9 has long been dead… there are those of us that know that “it ain’t necessarily so”. And also as DieHard has intimated… there are youthful members here to continue the effort(s). “The Gang” cr-hacked the Mini and while “no-new-horizons” might seem to be a prevalent mindset… well, just wait and see what the yutes here might eventually reveal. Onward!

Ever feel like we all share this surprising “little secret”? >OS9

“…we are all getting older”
            Get off my lawn! -FdB

[IIO]

i am sure all goes well for you in 2020, DH. <3

it is quiet here but that doesnt mean nobody is working on things. curiously watching OS923´s finder-releated discoveries and code fragments.^^

[IIO]

damn, 14 seconds.

[mrhappy]

i am sure all goes well for you in 2020, DH. <3

it is quiet here but that doesnt mean nobody is working on things. curiously watching OS923´s finder-releated discoveries and code fragments.^^

Yes... same here!

It seems that it's after these 'quiet' phases that all hell breaks loose!

MacTron... 'so I was playing around with this ASR thingy'.... BAMMM.... INSTANT DAW!!!!!!!!!!!

Imic... 'so I was playing around with this ROM thingy'..... BAMMM..... UNSUPPORTED OS9!!!!!!!!!!!

And yes, those quotes are paraphrased! Haha!!

Who knows what MacTron is cooking up in his basement OS9 laboratory.... down there in his lab coat smoking a pipe and playing around with some obscure PCI card that will Bluetooth SATA to his Apple watch ( that he has running OS9!).... fyi, word on the street is that he doesn't wear anything under that lab coat!!!

[Jubadub]

I sure wish y'all an excellent 2020, as well as an excellent month of December in 2019. You're all correct about people independently working on OS-9 things quietly in their respective corners, and sometimes not so quietly, when you look at the interest and actions of people in other places, like in the Macintosh Garden (which I'm a regular of, as "Jatoba", always going on about OS 9).

Mac OS 9 Lives!

The Mini has always been an absolute snail under OS X anyway, IMO that is what made this whole undertaking worthwhile, it absolutely shines as an OS9 machine.

At least on the 1.5GHz minis (which are all I used), they work really well, even 10.5 Leopard, but who cares about OS X, anyway? Even if they worked better on a mini, it doesn't matter: OS 9 is superior in nearly every way in user experience, and software library, and system performance, and customizability, and modularity. It was unmatched then and is unmatched forever.

I mentioned it just so people know what versions of OS X they can use on it if they ever need it for something incredibly specific. Much like keeping GNU/Linux, BSD or even MorphOS on the side. (Not that I need any of those anywhere near my minis. )

The Mac Minis have now multiplied here like rabbits

Haha, same here! And I still think I need even more breeding of that!

[Jubadub]

ELN, Nanopico & other Mac mini ROM hackers, I came across a utility today, by chance, which made me wonder if it could be of use to any of you, for inspecting Mac ROMs & understanding better what they contain.

It's called "ROM Sucker 2.0". I found it within the Fantasm 5.3 CD (to locate ROM Sucker, you need to "install" Fantasm, then search for the "Examples" folder).

From what I saw it do, it seemed to have promise in helping analyze a ROM, but only to a small degree. There's a good chance you guys' knowledge and accomplishments with the Mac mini ROM already go way beyond anything this app can offer, BUT I'm bringing this up just in case it may have the potential to assist further with things. Or be of help in some other situation.

[Jubadub]

Somewhere along the thread, we took notice the Apple DVD Player didn't work on the mini, however, it does! All it requires is this minor patch (download #3). Just watched the Shaolin Soccer DVD on the Mac mini under OS 9.

[DieHard]

Somewhere along the thread, we took notice the Apple DVD Player didn't work on the mini, however, it does! All it requires is this minor patch (download #3). Just watched the Shaolin Soccer DVD on the Mac mini under OS 9.

OK, now that is a breakthrough !  I think we need to email Ross and get a new version of the Install ISO with New ROM and DVD patch already inserted

[IIO]

*cough* or use VLC

but seriously, i love these fixes.

[ximiimx]

Has anybody had a problem with a white, menu bar sized line, on the left side of screen, stretching out toward the middle, after quitting iTunes?
I’ll try to get a picture....

