Hey Bolkonskij,
A while back I did some testing with a 1.0Ghz 15" but stopped after I couldn't get video acceleration. The GeForce4 MX was supported in Mac OS 9, but the chipset is slightly newer (NV18) than the one supported by the Mac OS 9 drivers (NV17) - thanks to darthnVader for this info. I believe the system was still usable but I haven't booted it for over a year. It's sitting out at the moment so I'll fire it up in the weekend if I get time.

I did have a 1.25Gz 17" but unfortunately sold that before I found the work by iMic and Mac OS 9 Lives!

Hi Retter, thank you very much!

When booting unsupported machines Mac OS 9 often thinks there are two monitors attached, and incorrectly assigns the wrong one as the default monitor. Try pressing the F7 key (with the two squares icon). This should switch monitors, then you can open the Monitors/Monitors & Sound control panel to redefine the screen arrangement.

If pressing F7 doesn't help, try connecting a second monitor to the DVI port and performing the same steps. See the images at the end of the article for more detail on how to do this.

I've also updated the article to note this (thanks for your reminder!).

No, it works, I have tried it with different disk images, and I can't get past the gray screen. I don't know what I could be doing wrong. Could there be something wrong with the Open Firmware? I do not know what to do

Ah right, do you see the "Happy Mac" at all when trying to boot?

You will probably need to apply the "screamer" fix if you haven't already. The full statement you save in the NVRAM editor should look something like this:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
80010201 encode-int " cpu-version" property
device-end

dev /pci@f2000000/mac-io/i2s/i2s-a
" screamer" encode-string " compatible" property
device-end

Now we are on the right track, but there is a problem, because when the east side that says 9.0 appears and the transport bar reaches the end, it freezes, and the mouse does not work, I have tried with the extensions disabled and the same thing happens.

Thank you very much, thanks to your instructions I have managed to install the system, it has some strange things, I see as if the video acceleration does not work and the adio does not work in any way, it is as if it does not detect the internal interface

No problem. The freezing is usually due to the Multi Processing folder not being removed before booting, in which case you boot from the CD again and remove it.

That's right, there's no video acceleration on these models since there were no drivers/support added for Mac OS 9 with the GPUs used in these machines. The sound issues are occurring for the same reason.

The best models I have used are the `M8793LL/A` (1.0Ghz 17"), and the `A1046` (1.0Ghz 15"). These models have full sound, trackpad support, and good GPU support with darthnVader's ATI extension. The only problem with all models is that sleep is unsupported due to there being unrecognized hardware devices. I have been trying to find a solution to this but haven't had any luck yet.

With the Darth Vader ATI extension the screen goes completely black

Hi Retter,
Apologies for the delayed response. That's interesting.. Have you tried removing all NVIDIA extensions, and also some/all of the existing ATI extensions?

Hi cyberish! Thanks for the kind words I'm glad you've found it interesting!
I haven't setup external boot devices for a while now but I believe you are correct with the structure of these commands, although your device ID may be different.

In another article (Changing the boot device with Open Firmware) there is an example for booting from USB devices, which is the same as what you have. Booting from a FireWire device should be the similar although you should view Open Firmware's device tree with devalias to find the device ID of your FireWire drive.

Some computers have different device names based on their port configuration. For example, my PowerBook G4 Ti has the devices fw and fwx. I'm assuming fw is for the single FireWire port but I'm not sure what fwx is for. It has two USB ports so the usb0 and usb1 devices are both present.

Let me know how you get on :)

thank you Greystash for the HDD hint! - I got my Powerbook 6,2 booting into OS 9 but it hangs and freezes just before completing the boot process, before getting to the Desktop. - The same occurs even with Extensions and Control Panels off... - I had this very computer working once with the "unsupported MacOS9Lives" Cd. (There is a little hick on this page : it should be "reset-all" (not " reset all" !)

Glad to hear you got it booting! After installing from the MacOS9Lives CD did you remove the Multi Processing folder from Extensions? Leaving this within the system folder will crash the boot process. Maybe this is seen as an essential part of the OS and loads even if extensions are disabled.

If you can boot from the MacOS9Lives CD it means that there is probably something wrong with your system folder. It might be worth trying to re-install from the CD, and then removing the Multi Processing folder before rebooting.

Thanks for letting me know about the typo! I've just fixed that up.

This is it! Removing the ‘Multi Processing’ folder did the job. Thank you ! For what reason the ‘Multi Processing’ folder is still in the System Folder on the MacOS9Lives distribution? Will post over there too...

I'm not sure but it has been brought up previously, although I can't remember what the outcome was. That's great you've got it working now!

Hello! No worries, but I can't take credit for all the initial work that got us to this point - that goes to the folks mentioned on this page.

Great to hear that you've got it all set up!
I've got the same setup FW800 1.4Ghz with 2x SSDs (one OS9 and the other Tiger). I don't have any issues selecting boot drives after restarts etc. but I know that SATA adapters can influence this a lot.

