Unfortunately, like me, you are stuck with X right now. We have no way yet to install OS9 with the GeForce video chips, just the ATI ones.
I'm very new to all of this. I'll open a new thread if told to. This one was pinned. I have tried for a week now, reading a lot which is way over my head.
My iMac is manufactured in mid 2003, It's iLamp 800Mhz USB 1 with geforce 4MX 32MB. From what I've been able to find, it's an X only model. From MacTrons post, it's should be OS 9 bootable but I cannot. I have tried a ton of images but simply cannot get this machine to boot OS9. Can somebody please help me with baby english instructions? Almost goo goo gaga level.
There is not reason it can't work, the Geforce chips in these Mac's should be fully supported under OS 9, it just likely takes some hackery to get things going.
Really, your iMac 800 doesn't differ very much at all from the iMac 800 that fully supported OS 9 booting.
Start with the basics, install OS 9 in the Classic Env on a disk with OS 9 drivers on the Hard Disk( Easy way to do this is to boot the iMac in Firewire target disk mode and format the drive from a supported Mac, if you can't do it that way, I'll tell you how to do it from the OS X install CD/DVD, just ask(( WARNING YOU WILL LOSE ALL THE DATA ON YOUR HD SO BACK UP FIRST)), then boot Open Firmware and enter debugging mode:
dev / 3013FFF encode-int " AAPL,debug" property
Boot the Mac OS ROM, if it helps put an unmodified copy in a folder named ppc at the root of your OS 9 partition, then.
boot hd:9,:\ppc\:tbxi
In this example hd:9 is the ninth partition of your drive. To make sure your ppc folder is on the ninth partition do:
dir hd:9,\
That will list all files and folders on the ninth partition. If you have OS X installed, in the terminal do:
diskutil list
That will list all your partitions, find the name and partition number of the drive you put the Mac OS ROM in the ppc folder.
So if you have a drive named MacHD, and it is HFS+ on the tenth partition, and that is the drive you put the ROM in the ppc folder( you create this folder ).
Then you nee to boot the 10th partition:
boot hd:10,\ppc\:tbxi
:tbxi is just sort form for Mac OS ROM.
You'l get a bunch of debugging info, the last line will be "Off to Mac OS". Then your screen may turn it's backlight off, let me know if that happens, or doesn't.
If the backlight stays on, you'll enter the Nanokernel log while the system is trying to boot.
Let us know what happens, and we'll tell you how to proceed