>> has a macosx 9 on it.
> to the search patch, e.g. "hd:,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX"
> before "hd:,\\:tbxi" if an installed BootX should always take priority?
yes. That works. sorry for the late answer.
>> showing in the system ?  I did not find anything in the osx logs.
for busmaster but I was missing Ben's fixes.
So, with your ppc-busmaster branch, macosx 10.4.11 finds the adapter.
However, dhcp does not work. Investigation in progress.
There are no regression with David's branch.