On the ATA66 Bus I have my OS9 SSD connected, and no other devices attached. This is the SATA adapter I'm using and it's set to Master.

My OSX drive is connected to the IDE bus closest to the CPU and uses this SATA adapter. I'm not sure which jumper setting this defaults to since there are no pins to bridge, I'm guessing it's either Cable Select or Slave? Again there are no other devices connected to this cable.

What sort of hard drive adapters are you using (if any)? I previously used different adapters and after restarting OS9 I could never boot into OSX, but it would work if the machine was completely shut down, and then turned on again. After holding the option key to bring up the boot selector I could then choose the OSX drive and it would boot. Restarts would never work, it would always boot the OS9 drive. The combination I am now using works well and I haven't had any issues with these adapters.

This probably isn't going to help but you could try this alternative Startup Disk version and see what happens.

Hopefully this helps. If you want more details on my setup let me know, I am happy to help!

I have the 7.5.6 version here, but if you're after the beta version I assume this would be found within a 7.5.6 beta system update.

Hi Steph,
The line you need to enter into Open Firmware is this:

setenv boot-device hd:\bootscript

The boot script should be a plain text file (txt) created by SimpleText, and the name in the command above should be whatever you named the script file.

It's likely you're getting stuck on the grey screen because the boot script isn't being read. The script is what tells Open Firmware to modify the CPU version which enables Mac OS 9 to boot. You will also need to make sure your HD is formatted correctly for OS9 to run.

See more on setting up the boot script here.

I haven't tried this on a 1.25Ghz eMac but it should work fine. Best of luck!

Hi, thanks for the answer! I did that already, I found the info here. My partition is on an external firewire drive, no luck. Do I need to replace "hd" by "disk1s2" for example? I'm almost there, frustrating, thanks in advance.

I haven't actually tried this on an external disk before, but I have used a partitioned drive. hd is an alias for the internal disk and it seems to search all partitions for the script. I would assume that swapping hd for your disk identifier would work, but I'm not 100% sure as I haven't tested this.

When you're setting the boot device/pointing to the bootscript in Open Firmware you would replace this with something like the following (this is an example with a USB device ID, so replace it with your FireWire device ID and partition number):

setenv boot-device usb0/disk:2,\bootscript

And in your bootscript you should replace boot hd:,\\:tbxi with boot usb0/disk:2,\\:tbxi, but with your FireWire device ID/partition number.

If that doesn't work you might be limited to using an internal disk. I'm interested to hear how you get on!

It's working, just quite unstable and I have a lot of privileges problems, OS9 games are on the X partition, I can live with it, thanks!

Glad to hear you got it working!!

I've come across this also and I think there's a bug involving some of the ATI drivers. Try this:

After booting wait at the desktop for a while in the frozen state. After waiting, open the Force Quit prompt (command + option + Esc). The prompt should ask you to force quit an ATI utility (because this is what's currently hanging the system).

If you don't get this wait a little longer after the next restart.

Once you've booted successfully into the system, disable all NVDIA drivers, and try disabling/toggling some ATI drivers. I can't remember which one causes the issue but it's not going to make much difference disabling some/all since GPU acceleration isn't available anyway. The modified Jasper driver is essential for screen resolution and color support.

Hi Roman. After checking my model I noticed that it's not the DLSD model, instead it's the PowerBook 5,6.

If yours crashes immediately after selecting the boot device then I would assume it's an issue with incompatible RAM (DDR2). I don't think there were any machines supported by OS9 that used DDR2 memory.

If the system begins loading, and then crashes then it could be a video issue. The GPU is unsupported but may work with the modified ATI driver made by darthnVader from MacOS9Lives. This would need to be moved to the Extensions folder of the System Folder you are trying to boot.

Good luck!

Hi Roman, as far as I'm aware it does work with the screamer fix mentioned above. I managed to get it working on an overclocked 1.8Ghz model (1.67Ghz 15" model although I can't remember if it was DLSD).
The main issue is that these later models have a USB track pad that is unsupported by OS9, so the tracking is incredibly slow making it barely usable. If someone were able to write a driver for this it would be by far the best portable unsupported Mac OS 9 machine. If you're willing to use a mouse instead it would be fine.

Hi there, I've edited the page to explain the monitor/resolution problems in more detail. I've also added an alternative link for the video driver, so see above for these edits.

If the speakers are working fine then it's likely you won't need the screamer fix. If they aren't functioning correctly you don't need to download anything, just add the screamer fix code detailed above to your Open Firmware script.

Hi there! That's great news! Do both speakers work correctly under OSX?
If they do it might be a driver compatibility issue under OS9.

If you haven't tried the "screamer" fix mentioned above you could try that, otherwise if it's already present in your script/NVRAM you could try removing it.

Also, this probably isn't the issue but check the speaker balance in the Sound control panel.