Good news! Kay Koba at Kero’s Mac Mods store is now selling pre-packaged ROM-inator kits for the Macintosh Plus, Mac 512Ke, 512K, and 128K. This is a recreation of the original Mac ROM-inator kit that I designed in 2015. The design is open source, and Kay’s new version is called “ROM-inator Resurrections”.

The ROM-inator replaces the stock 64K or 128K of ROM in a compact Macintosh with a full 1 MB of flash memory. Once installed, the flash ROM’s contents can be updated via software from within the running Macintosh, allowing for extensive customization. The replacement ROM adds a bootable ROM disk to your Macintosh, provides built-in HD20 disk support, replaces the startup sound, changes the Happy Mac icon, and makes it possible to edit the ROM disk or even tweak the ROM toolbox code code.

• Startup beep is replaced by a glass “ping”
• Happy Mac icon is replaced by a Mac wearing sunglasses
• Pirate icon is displayed while waiting to load the ROM disk
• ROM disk image including System 6, Mac Write, Mac Draft, and eight games
• 128K ROM code turns a Mac 128K or 512K into a 128Ke or 512Ke

The ROM-inator is a descendant of Rob Braun’s original Mac Plus ROM Adapter and disk driver. More details about its inspiration and development are here.

When first powered on, the Macintosh will play a customized startup sound, and display a “pirate Macintosh” icon. To boot from the ROM disk, press and hold the R key on the keyboard for a few seconds. If R is not pressed, the Macintosh will boot normally from an attached SCSI disk, or wait for a floppy disk to be inserted.

The utility program Flash Tool can update the flash ROM from within the running Mac. Alternatively, the flash chips can be removed from their sockets and reprogrammed using a standard EPROM programmer.

You can buy a ROM-inator Resurrections kit from Kero’s Mac Mods store. Please refer to their store with any questions or tech support needs; BMOW does not provide any support for these.

Happy ROM hacking!