Mac OS 9 booting on: Mac mini G4 (Detailed Posts)

[EriolGaurhoth]

I think I'm all set, the newer Drive Setup worked, restoring the .img file from my firewire drive instead of my (apparently) faulty CD drive gave me no checksum errors, and the system booted.  I had an issue moving the mouse upon boot, but installing USB Overdrive fixed that right away as well

[jackoverfull]

I think I'm all set, the newer Drive Setup worked, restoring the .img file from my firewire drive instead of my (apparently) faulty CD drive gave me no checksum errors, and the system booted.  I had an issue moving the mouse upon boot, but installing USB Overdrive fixed that right away as well

I have USB Overdrive and I keep having the mouse stuck on boot usher now and then, rebooting invariably solves it.

[IIO]

does that mean that one should make the followig changes to the v9 image:
 - set USBOverdrive to not 1.0 (in the prefs file)
 - autolaunch drive setup 2.1
?

[RossDarker]

The primary Drive Setup will be made 2.1 again. I think more people are formatting large drives as opposed to external FireWire drives. 1.9.2 will still be on the disc though, and instructions for formatting FW drives will be added to the readme.

As for USB Overdrive, I remember some people only being able to use the boot CD with extensions off. (USB Overdrive is installed on the CD)
So it seems to unstick some mice (more often), stick others, or have no effect. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, and stuck mouse is still ~1/10 chance. I’d have to read some of those posts again to see how likely that is.

So it would seem it’s best to leave USB Overdrive optional for now.

For the next CD, I’m hoping there can be a big upgrade, such as onboard audio functionality. The progress being made some time ago looked to be going in the right direction. It’d be great if it’s successful, but still worth investigating nonetheless.

[jackoverfull]

I thought that onboard audio was not possible until a software mixer is written?

[ssp3]

The primary Drive Setup will be made 2.1 again. I think more people are formatting large drives as opposed to external FireWire drives. 1.9.2 will still be on the disc though, and instructions for formatting FW drives will be added to the readme.

I might be in minority here, but for well over 20 years I've been a big fan of FWB HDT for formatting internal drives. In my experiments with 17" PB G4 1MHz and Delock + mSATA drives, I got speeds in the range of 60MB/s with Drive Setup 1.9.2; 90MB/s with HDT 4.5.2 and slightly less than 90MB/s with 2.1. Drive Setup also installed a whole bunch of different drivers on internal drive, whereas HDT only the ATA one.
But, as they say, YMMV.

[DieHard]

I might be in minority here, but for well over 20 years I've been a big fan of FWB HDT for formatting internal drives.

It is an awesome product... however, I backed away from it for compatibility issues; some drives become un-readble in systems that do NOT have FWB installed.  So data recovery and other universal HD swapping becomes an issue.  This becomes an issue if you remove a drive with FWB installed and connect it as a secondary drive to a system without FWB installed. I am guessing the FWB drivers are similar to a dynamic drive overlay and need to be configured at boot in some way.

[IIO]

external FireWire drives. 1.9.2 will still be on the disc though

yes of course, as secondary option it should be kept.

as for the formatting and installing issues, one option could also be to make the volume an OSX boot volume and do things from there, but that would be less sexy, more work and it would no longer fit onto a CD media.

[EriolGaurhoth]

Hi guys (and girls) !
What if I tell you that Bluetooth is working on OS9 on my mini ?
Ok ok ok, only with keyboards and mouse. 

Using the internal bluetooth of the Mac Mini or a USB bluetooth dongle?

[ebann]

I’m new here 
I have a Mini G4 1.42GHz and want to install Mac OS 9.
I downloaded the latest ISO image and burned it to a CD in Windows 11.
Burner couldn’t verify the image complaining it couldn’t read the disc.
I couldn’t boot from CD using OPTION or C keys.
Tried booting from Mac OS X under Startup Disk using ALT+RESTART.
Did NOT work.
Tried burning another CD from MacBook… also failed to verify image. Unreadable.
What am I doing wrong! The YouTube video looks simple enough 

Edit: I vaguely remembered someone complain about keyboard issues so I replaced the modern Apple flat-chiclet USB keyboard with the one from my PowerMac Silver keyboard and alas, booting from CD by holding C worked like a charm. Silly how keyboards are so finicky.

[Opualuan]

I’ve installed this on two systems, neither have sound at all- internal or external. Also, no control of the modem. I know about the volume issue, this is different- am I alone in this experience?

[jackoverfull]

Have you tried connecting external speakers with built in volume control? The volume of the internal speaker is stuck so low to be inaudible.

I had no idea anyone was still using a modem, sorry.

[Opualuan]

I did try external speakers but will re-test with a different set. It’s very late to still be using a modem, the only reason is to play some multiplayer games with a friend, haven’t found a reasonable solution for Appletalk over Ethernet/internet.

[ssp3]

A question to creators of ROM file for Mac Mini or those in the know: why are there two instances of 'PowerMac10,1 PowerMac10,2' and several other lines in the boot script in ROM file? Was it done on purpose? If so, why?

I'm playing with ROMs for other unsupported Macs and trying to learn..

