Software engineer Doug Brown has cracked a long-simmering mystery surrounding a hidden photo in the Power Mac G3’s ROM. The JPEG image, containing a group of team members from the development process, had remained inaccessible for 27 years.
Brown discovered the image using a hex editor tool called Hex Fiend and Eric Harmon’s Mac ROM template. While exploring the ROM’s resources, he stumbled upon two key strings in the PowerPC-native SCSI Manager 4.3 code: “.Edisk,” “secret ROM image,” and “The Team.” These clues provided the crucial information needed to unlock the image.
According to Brown, the trick involves enabling a RAM Disk in the Memory control panel, selecting it after restart, erasing the disk with the “Erase Disk” option, and typing “secret ROM image” into the format dialog. This method was later validated by Alex, who initially discovered the activation method on the #mac68k IRC channel.
Brown’s discovery sheds new light on a previously inaccessible piece of Apple history, revealing a hidden treasure trove of information locked within the Power Mac G3’s ROM.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/after-27-years-engineer-discovers-how-to-display-secret-photo-in-power-mac-rom