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iBook G4 - Mac OS 9 "Universal" - 256 colors
Posted by: KnobsNSwitches on 2017-12-26 09:45:30
This is a fairly specific question...I've got an iBook G4 running on the Mac OS 9 "universal" install, for Macs that don't officially support booting into OS 9. 

I'm trying to set the screen to 256 colors (to run some living books), but there's no options other than Millions.

I've tried disabling all the ATI and Nvidia extensions I can find, but the Monitors options don't change. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Posted by: CharlesT on 2017-12-26 11:03:28
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the universal install for unsupported Macs necessarily enables 100% of the functionality on any of the machines it will boot on. Some examples being things like Bluetooth which there are no OS9 drivers for. This may well be one of them. Disabling your graphics card extensions will definitely NOT help, make sure you re-enable the extensions for the flavor of graphics card in your machine.

You may also want to post the question on the Mac OS9 Lives forum, where they have a topic devoted specifically to running on unsupported machines. Hey, being stuck in millions of colors is better than being stuck in 256 colors for most use cases.

Posted by: swamprock on 2017-12-26 15:11:45
Have you tried running a game that switches to 256 colors when run? For instance, give the original Hexen or the Vectorama emulator a try. Both will prompt you to switch to 256 colors, then click yes to see if it will do so.

Posted by: KnobsNSwitches on 2017-12-26 20:34:46
Yes, it doesn’t change. I think it must be some limitation, I’ve come across a post with info on editing some ati driver extensions but a quick glance in ResEdit was not clear to me. 

Posted by: AlpineRaven on 2017-12-31 14:08:46
Its the video card that the OS doesn't recognise hence un-supported OS.
Cheers

AP

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