Thanks Jubadub, Mac OS 7.6.1 it is!

I’ve put together an experimental Mac OS 7.6.1 Restore CD for the Mac mini if anyone would like to try this out.

See my post (#25) at https://system7today.com/forums/index.php?topic=4125.msg19998;topicseen#msg19996 for more info.

0.1 iso: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u936FucCak17UsFCR_CYd-CQonXUyRcI

In short, burn this to a CD, then hold C at start-up to boot the disc. After installation, eject the disc with the mouse button when restarting.

Thanks to everyone who has made this possible! 

Do you like folk music? If the answer is yes, then I highly recommend this young artist by the name of Jasmine Elise. Talent, authenticity and dedication have little to do with status and celebrity. She's not a household name (zero promotion, rarely plays far from her birthplace in the South of France) but she's an accomplished musician. She's French of English parents ...

Nice guitar picking technique, delicate arrangements, heavenly voice for either covers or self penned songs

YouTube (main channel): https://www.youtube.com/@jasmineelisemusic
Youtube (sub channel, direct acces to her own songs):   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqx9H0qS4gw1eQa738knKgg

wow thats pretty sick 
good job 

Hey, @RossDarker! So good to have even more people back seeing this.

From what others reported, the 7.6 install of the CHRP discs is indeed a bit different, and not working as often as the full retail release of 7.6. So yes, to create a 7.6 install disc, be it for the mini or almost any other device, I think we should avoid the 7.6 CHRP release.

From what I gather, Mac OS 7.6.1 is the most popular version of System 7 on PowerPC across all our Mac communities, so it's probably best for us to start with that. We can always follow it up later with different versions of Mac OS for different CDs, when the time comes. What do you say?

Just for reference, there's enough to eventually justify a Mac OS CD for each of these:

- Mac OS 9.0.4: Only if one day someone figures out how to make it work on the mini...;

- Mac OS 8.6: Only if one day someone figures out how to make it work on the mini...;

- Mac OS 8.5.1: Latest Mac OS (other than 9.2.x) that we know how to make bootable on the Mac mini G4 (just have to patch system checks out of System file, or spoof the mini to something other than a Cube that also works that is also whitelisted in the System file). It is a decent choice for running apps that Mac OS 9.2.x might not be able to. It is also the latest version of all Mac OS to use the original PowerPC nanokernel (nk v1);

- Mac OS 8.1: Latest Mac OS (other than 9.2.x) that we can already, today, right now, boot on the Mac mini G4. It is also the latest version of Mac OS to run on 68040 Macs (and 68030 Macs with some dedication), which might be potentially relevant for any mini owners that also have later 68k hardware lying around (or Basilisk ][ etc.). Also the earliest version to support HFS+, but we can bring that as far back as at least System 7.5.5 if we want to;

- Mac OS 7.6.1: Latest version with MFS read support. The most popular among PowerPC System 7 users that we know of;

- Mac OS 7.6: latest version with MFS write support, although the 7.6.1 changelog suggests it had regressions that had been addressed in System 7.5.5 previously, re-applied again later only for Mac OS 7.6.1;

- System 7.5.5: latest version with MFS write support without 7.6's regressions, also is the latest version of Mac OS to boot on just about ANY PPC/68k Mac ever made as long as it has enough RAM to boot it, making it the most desirable "universal Mac OS version", which might be relevant to owners of various Macs;

- System 7.5.3: Some people swear it's even more stable than 7.5.5, at least on certain machines (hard to say, personally, especially in the case of PPC Macs and the mini G4);

- System 7.1.2P:  Only if one day someone figures out how to make it work on the mini... (and on any New World ROM machine, for that matter).

Great work!

Yesterday, I used this ROM to put together a bootable Mac OS 7.6 Install CD for the Mac mini.
Currently it can restore a system based on that from the “Mac OS 7.6 for CHRP” CD.

I hear this system is a little different to the retail version of Mac OS 7.6.

Would such disc be better right now if it installed a patched version of 7.6 retail?
Or rather a different version of System 7 altogether?

This would be largely experimental for now, and just an initial release where others could try out different extensions etc.

Wow, LMK when you get a PCI audio Interface (like 2496) to work via pass-thru, this would finally make a full working DAW a reality; currently all my "Virtual DAWs" do not perform with "real hardware"

Mostly that should work out of the box, maybe if the cards do Bus Mastering or some other funky PCI functions I don't fully understand it would need a few mods, but the cards do not have option ROMs or I2C busses that require firmware( OpenBIOS ) level mods.

Mostly the OS's runtime drivers for Audio cards are going to take care of everything for you.

Had you ever tried to pass a PCI audio card to qemu-system-ppc? It would likely help is a I finally track down the issue with OS 9 freezing on access to the 2nd CPU, but I've got a pretty good idea what the issue is now, just need time to go back over my work and make sure the interrupt-parent is routed through Uni-North and not directly to Mac-io interrupt-controler.

Wow, LMK when you get a PCI audio Interface (like 2496) to work via pass-thru, this would finally make a full working DAW a reality; currently all my "Virtual DAWs" do not perform with "real hardware"

After an extensive amount of modifying OpenBIOS and a few mods to qemu I was able to get PCI Passthrough of a GeForce 7800GT PCI-E card to work with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8.

Mostly everything is untested and there are a lot of bugs wot work out, but QE/CI are reported as working and I was able to confirm the ripple effect in Widgets does work.

Due to my motherboard having issues with passing a USB keyboard to the guest I have largely not been able to test 3D gaming, but I'll get those issues sorted over time as I have it.

This opens the door for much better graphics performance in emulation, I've also started work on Geforce 3 emulation and 3dfx voodoo2 emulation, but a host system is going to have to be 20x faster than the fastest systems we have today before 3D acceleration like OpenGL in hardware is going to be anything but a slide show even if I complete that much of GeForce 3 emulation.

Turns out that 3D acceleration on an emulated GPU is one of the most taxing things you can do even on a modern host CPU. Without drivers to offload OpenGL calls to the host system you are stuck with a slide show. That's why work on PCI Passthrough is vital to emulation of PPC systems.

is there traces of ADB still on the mobo? maybe we can solder a ADB cable to that and then use WOMBAT to convert back to usb

There's a novel based on this business (TekServe) that I read a few years ago. It's called Laserwriter II. Here's my review of that novel if you're interested:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RBJR40M4IMXW8/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8