Hey, it's great to see you return here, @ELN! Your scripts and tools really saved the Mac-day here!

I wasn't sure about Go, but yeah, Python doesn't usually leave me with the best impression with lack of forward compatibility among even minor versions... I thought the infamous Python 2 to 3 migration was going to be the last time it would have issues like this, but I guess not. However, I'm just glad your tools work with most Python 3.x versions still! They made all the difference, and they were very easy to use thanks to the lengths you went through to keep it as heavily-commentated and easy-to-use as possible for a CLI app. I see why you would favor Go nowadays, though, as they reassure to do better to devs. (What about good ol' Perl?)

By the way, in case it might interest you, you can interact with Rairii directly through this Discord server of his (listed in his Nintendo PPC NT GitHub page, which currently accomodates PowerPC/MIPS WinNT + Mac discussions/developments in particular).

Excellent work!

I switched from Python to Go in large part for the compatibility guarantee. https://go.dev/doc/go1compat

BRAVO Jubadub!

Had been wondering about your absence ‘round here lately.
Now that’s evident, considering what you’ve been working on.

Extremely well done and VERY highly commendable.

Not everyone is capable of pulling all of that information together
and then presenting it in such a concise, yet clearly written manner.

Kudos!

I'm glad you like the post! Indeed, gathering all the information so that everyone's on the same page was one of my main goals with all this.

But, just to be sure there's no risk of any misunderstanding, I'm just the messenger in all this: we all owe it to Rairii, who is the sole owner of this project that made all this possible. All I did was to combine it with @ELN's mac mini scripts and tools, then share the result of that with everyone along with the story and all the information.

My overall "Mac absence" for the year was mostly due to having to take care of personal matters to get things in due order. But after I saw these crazy new developments brewing, I sure took the time to take a dive and share whatever I could!

In the words of the late great Ozzy "Never say Die..."

BRAVO Jubadub!

Had been wondering about your absence ‘round here lately.
Now that’s evident, considering what you’ve been working on.

Extremely well done and VERY highly commendable.

Not everyone is capable of pulling all of that information together
and then presenting it in such a concise, yet clearly written manner.

Kudos!

Great Post!

This is EPIC!

Agree!

@Jubadub, thank you for writing all this! I will need to re-read it several times to fully grasp what's going on there.
This is EPIC!

Okay, this topic is now locked @ 78 pages.

So, anything new and / or related? Start another topic.

Have questions about OS 9 on the G4 Mac minis?

Start another topic. Thank you.

 
Jubadub has already just begun:
System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4!
https://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=7711.msg59712#msg59712

Also, why 9.6.1 was chosen and not 10.2.1 or even something earlier, like 8.7 is still a mistery to me. I think I've asked the same question in the past but got no answers.

It seems like using 10.2.1 was fine all along, from what I can tell.

As for why not 8.7, I know of at least one reason: ROM versions earlier than 9.1 lack the "Kauai" drivers, required for ATA-6 AKA Ultra ATA/100 support. The mini needs that for the CD/DVD drive as well as the internal disk drive.

Now, technically @ELN's script tries to patch in the Kauai drivers if the ROM version we are adding Mac mini compatibility to is of a version earlier than 9.1 for this very reason, but from what I tested, the script could not handle ROM version 8.7 completely, and when I tried to use the patched 8.7 ROM I got despite that, the mini could not boot with it from its own internal disk drive.

I would love to see whatever needs to be tweaked to the macmini.py script to be done, so that ROM 8.7 can be used successfully. Rairii's "super" ROM 10.2.1, as a ROM that is truly based on ROM 10.2.1 with CPU Software 5.9, contains the graphic glitch that affects the few games I spoke of previously, as with any other Mac OS ROM version 8.8 or later.

If only @ELN saw this message, to learn about this issue... I wonder what he might have suggested.

Quote from: Jubadub on November 27, 2025, 10:13:03 AM

I have thoroughly tested Mac OS 9.2.2 with this new ROM combination (latest Rairii 10.2.1 + latest Mac mini G4 patches AKA v9 patches), and from what I could tell, everything behaves exactly the same as with the previous ROM we always used.

Long shot, but, is the mouse-freezing bug still present?

You know... Now that you mention it, I don't think I encountered it. But maybe I was just "lucky": even with the previous ROM, it was not THAT common for me to encounter it (but at the same time, it wasn't exactly very rare).

If you have a mini, are you able to check it on your end, as well? The more people we have trying this out, the more likely we are to truly find out.

I suspect the mouse glitch probably remains, since as far as we know it's a shortcoming to be addressed in our patches for the mini rather than Apple's own code, but... who knows?