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

[gaiaweylyn]

I do have other machines that I can use to format the disk separately with the OS9 drivers, so that's not an issue. The small mouse and video fixes would be nice though!

Either way, noted. Will use V8 for now.

[Rainier]

Grateful for all the work done and offered here for non programmers like me.
I need Frame and hate it on Windows. Version 7 on Mac beats 17 on Windows. So I picked up a G4 Mini and the boot .iso for 9.2.2 v.8
All is well except...
Except for the mouse freezing seven, eight times a day. Sometimes on startup, more usually after sitting unused for ten or twelve minutes. Sometimes it locks up while in use.
I’ve read here that I’m not alone. Other’s frequency seems less.
Has anyone found a way to keep their mouse warm instead of frozen?
Again: thanks for the labor of love from many of you.

[IIO]

it is interesting that it happens for some people more often than for others. but i guess you actually work a few hours per day with it?

[DieHard]

Except for the mouse freezing seven, eight times a day. Sometimes on startup, more usually after sitting unused for ten or twelve minutes. Sometimes it locks up while in use.
I’ve read here that I’m not alone. Other’s frequency seems less.

Without rebooting, I plugged in a "Genuine" apple white single button mouse and it "unfroze" and then I plugged in the 3rd party and it was working again (all without a reboot); so... one choice is to get an original "single" button apple, Because IMO it is immune to "freezing" and somehow "resets" the problem

[IIO]

[Rainier]

Yeah, I do editing and doc layout, book prep stuff etc as a side job. InDesign is great in OS X, but there are things FrameMaker does effortlessly that InD requires way too much work.
So the little, old, G4 Mini is getting used most days and except for the mouse, has worked a treat.
I’m now thinking of an OS 9 12” g4 laptop for out of office work, leaving the iPad at home.

[txviking]

I had a G4 Mac mini years ago, but it was stolen out of my now ex-wife's house. Picked another up on eBay this week for $25 that I'm playing around with.

Going to give v8 a try as soon as I dig far enough back in the thread to figure out where it was linked from.

[mrhappy]

Going to give v8 a try as soon as I dig far enough back in the thread to figure out where it was linked from.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4365.0.html

[drzeissler]

v8 seems to have an upgraded ati-driver. it's working great, but no chance of getting vsync to work?
if I had to choose, I would always use vsync in order to get rid of the screen tearing.


...I think vsync control was never possible on os9...perhaps some games-engines hopefully support it.

[cybernetix]

Firstly I would like to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to making Mac OS 9 possible on the Mac Mini G4. I truly appreciated your hard efforts and will indeed donate some money to the cause.

I've recently procured two Mac Mini G4 units (1.5ghz flavour) and have been testing out v8. It was super easy to get it up and running and in no time was I enjoying a nostalgia trip.

I appear to be hitting the Out of Range monitor issue when running @ 1080p on a non-Apple monitor. I'm keen to try and rectify this using the updated ROM by ELN + the unhacked drivers. I understand v9 is in the works but if I was to try and replicate the best known install right now can I do it with the following sequence?

1. Perform clean restore of v8.
2. Copy ELN's ROM into System Folder.
3. Delete all ATI* extensions from System Folder\Extensions.
4. Install ATI January 2005 drivers. (Do I require the July 2005 patch?)

I thought defining the steps explicitly would help me - I apologies if this has been explained before just in a different way.

Any guidance would be much appreciated. Cheers again everyone!

[IIO]

no, you may not replace the ati drivers. the ones coming with the mini OS are already modified for it, the regular ones wont work.

[ELN]

No! Use the regular ATI drivers with the latest ROM! It fixes the mouse bug.

[IIO]

ah, seems i missed that the driver made it into the ROM now.

[txviking]

No! Use the regular ATI drivers with the latest ROM! It fixes the mouse bug.

I encountered the mouse bug when I booted the V8 image. Haven't attempted installing yet. Which ROM am I supposed to be using? I presume I need to replace the Mac OS ROM file both in the System Folder on the CD and on the bundled Macintosh HD.img that I presume the installer uses?

[IIO]

strange enough, four weeks ago i already gave the right answer when somebody asked, and now i forgot it again.

but where is that latest ROM file again?

[FBz]

Page 14 of this thread.
Read this post Per ELN:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2408.msg37482.html#msg37482

[IIO]

i know this post and wanted to point him to it, but i didnt see the attachement.

[txviking]

Thanks for posting the link to the right post. I do remember reading this, but I had missed the attachment at the time.

I was able to modify the V8 ISO to include this new Mac OS ROM in its System Folder. I did that by mounting the disk image with -readwrite under Leopard, which still had HFS write support. However, when I try to do the same to the embedded Macintosh HD image, I get: hdiutil: attach failed – Operation not permitted.

I can mount the "Macintosh HD" img embedded on the ISO as read-only, but not as read/write. I will see if I can manipulate it better on one of my classic Macs, but any pointers on how to slip the new ROM file in there from Leopard would be appreciated. And yes, I did try running hdiutil as root.

[FBz]

i know this post and wanted to point him to it, but i didnt see the attachement.

Did you look under your bed?

[IIO]

with the "OS9 driver included" ROM we can start including an option for "manual install" with the v9 iso distribution and so can everyone who wants to create his custom mini OS.

so dont bother about modifying the ASR image - just assemble a mini system folder (f.e. on another mac) which you then can copy to your minis when needed.