If Apple could write enablers to allow 7.1 to utilize the hardware of a PowerBook 180c, Color Classic, or Quadra 840av, would it be possible to have 7.1 recognize a much newer Mac?

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Yes, Sonnet wrote their own enabler for the 7200/G3 accelerator for several versions of Mac OS. That particular enabler has to transfer the boot process from the 601 to a G3 on a PCI card and patch the OS to recognise additional RAM on the PCI card. All of which sounds amazingly difficult to me. Patching System 7.1.2 to work on a PCI Mac sounds close to impossible without access to Apple's internal documentation. Patching a version of System 7.x or Mac OS 8.x to *limp* on slightly later hardware may be achievable as long as you don't need a new hardware feature to run your software.