I have a beige G3 and I recently added a dvd reader mostly just to read files off burned dvd's bur when I was overclocking the sweet baby I noticed the video card has ATI RAGE II+DVD painted on it does that means it has a DVD decoder?
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When you say video card, are you actually referring to a add-on video card or the onboard video?
As for dvd decoding, if it says what you said it says, then yes it will do dvd playing.
I got it to work on my dvd rom beige g3. Works perfectly in os x and 9. I forgot where, but i had to do some hacks to get it to work though. (i'm using a radeon 7000 video card).
Its the onboard video
...but the Rage II+ DVD does not have a DVD decoder. Not even the Rage Pro can handle DVD, and it's infinitely more powerful. You'll need a new video card with at least a Rage 128.
Edit: To elaborate, to my knowledge the "DVD" part on the chip has nothing to do with Digital Versatile Discs. It's probably just part of the model, like the "VR" in Rage 128 VR.
Erm...wrong...
Not that it's really worth arguing about, but technically you're both right. And wrong.
There were several generations of ATI Mach 64 accellerator chips. It's long and convoluted, but in short, the "DVD" in the Rage II+ DVD refers to the fact that the chip has several "motion compensation" features in its 2D accellerator which with proper drivers allow some aspects of displaying a scaled video buffer to be offloaded from the CPU. (And to move backwards, the "II" in "Rage II" denotes fairly major changes made earlier to the accellerator hardware which facilitated the display of motion video. Earlier models didn't provide fast enough access to display memory to really handle that task at large window sizes.)
However, these features are *not* a DVD (mpeg2) decoder. ATI did sell seperate boards to provide one (which is referred to in that press release Martakz quotes), but if you don't have it all the model number designation means to you is that your video hardware is *technically* fast enough to play a DVD, but your CPU will still have to do all the decoding.
Anyway. Google enough and you might find a blow-by-blow summary of Mach64 evolution, if you really care. I stumbled across one years ago, buried in some Xfree86 documentation.
--Peace
[quote]the chip has several “motion compensation
Can someone fix their post on this thread, i can't read it, for some odd reason it looks like that the code for quoting a message broke up the thread so that the left hand bar is covering half the main thread page. (tI have 2 inches of blank white space on the left).
I'm right.
What I was really getting at is no, a Beige G3 with the Rage II+ chip cannot play DVD movies.
Care to prove me wrong?
Again, this is a really stupid argument.
If someone's really dying to prove you wrong, I suspect that under Linux *if* you could get the "xv" enabled drivers working (which isn't easy on PowerPC, having screwed with it on my Bondi iMac) you could probably play a DVD. The video hardware is fast enough.
(Read the "gatos.sourceforge.net" mailing lists, and you'll find success reports using the same video chipset.)
You might need a faster then stock CPU to do it, however. And this doesn't help you under MacOS.
--Peace
If someone's really dying to prove me wrong, they're a total loser.
Once again I have to try making my point clear. Clearer. Whatever.
Think about it. Can you just plug in a DVD player to a Rev A G3 and get right into playing DVD movies on it?
Can you install a simple piece of software to cause a Rev A G3 to play DVD movies?
Is there any well-known, sorta-kinda-maybe easy, not-so-time-consuming way to make a stock Revision A Power Macintosh G3 with Rage II+ graphics chip play high-quality, near-full framerate DVD movies?
I think my answer of no is quite well justified by the loud and clear no answers to the above questions.
Or maybe we should ask the original poster **just** how much effort they planned to put into making the G3's mediocre graphics chip play DVDs?
I think someone needs a nap. ;^>
--Peace
{gently-intended-commentary}
Eudimorphodon wrote:
and
OK, so Eudi, do your further extensive(!) comments make it somehow less "stupid"? Not that I necessarily think the conversation was stupid, I'm just using the word you tossed in . . .
I should point out right here that I've certainly been guilty of similar "stupid"-arguing, so I know of what I speak!
I assume Disco Inferno meant his comment:
to describe the possibilities under normal conditions, that is, under any Mac OS. I think that's a fair enough statement. It would however have been nice if DI had said that, then I think there would be little about which to disagree, eh?
All this points out that assumptions made are not universal!
And finally, the comment that inspired me to write this:
Eudi, I hope you know how condescending that sounds . . .
{/gently-intended-commentary}
dan k
Perhaps my intent in responding to this thread at all was unclear. The reason I did was this exchange:
Disco Inferno:
To elaborate, to my knowledge the “DVD
You all seem to be making an argument out of this... but in reality, my lack of sleep lately plus what seems to be a permanent hangover has made me a) sound somewhat offensive when just trying to get a point across and b) not make so much sense when attempting to get said point across.
Still not sure if it ever showed itself but what my point actually was, was that a G3 or similar(6500s and the like) just plain won't play DVDs under normal conditions running the Mac OS. They just don't want to and aren't meant to.
But hang on, this isn't an answer to the original post. Read it.
What IS the answer?
No.
There's that tone again. *shrug*
Anyway. I'll just point out that a polite, complete, and civil answer to the original post is:
"No, it doesn't have a DVD decoder. The reason it says "DVD" on it is ATI designed the chip to work with hardware or software DVD decoders, but no suitable software player exists for MacOS."
I don't see a whole lot of point to getting snitty and screaming "I'm right!", "Loser", etc, simply because a tiny portion of your original answer was overturned. (I.E., the origin of the "DVD" in the product designation.)
There's nothing like a good nap to help with a hangover.
--Peace
There's no tone. None. None.
The loser comment wasn't 'tone'-related either, and I didn't scream it... I was implying that if somebody really really wanted to go to all the trouble of making said G3 play a DVD just to "prove me wrong"... that's a little odd.
All 'I'm right' comments were just light-hearted little nudges in a few people's directions, too.
So where was your nice little answer to the original post?
Calm down, eudi, nobody's trying to hurt you...
PS- frankly I don't give a flying badger about the "DVD" part- who really cares about Rage II+'s these days anyway(let alone has enough to do with them to actually know what the DVD bit is for)? I was just trying to give the general idea of it.
Snirk.
If you don't care *and* don't know, why did you answer at all? ;^>
--Peace
In an attempt to be helpful, of course! :macos:
Will you two numbnutz cut it out fer chrissake?
DI, Eudi can't help being abrasive, he doesn't mean anything by it (I don't think), just his nature. Don't take it personally!
Yeesh!! How about just moving on guys, eh? This thread is waaay past expired!
dan k
Are you trying to start something here?
Gladly.
Moi, abrasive? Pishaw. ;^>
A "snirk" seems a pretty appropriate response to this all, really.
--Peace
Nothing like bringing up old forgotten arguments, is there?
Someone just handed me an old motherboard which is now sitting beside me, next to all the other junk, on my desk (I always sit actually ON the desk)and guess what?
3D Rage II+DVD
Well folks: I'm going to take that challenge. No, it might not be on the set-up mentioned but good sense has never stopped any-one (or at-least very few) before.
Look forward to some snapshots and results in this space soon.
Hint: be Irish for a day - St.Patricks Day - and get smashed on Guiness.
Cheers,
the PinOutKing.