Thanks. I've had the original drive apart and it was quite clean already.

Do you have a link to the hacked DVD drivers?

I'm UK based. but that made me think and I do have an old MBP. It was one of the first Intel ones. I wonder if that has an IDE drive in it? I'll look for the specification.

Thanks.
 

A couple of suggestions.
1. Clean the original Apple drive.
2. Try hacked DVD driver with your Panasonic.
3. Buy a replacement Apple drive. They go for around 20-30 ($ or EUR). If you're in EU, PM me. I have a couple of dead PowerBooks with such drives.

I never desoldered the PLCCs, I cut the pins close to the IC case with sharp Stanley knife and then desoldered what's left of the pins one by one. 
But you have to be very careful as not to damage PCB and have a steady hand when performing such stunt.

Thank you for your further suggestions!

This is probably really the best solution.
I was thinking that it would be nice to save the original EEPROM as well, so that I could read the contents with an external EPROM reader and maybe later write the PC version into one half of a 2MBit EEPROM and the Mac version into the other half, then use a jumper to switch between PC/MAC, so you would have a universal SCSI card. But I'd probably never use that option

As far as the R9200 video Fcode ROM, it mixed in the the Mini's boot rom.

The New World Boot Rom is compressed, but I think JoeVT figured out a way to decompress it. you may want to message him over at the Mac Rumors forums.

If you are adding 32MB of VRAM it would help to have some high res photo of the silent upgrade Mini so we could get a look at the resister and logic board.

Maybe adding the resistors and VRAM is enough or maybe we would need to edit the 32MB FCOde ROM, or just inject/replace it with the FCODE ROM from the silent upgrade Boot ROM.

JoeVT would again be the one to ask.

I don't fool with much of this stuff anymore, we passed the point of diminishing returns on PPC. If you can't email and browse the web at good speed you just end up using sneaker net to move files from a modern Mac to PPC.

If you are just using PPC as a steady state machine to run old programs, all the upgrade paths are known to get the most speed out of them. I'm an upgrade junky but the Mac has to be able to run a modern browser and email or I'm just done with it.

Won't be any more video cards for PPC unless someone unlocks the mysteries of the die shrink 7600's/7900's from Nvidia.  There are no drivers for the Mac OS beyond that and not much we can do.

It's sad when you love hacking FCODE that no computer systems use Open Firmware and run the Mac OS anymore, but Apple went the way they went 20 years ago and these projects have come to an end for me.

Sadly macOS can't do PCI Passthrough via thunderbolt and the macOS can't use video cards via thunderbolt on AppleSoC.

SO until that changes I just don't have any fun to do indoors, so I'm back out in the garage having fun with turbos and hot rods. 

It's just a thought, but maybe try ROM file from v8 installer? I think ELN did more changes to v9 ROM compared to v8. There was something about ATA drivers too. Maybe they interfere?

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2408.msg37482#msg37482