A recently uncovered Easter egg in the ROM code of the 27-year-old Power Macintosh G3 reveals a hidden image of the development team behind this classic Apple computer. The secret was unearthed by software engineer Doug Brown, who discovered the method to display this long-hidden JPEG after years of the image being known but inaccessible to users.
Discovery and Background
The image embedded within the ROM of the all-in-one Power Mac G3 models produced between 1997 and 1999 is a JPEG file showing a group photo of the development team. ROM researcher Pierre Dandumont first documented this image in 2014, but the method of displaying it on the actual hardware remained unknown until now.
How to Trigger the Easter Egg
Unlike earlier Mac Easter eggs that keypress combinations could trigger, this secret required a more involved process involving the RAM disk. To reveal the hidden image, users must first enable the RAM disk by going to the Memory control panel and set up a RAM disk. Then the computer must be rebooted to mount the RAM disk.
Next the disk is erased by selecting the RAM Disk icon, go to the Special menu, and choose “Erase Disk.” Enter the phrase “secret ROM image” as the volume name. After formatting, a file named “The Team” (a JPEG with a text file creator code) will appear at the root of the RAM disk. Double-click “The Team” to open it in SimpleText, which will display the development team photo.
The image is stored as an HPOE resource in the ROM, while clues to its activation are found in Pascal strings at the end of the PowerPC-native SCSI Manager 4.3 code. Using tools like Hex Fiend and Ghidra, Doug Brown and collaborators determined that the SCSI Manager code checks for a RAM disk named “secret ROM image” and then creates “The Team” file containing the JPEG data.
Historical Context
The G3 team chose to embed their photo in the ROM as an Easter egg, inspired by earlier Power Mac Easter eggs but with a more discreet activation method. This was reportedly done after an incident involving an unauthorized Paula Abdul image in an earlier Power Mac ROM, prompting the team to keep their own Easter egg under wraps. This Easter egg is considered one of the last from Apple’s pre-Steve Jobs return period, as such practices were reportedly discontinued after Jobs’ return in 1997
