Original system on 2400?

[Nicole]

Hi y'all,

a while back I was looking to make a system 7.6.1 boot disk for my 
2400 in order to work on floppy disks created by old systems (1 thru 
6) without deblessing them.  In the end I decided I didn't need to, 
but in the process I was told the following:

At 2:04 PM -0500 3/2/03, Bill Brown wrote:
>You speak of booting your 2400 to MacOS 7.6.1. I am confused. My 2400 came
>to me new out of the box with MacOS 8.0 installed. I have long since
>upgraded to MacOS 8.1. I've had no need to look at anything later. I am
>aware that the 2400 was introduced into the Asian market with MacOS 7.6.1
>installed. All my literature and all information I have found for my North
>American 2400 is that MacOS 8.0 is the oldest it will run on. I have tried
>to install MacOS 7.6.1 on my 2400 to no avail; the installer said no way. I
>have tried booting my 2400 to an external drive with an all-flavor install
>of MacOS 7.6.1 also to no avail. I have understood that the issue is that
>only the earliest of 'book 2400s sold in the Asian market have boot ROMs
>that will recognize MacOS 7.6.1. The rest of the world received 'book 2400s
>with newer boot ROMs requiring MacOS 8.0 and newer. This may well be
>mytholgy. I do not know.

Now, according to Apple, the 2400 *does* run 7.6.1 (although my pb 
also came with system 8), so what's the deal?

Is there a hardware difference btw the original Japanese 2400's and 
the ones released in the US?  Can the 2400 run on 7.6.1?

Does anyone know?

Nicole