As I remember it there used to be an system extension that you could put in your Extensions folder and make invisible. It would make the display appear to have more than 6 voided pixels, just enough to get your screen replaced. Of course dealers caught on, and I would consider it standard...
I am having the same problem.
G4 gigabit 400mz.
I had OSX installed- worked fine till one day. Then I reformatted to do a clean install, now I can't reinstall. The OSX installer does show other IDE devices I have as installable OSX partitions though.