[IIO]

Quick Redraw 201
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/8223-system-extending-macos9plus-v1-0-extensions-and-control-panels-compilation-

[Jubadub]

I was checking out some of our older posts, and then I saw something I had completely forgotten I had written:

Random feedback, to everyone: when I used the Quicksilver-2002-based modified ROM for the Mac mini, I noticed the "freezing mouse" bug was completely gone. More precisely, what happened was that during boot, the mouse would freeze, but also unfreeze as soon as the system fully finished booting. Each time. The original purpose behind trying out that ROM back when ELN compiled it was to precisely fix the freezing mouse issue, and it looks like it did. It was switched back to the G4 Cube, because Ross reported he had sound issues he didn't have before.

In any case, that's something for us to keep in mind for later.

In other words, using the earlier Quicksilver-2002-based hacked Mac OS ROM totally evaded the mouse freeze bug, while the current G4 Cube one has the issue. I wonder what differs between the two ROMs that makes the problem disappear with the Quicksilver one?

[IIO]

the "quicksilver ROM" isnt a hack, it´s the original.

[ivan_holmes]

Hi all,

I have lurked on this forum for a while and found it to be the definitive resource for people running Mac OS 9 today. I recently purchased a Mac mini G4 (1.25 but it was only £13!) to add to my existing collection of Macs (Dual 1.25 MDD, Dual 450 Gigabit Ethernet overclocked to 500) and I was so impressed by the ease of installation using the CD from this site.

I'm posting today to say thank you to everyone who contributed in some way to this.

At the moment I'm using the Mini to create images of Tiger and Leopard (fully updated etc.) that can be restored through ASR. I have successfully booted off OS X Tiger restored this way. Has anyone tried this before? It seems like a good time-saver.

Cheers,
Ivan

[mrhappy]

I have lurked on this forum for a while and found it to be the definitive resource for people running Mac OS 9 today.

Have to agree here!!

At the moment I'm using the Mini to create images of Tiger and Leopard (fully updated etc.) that can be restored through ASR. I have successfully booted off OS X Tiger restored this way. Has anyone tried this before? It seems like a good time-saver.

ASR is quite the time saver!! Personally have only used it for OS 9 images but glad to hear that it works as well for Tiger and Leopard!

[ivan_holmes]

ASR is quite the time saver!! Personally have only used it for OS 9 images but glad to hear that it works as well for Tiger and Leopard!

I haven't tested it for Leopard yet, I'm doing so now. Can't see any reason it wouldn't work if Tiger does though...

[DieHard]

At the moment I'm using the Mini to create images of Tiger and Leopard (fully updated etc.) that can be restored through ASR. I have successfully booted off OS X Tiger restored this way. Has anyone tried this before? It seems like a good time-saver.

Cheers,
Ivan

Yes, that is interesting... with Mac OS X I have always used "Super Duper" , "Carbon Copy Cloner" or the "Disk Utility" itself to clone images,
but I think the ASR would be cool to mess with for 10.4 and 10.5 and make DVD master installers

[ivan_holmes]

Yes, that is interesting... with Mac OS X I have always used "Super Duper" , "Carbon Copy Cloner" or the "Disk Utility" itself to clone images,
but I think the ASR would be cool to mess with for 10.4 and 10.5 and make DVD master installers

I have similarly used CCC, SuperDuper and Disk Utility, all work well but my goal is to install Mac OS X quickly and easily on a Mac with 9 installed, and eliminate the tedious install and update process.

Unfortunately, the Leopard image is quite large (9.5 GB) and ASR refuses to store it as it's over 4 GB, I guess this is a limitation of ASR. At some point I may try splitting the image into three parts and restoring them in place over each other.

The Tiger image however is working well, I have restored it twice to different disks and all is good.
 

[gaiaweylyn]

Perhaps I'm just missing the blatantly obvious, but was the V9 release ever finished? I recently acquired a super nice Late 2005 / 1.5ghz mini, and would like to use it with this.

Posts above seem to suggest that it was, but the latest version linked in the download section is still V8. I don't want to start a fresh install using an older release of the project if there's a newer one available with additional fixes and optimizations.

[IIO]

no, not yet.

but somewhere here there is a furtherly modified ROM which enables the use of HDs without driver.

if you are okay with overwriting your disk (using it on the same disk as OSX isnt recommended anyway), use v8.