I have a 233 Mhz beige g3 with a 20Gig HD that I would like to turn into a multi-media center. It is running OSX. I have put in a DVD rom which works fine. It will play DVDs using VLC but I will need to get a video card to make it smooth enough to watch. I was thinking of a ATI 7000. Any suggestions here? Will a 32Mb card work well enough or do I need to get the 64? Maybe there is a cheaper card that will do the trick?
Is AV input a possibility? Is the audio out going to be alright? Do I need something more than the built in?
I have a usb card which I will be installing. I have been readiing up about the Keyspan digital remote and I think that is what I will be getting to control the g3 from the couch 
In the end it will be hooked to my living room TV and be a DVD player, itunes player and digital photo viewer.
Has anyone done this sort of project? Ideas? Input? I do want to do this as cheaply as possible too.
I've tried many times, and OS X will not even recognise the AV card for me. Whatever video card you get, make sure it's got built-in TV out.
OS X aint gonna work with that A/V card, gotta use OS 9. But check www.applemachome.com and go to classic for the best version of itunes that will run on os 9. You just have to use Mp3, no AAC, and visualizations will SUCK BALLS with a G3.
You can get about 20fps with the iTunes visualisations depending on the video card, resolution, and processor. The amount of ram helps too.
sourapple, I hope your not generalizing and including all G3s in that comment, iTunes visualiations are very nice, and very smooth on my G3 PowerBook (Bronze Kbd), although i will admit, there not the best on my G3 minitower.
An ATI 16MB video card will work with Apple's DVD Player in OS X just fine. The ATI 16MB video cards out of B&W G3's sell on Ebay at about $30-35.00 and will work fine without the decoder card n OSX. In OS 9 you need a decoder card that attached to the 16MB video card for DVD playback.
And it will play the iTunes visualizer fine.
Some of the B&W cards had S-video output which will be best for using a tv as a monitor.
Good Luck,
Visuals are quite smooth on my 800MHz G3 with Radeon 7500 Mobility (iBook). Granted they dont run at 70-80fps like they do on my G4, but they are plenty fast. A Beige with a 1GHz 750GX G3 and a Radeon 9200 video card will run them just peachy.
watch your language please.
I have a biege 266mhz G3 with 128ram and I looking to turn it into a media center as we have hundreds of tunes on our imac G4 in another part of the house and I want acess itunes from the couch through the T.V. I am currently looking for a video card that has svideo out.
I have also got to load an OS onto the machine as it was given to me in pieces!!!!! not sure whether to go for mac os X or not?
Did you have any luck in making this work.
Hi all!
Just thought I would share my experience with VLC and a G3 266 under 10.3 (not sure this will be of any use for you guys but might as well go ahead...):
VLC uses too much CPU power, even with a Radeon 9200 PCI 128 MB and a ZIF @ 500 MHz the DVD images are jerky, clear but jerky. Get the OSX DVD Player to work, it is far better... You have to use Pacifist to extract the DVDPlayer.app from the OSX Install CD then you also have to replace the DVDPlayback.framework, take the one in the Install disk and place in in the OSX library instead of the one there... It should work just fine. The only thing is if you are trying to read DVDs from different zones the DVDPlayer.app will only allow 5 zone changes, you could of course find a way out of that...
My Super G3 has the 500 MHz ZIF and the Radeon 9200 Mac ed. 128 MB PCI and on my 19" LaCie electron blue screen it is a wonder to watch video and to play Quake etc...
Hope this is helpfull to someone
Well, it is working!!!! I was just watching a DVD on my Beige G3.
I have a 233 Mhz beige G3 with a 20Gig HD. I pulled a DVD-ROM out of a junked PC and installed it in the G3. For $25 on Ebay I bought a Rage Pro 128, 16 with a DVD decoder, they don't all come with the DVD decoder so I had to wait for one.
I reformatted my HD and installed system 9.2. Then I downloaded Apple's DVD player and patched it according to these instructions: http://www.os9forever.com/DVDPlayer.html
It all works great. I still don't have a way to hook it up to a TV, buy I am working on that. Does any one know if the Personality Card would be able to output the DVD to a TV?
IIRC, I think as long as the personality card has TV outputs, it can display whatever is on your screen on the TV.
Does the full AV Personality Card work under OS X?
nope, i tried and failed many times.
Oh, OS X. I'd forgotten about that...
there is no way to get it to work under os X? i ask because i just bought one off of eBay and i was hoping it would work.
No, not even one way. I spent at least a month searching and i did not find anything, not a hack nor upgrade.
I got a Personality card and put it in my beige G3. I used the 3 colored AV jacks to connect it to my TV. The TV appeared as a second monitor, not a mirror of the monitor plugged into the Rage card.
I played a DVD and it showed up on the monitor but I could not drag it over to the TV. I fiddled with the monitor control panel but couldn't get the DVD to show up on the TV.
I am running OS 9.2.2 is there a way to mirror the monitor? I keep hearing that there is a control panel for that, but I can't find it any where.
I have one more thing to try, I ordered a "VGA to TV CONVERTER S-VIDEO & RCA OUT CABLE" from Ebay. I hope that will work.
I found how to use video mirroring. It is on the control strip....duh!
Oh well, it still doesn't work. When the video mirroring is on and I try to start apple DVD player i get an error. The videocard (the personality card) doesn't support apple DVD player.
I hope the VGA converter will do the trick.