Agreed
One example I know of where there was code in the ROMs was the ability to plug and play. If you had a Mac II, as an example, and you threw a new video card in the system, Apple or approved third party(who conformed to the HW protocols), the system would see it automatically and use it. You could literally swap an old video card/monitor combo for a new one without loading software.
Similarly if you threw an Apple brand SCSI HD into the system, it would be mounted automatically. But there were workarounds for non "approved" SCSI drives that you could use, involving software patches.
But while this is in some other system's OS, it doesn't make it part of the Mac OS, its really redrawing the lines of where the firmware ends and the OS begins, and has its plusses and minuses.
