iMic,
You have already inspired many, where ever you go from here is gravy... thank you for all the hard work... it reminds me of the days we used to use Norton disk edit in MS DOS to Hex out License keys from DBase software Applications (same concept to keep the file the same number of Bytes)... excellent work 
Admittedly most of it was trial and error over a span of several months, and thankfully most of the data that needed to be modified (such as the machine identifier list) was stored in plain text in the Resource Fork. Anything more involved than that and my knowledge hits its limitations. Like editing the bits of an old DOS application though, it's always a thrill when it all comes together and works at the end.
iMic. Even with most of us been OS9 centric, We, as part of the living PowerPC community have to give thanks to you also for the develop of Leopard Assist. You have broke barriers in both sides of the wall. You have made TigerOnly computers go Leo and OSXonly computers go back to OS9. THANKS for been a truly liberator.
Thanks for the encouraging comments.
Most of these tools, be it the OS 9 ROM or LeopardAssist, were usually developed because I had a need for them myself. With LeopardAssist, it was because my 733MHz QuickSilver G4 fell short of the 867MHz requirement. With this ROM project, it was because I wanted to see OS 9 boot on an iBook G4. It's always nice to share the finished product though so others can benefit from the work as well.
With LeopardAssist being updated to version 3 in January, the launch of ThinkClassic in May and now this new ROM release, it's certainly been a busy year here for older Mac related projects.
I think you can not "make a brick" of a PowerMac with bad OpenFirmware commands, but it seems that the OpenFirmware level of iMic is way ahead ours... MacTron has said that was dangerous.
This last method seems to work for the iBook from iMic. But not on the MacMini. That lead DieHard that maybe the trouble was not having source of graphics drivers
I wouldn't suggest my knowledge of Open Firmware is extensive... I think I've bashed around in Open Firmware more in the last three days or so than I have in my entire life combined prior to this experiment. I'm still finding out new things here and there as I go along.
Interestingly I have managed to brick one Logic Board with bad Open Firmware commands. My Sawtooth (AGP Graphics) Power Mac G4 failed after a botched write to the NVRAM with an early test version of LeopardAssist in 2008. I never did figure out entirely what caused the machine to react so badly to it.
For what it's worth, the iBook lacks graphics drivers as well. It's locked to Millions of Colours and 1024 x 768 as a result, and a patch is needed to disable the second display. It's rather frustrating as I had hoped to run SimCity 2000 on the iBook, but of course it needs to switch down to 256 colour mode to run, which this machine can't do.
i dont agree with calling it a dangerous + brute force method at all. the machines are almost identical
it simply undid a change in the combination of machinefirmware / openfirmware settngs code that was placed there on purpose by apple to disable the mac os 9 bootability.
there is no technical reason blocking it from working.. it was deliberate + intentional to disable the os.
as intentional as it was to hold a public funeral.. it doesnt get more deliberate + intentional then that.
the execution of loading of the toolbox image/chrp script was disabled at the openfirmware level..
breaking the chain of events that would lead to a possible boot.
I don't have a FW800 MDD myself otherwise I'd test this theory, but did Apple actually place a block in the firmware to prevent OS 9 from running? To me it seems that the likely change was the switch from MacRISC2 to MacRISC3 in the FW800's firmware, which prevented the Mac OS ROM from being classed as a valid boot file on the machine. Perhaps this altered ROM, with the added MacRISC3 compatible flag, would permit a successful boot into Mac OS 9 without having to flash an older firmware version on the machine?
i understand your reasoning about the problem of the greyscreen being graphics drivers..
this makes sense to me much in the same way that my powermac g3 450mhz wont boot if i have the radeon 7000 card installed on a vanilla install of 8.6 or 9.0 but it works fine with 9.1 + 9.2 - i wrote recently saying i had to replace the ati rage 128 to be able to install... suggesting that anyone with a g3 absolutely must keep this rage 128 card for situations like this.. but hoping for someone to develop new graphics drivers is a huuuuuuge longshot 
but its understandable given the history here this thread started frm a silly post like that about *impossible things* not so long ago right lol lol ptleguy thinks hey.. fuck it . why not try to start a new miracle thread hahahah
but: re graphics cards / drivers being the cause of non-boot
dont forget that japamac claimed to hav booted mac os 9 on many unsupported video cards.. such as the radeon 9800 etc (albeit without 'accelleration')
looking back to the thread of filiphuezen or whatever did he get a grey screen on boot with his radeon 9200?
his card never worked untill he used the freshdraginstall with updated video drivers
I'm curious to see how much a contributing factor the graphics chip plays in holding up the Mac OS 9 boot process. As I mentioned above, the onboard GPU isn't detected correctly by OS 9 in this iBook either, however that doesn't stop it from booting.
As it stands the boot attempt on the Mac Mini is being halted before the Happy Mac even appears, suggesting that it isn't even reaching the point where extensions or graphics drivers would come into play. Of course, I could be mistaken.
which leads me to ask: which install was iMic using with the above test?
and which versions of the ati driver extensions
As was mentioned above by Protools5LEGuy, I'm using the
922 Drag Install with Mac OS ROM 10.2.1. I've also tested the machine with the ATI Radeon 9200 Mac Edition drivers and the ATI 2005 Driver Update, however neither of these have had any effect on any of these machines whatsoever.
Yeah, I know this is wishfull thinking, and you even laught about it, but who knows? The partnership between MacOS9Lives! and ThinkClassic is giving unsuspected results. The more who join us, the easiest to know a guy who knows a guy that do @@@
It's fairly impressive what can be achieved when our communities work together, isn't it? Personally I think it's been fantastic collaborating with Mac OS 9 Lives on this project. Some of the information here has been extremely valuable, especially the documentation and threads on Open Firmware.