Code: [Select]

<COMPATIBLE>
PowerMac10,1 PowerMac10,2 PowerMac10,1 PowerMac10,2 MacRISC
</COMPATIBLE>


Code: [Select]

\ Hacks for Mac mini, should not affect other machines
" /" select-dev " model" active-package get-package-property 0= if
    decode-string 2swap 2drop 2dup " PowerMac10,1" $= -rot " PowerMac10,2" $= or if

        \ Pretend to be a Power Mac G4 Cube
        " /" select-dev
            " PowerMac5,1" encode-string 2dup
            " model" property
            " MacRISC" encode-string encode+
            " MacRISC2" encode-string encode+
            " Power Macintosh" encode-string encode+
            " compatible" property
        device-end

        \ Pretend to have a PowerPC 7445/55, actual PVR unaffected
        " /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0" select-dev
            80010201 encode-int " cpu-version" property
        device-end

        \ Set prim-info (for PwrMgr v2 in NativePowerMgrLib)
        " via-pmu/power-mgt" select-dev
            000000ff encode-int
            0000002c encode-int encode+
            00030d40 encode-int encode+
            0001e705 encode-int encode+     \ public features
            00001400 encode-int encode+     \ private features
            00000000 encode-int encode+
            0000260d encode-int encode+
            46000270 encode-int encode+
            " prim-info" property
        device-end

    then
then \ End of mini hacks
\ Hacks for Mac mini, should not affect other machines
" /" select-dev " model" active-package get-package-property 0= if
    decode-string 2swap 2drop 2dup " PowerMac10,1" $= -rot " PowerMac10,2" $= or if

        \ Pretend to be a Power Mac G4 Cube
        " /" select-dev
            " PowerMac5,1" encode-string 2dup
            " model" property
            " MacRISC" encode-string encode+
            " MacRISC2" encode-string encode+
            " Power Macintosh" encode-string encode+
            " compatible" property
        device-end

        \ Pretend to have a PowerPC 7445/55, actual PVR unaffected
        " /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0" select-dev
            80010201 encode-int " cpu-version" property
        device-end

        \ Set prim-info (for PwrMgr v2 in NativePowerMgrLib)
        " via-pmu/power-mgt" select-dev
            000000ff encode-int
            0000002c encode-int encode+
            00030d40 encode-int encode+
            0001e705 encode-int encode+     \ public features
            00001400 encode-int encode+     \ private features
            00000000 encode-int encode+
            0000260d encode-int encode+
            46000270 encode-int encode+
            " prim-info" property
        device-end

    then
then \ End of mini hacks


[zefrenchtoon]

As many of us, I am still thinking about getting sound using mini's internal sound card and speaker.

If I am not wrong, a part of the hack to make OS9 boot on the mini consists to modify the ROM to make OS9 thinking it is running on a Cube.
If I am not wrong, the Cube is a quite special system when we talk about sound because it uses specific Apple Pro USB Speakers which contains a specific amplifier.

So I was thinking that maybe it was related ... on one side, we have almost no sound, on the other side the "real" Cube uses an external amplifier.

Then, I have read this post on 68kmla about how the System boot process works and I though about our beloved minis and OS9.

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/patched-6-0-8l-for-more-macs.45379/post-501638

If I am not wrong, the mini, as the other "unsupported" G4s, does not have a GestAlt Id.
But the Cube has one !   406
So maybe in the boot process, the System disables the internal amplifier because of the gestalt id.

Thanks for reading 

[teroyk]

so you say you are sure that in theory it will work, but silverlining itself has also a limit? hopefully it was only because of your enclosure.

my HDDs just arrived. i am supposed to use what version of silverlining?

and i know you can ask for sector size in OSX console. can you maybe also format drives with custom settings in the shell?

Sorry I missed your post before.
Silverlining Version 6.5.8.
With second thought, is that actually allocation size, not sector size that I can setup with it?

Actually how I can format with 1024 bytes sector size in OSX console?

[dtekle]

@zefrenchtoon:
Your idea sounds interesting, maybe it is possible to patch the sound initialization part of the MacOS ROM. Some ROMs expert should look into this and do some exploration along this route.

Besides that, there is an ongoing effort to write a MacOS driver for the used sound chipset (Toonie) in the Mac mini G4 based on the existing Linux driver and reverse-engineering of the Mac OS 9 system file (Link: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6701.msg50722.html).

[chatulim]

Hope you guys can help me...

I would like to install OS 9 on a G4 mini 1.25 GHz (PowerMac10,1) with a non-working optical drive (it not read any  discs. It just grinds a bit and then spits them out).

Besides the G4 Mini, I also have a PowerBook G4 12" 1.5 GHz running OS X Tiger, and an OWC external FireWire / USB 450 GB drive with 3 partitions: Tiger Install Disc (4 GB); Ross's Mac mini OS 9 CD v9 install disc (700 MB);  and one empty partition (the rest of the GB). The FW drive has OS 9 drivers installed.

I plugged the FW drive into the Mini and booted with the option key held down. When the screen came up, it showed 3 options: The Mini's internal drive (also with OS X Tiger); the Tiger install partition; and the Ross's Mac mini OS 9 partition. I selected the OS 9 partition, and after a few seconds it displayed an OS 9-style disk with blinking question mark. Then the fan starts spinning up like a jet engine and stays that way until I shut it down.

What am I missing?

[Opualuan]

I don’t know the answer on the external drive, but on my g4 mini the mechanism and laser lens was coated in dust. A few screws to lift the cover of the drive, easy to clean and worked well for OS install afterwards.

Yes- remove power completely and observe proper laser safety precautions.

[chatulim]

I don’t know the answer on the external drive, but on my g4 mini the mechanism and laser lens was coated in dust. A few screws to lift the cover of the drive, easy to clean and worked well for OS install afterwards.

I just want to make sure I understood you correctly: Did you take apart the optical drive itself‽ I've disassembled many Macs, but I never tried to open up a CD/DVD drive. Those WARNING!!! HERE BE LASERS!!! stickers always intimidated me.When an optical drive would fail (and they did so pretty consistently), I would just chuck it and replace it. I was actually pretty happy when the world moved on to solid-state storage and network transfers.