- Preproduction and NT ROMs for the Apple Network Server (ANS) were recovered from former Apple employees; the author had preproduction ROMs in storage.
- The '2.0' MacOS ROMs were tested on an ANS 700 using replica DIMMs, enabling internal SCSI and Cirrus Logic video support, unlike earlier ROMs that required external hardware.
- The 2.0 ROMs boot Mac OS from internal drives and support VGA output, but lack LCD activity, have a truncated startup sound, and omit proper device aliases for internal SCSI (e.g., scsi-int missing).
- AIX boot fails on the 2.0 ROMs (loader error) and causes system crashes, while the earlier 1.1.20 ROMs support AIX boot and have complete device aliases.
- Performance benchmarks show the 2.0 ROMs are significantly slower (3-5 times slower CPU/GPU, slower disk) compared to the preproduction ROMs and a G3 reference, likely due to missing L2 cache support and improper RAM timing.
- Rhapsody 5.6 boots on the 2.0 ROMs but crashes with a kernel panic due to interrupt issues; Mac OS X 10.0.3 and 10.2 lock up after startup.
- The preproduction ROMs (1.1.20) offer better performance and stability for Mac OS, but lack built-in ANS hardware support; the 2.0 ROMs seem unfinished and are not recommended for general use.
- Future work includes patching the 1.1.20 ROMs to fix reboot issues and attempting kernel patches for Rhapsody on the ANS.