I've been trying to get this working for a while but haven't had much luck. This model will display all color sets and resolutions under OS9, but it needs either video support with drivers or Mac OS ROM modifications to allow this. I'm not sure where to do this within the ROM file but I have seen it done for other models. If you have two partitions (OSX and OS9), the color depth and resolution set in OSX will carry through to OS9 when you restart, but you won't be able to switch after booting into OS9.
I have the 1.0Ghz 15" model (Unsupported OS9) and a 700Mhz (full OS9 support). As darthnVader states here (
https://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1173.msg46900#msg46900) the 1.0Ghz model uses a slightly newer graphics chipset which doesn't have OS9 support. I've been trying to override the graphics properties in Open Firmware to be recognised as the older model, to see if that will make any difference. This might be a silly approach but I thought it would be worth a try.
I haven't been able to get far or test this because when the boot process starts Open Firmware is unable to find the display device, which is odd because it can be found and modified when you've booted directly into Open Firmware.
I've saved the following to the NVRAM in Open Firmware:
dev /pci@f0000000/NVDA,Parent@10
00000110 encode-int " device-id" property
000000b2 encode-int " revision-id" property
" GeForce2 MX" encode-string " model" property
" GeForce2 MX" encode-string " compatible" property
" NVDA,GeForce2MX" encode-string " device_type" property
device-end
With these changes set in the NVRAM, I boot the computer into Open Firmware again and it loads the NVRAM contents before allowing you to do anything.
In the pictures below you can see that after loading the NVRAM the first line complains that it can't find that hardware address during boot. The strange thing is that these addresses do exist and you can access them by manually entering them in Open Firmware.
The only hardware address related to display that it will find during the boot process is:
dev /pci@f0000000
None of this device's children can be found during the boot process, so all of the following will produce the same error when loading the NVRAM contents:
dev agp
dev screen
dev /pci@f0000000/[any child nodes]
Does anyone know why these device addresses can't be found at boot time?