>Do you think the assembly can be reversed engineered and maybe rewritten in C or C++?
This already exists.
Edit: there's also morphos: http://www.morphos.de/
It's an OS for PowerPC machines (including most old Macs) that's based on the old operating systems for the Commodore Amiga. It's lightweight enough that it, apparently (as I said, I haven't tried it yet) gives a new lease of life to hardware that can't run new or even new-ish versions of MacOS and Mac software.
There are several PPC linux distros available, both desktop and server flavors.
You could also play around with MorphOS, an Amiga compatible OS that runs on PPC.
That's a noppoo lolita spyder tkl with Nordic keycaps+Amiga to complete that MorphOS install.
If you want to try something a little different on that machine, it's supported by MorphOS (modern AmigaOS semi-clone).
I think the free version runs for 30 minutes before slowing down.
Yes! And I'm considering the AEROS distro too: http://www.aeros-os.org/
I just learned about Morph OS now, thanks. http://www.morphos.de/
It seems that Morph was developed because the Amiga was used a lot in video and audio production back in the 90s.
I came up with a possible solution. This works for installing MorphOS from USB, but I'll try installing OSX this way. I'm going to turn my Leopard disk into a ISO image, then maybe copy the morphos boot.img. I'll see if the Leopard disk has a boot.img for mac_ppc32, first, before I use the MorphOS boot.img
The info I found:
http://www.morphos.de/guide/usb-boot
Edit: I'll add more info, while I try this method to install OSX from USB.
Edit again: I found other guides, but they seem to require OSX, which I don't have installed yet.
I was able to make a iso image of Leopard, or "Boot Camp", however I cant find out how to install with out a DVD drive.
One alternative (or at least coming very soon) is MorphOS. I had read that the upcoming version 3.0 was slated to include support for some of the PowerBook G4s. It won't be free, but I think you'll be able to try it out for free with some type of time restriction.