CD-ROM Images for Booting a Macintosh from a 3rd Party CD-ROM Drive
Find in this page, disc images which when correctly burnt to a blank CD-R, will properly boot a Mac from a 3rd party (i.e. lacking an Apple ROM / not being an apple supported model) CD-ROM drive, including CD writers. This is a difficult thing to achieve, and has several difficulties, one of them is needing a CD that will allow it in the first place.
Generally, original Apple Installer CDs will boot a Mac even with a 3rd party drive, but a lot of images online have been… not extracted perfectly. This page contains a mixture of “fixed” images and original ones. Generally the original images are more broadly compatible, but I’ve done my best with my own!
Mac OS 7.6.1
This “fixed” image should boot most macs with a 32bit clean ROM, namely from the Macintosh IIci onwards. I haven’t tested, but CDs might work to machines as new as the Power Macintosh 9600.
Download Universal Booting Mac OS 7.6.1 (US)
Mac OS 7.5.3
This “fixed” disc image should boot most macs in the Macintosh Plus to Power Macintosh 9600 range.
Download Universal Booting Mac OS 7.5.3 (US)
Mac OS 8.1
This more heavily “fixed” disc image (the downloaded image had lost its drivers and had minor damage to the actual partition) should boot any Mac with a 68040, 601, 603 and 604 processor (plus machines which originally had these processors but were upgraded).
Download Universal Booting Mac OS 8.1 (US)
This is an original disc image which works perfectly. Thanks to fotWraith for providing the disc image.
Download Original Mac OS 8.1 (British)
Universal Installer CD
Placeholder. Image to follow.
This disc image should boot most macs in the Macintosh Plus to Power Macintosh 9600 range. The disc contains a compilation of installers for popular operating systems between 7.0 and 8.1.
<link to follow>
Beta Versions
The following Images have not been tested (likely because they are machine specific and I don’t have the required hardware).