Apple made three imac G4's with the PowerMac4,2 identifier -
imac G4 800 - M9105LL/A - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX - 15" TFT - Pre-Installed MacOS: X 10.2.3

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I think just got one of these... firmware is 4.5.0f4

I tried booting a custom Mac Utilities CD with Mac OS ROM 10.2.1 on it. It loads the file but won't start the system.

Nor will it recognize any Mac OS 9 system folder as bootable in the Mac OS X startup disk control panel.

Is ROM version 9.8.1 (from a Mac Test Pro CD) the only one that will boot OS 9 on this model? Anybody out there have this?

It's unfair that it can't boot Mac OS 9, since it's the same hardware as the ones that can.