System: (1) Beige G3 233 MHz Rev.A ROM with upgrade to Rev.B, (2) sonnet/ZIF G4 500 MHz, (3) 768 MB RAM, (4) OS 12.2.8, (5) original CD-ROM replaced by pulled-from-an-apple (via OWC-Larry) DVD-R/CD-RW.
The DVD player won't play DVDs, presumably because the onboard VRAM (originally 2 MB, but upgraded to 6 MB by putting 4 MB in slot F1) doesn't have the capability. So I purchased a ATI Rage 128 video card on ebay ($43 including shipping). It shows up on System Profiler in a reasonable way, with the same Vendor ID (1002) as the onboard VRAM. So it seems to be, as the seller advertised, a pull from a B&W Apple G3. System Profiler also lists ATIRage128.kext in the extensions.
So, according to what I've seen online, it should be plug-and-play. Not. Not even when the other PCI cards are removed, and the video card is placed in any of the three PCI slots. Suggestions?
So when you let the system boot with nothing at all connected to the onboard vga port and a monitor hooked up to the rage 128 video card, nothing happens at all even if you let it sit for like 5-10 minutes?
I rememeber that when i upgraded my beige, for a long time, the video from my radeon 7000 would not show up until late in the bootup process (a minute or 2 after i initally turned the machine on). I don't know what eventually happened, but it cleared itself and now when i turn the machine on, i get the video turning on within 10 seconds of bootup.
Egg on my face! I hadn't switched the monitor connection to the video card; I had been assuming that the video card was substituting for the VRAM. I happened to figure this out just before I read your message, but you were right on target.
I now get much higher res on the screen (1280x1024@60Hz) and can play DVDs using vlc.
However, for some reason I can't use DVD Player. Attempts to install v3.0 say that DVD Player is incompatible with my system (OS 10.2.8 ). And I ethernetted v4.0 to my machine, but DVD Player 4.0 won't open, giving the incompatible message again.
under X you need at least a Radeon. OS9's DVD Player supports the Rage 128 with DVD decoder card, but IIRC you don't have that, nor of course are you running OS 9.
dan k
What you write is consistent with what the unhacked DVDPlayerUpdate did with my G3 233 MHz.
However, the site
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/OS_X_10.1/OS_X_DVD_player_mod.html
contains a hack that lets DVD Player install on a G3 233 MHz (it amounts to using OS9 to remove a file from DVDPlayerUpdate, rebooting in OSX, and then using the stripped-down version of DVDPlayerUpdate). Apparently this hack has worked for many people witk beige G3's.
I tried it, and got DVDPlayerUpdate to install under OS 10.2.8. I then repaired permissions (as many posts have told me to do), and a good thing because I found that I needed the repairs. However, when I tried to run DVD Player, it started to open, but then closed right down.
I did a search in my computer on DVD and found a file DVD Player.crash.log, and with that console.log. The latter was simpler to follow. Apparently DVD Player was looking for the following library or file. without success:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/HiServices.framework/Versions/A/HiServices
So it crashed.
I don't know enough to say what to do next.
I tried a similar thing only to be stuck also. I have a Beige G3, Rev A also. no mods at all, have now obsolete Voodoo 5 PCI graphics card. I put a Lite-On 167S DVD-ROM in it to see what would happen. Reads CD's just fine but didn't show up as DVD player in profiler. Found out I never had Apple DVD Player installed via the many updates over the years so I found a downloadable Player 2.2 image and used TomeViewer to pull files out. Found a crack for it to remove hardware checking (ADP 2.2 only runs on the G3 DV I guess)from here http://web.tiscali.it/thinkdifferent/ but I am still stuck. The drive is recognized and shows as a DVD pllayer in profiler but after ADP 2.2 launches it gives an error to reduce screeen size.
Any ideas?
I also have a Beige G3 233mhz, but it has not been upgraded to a G4. I succesfully got it to play DVDs. I also bought a Rage 128 card. I watched Ebay until one with a DVD decoder came up. Look at your card a see if it has a card stuck to it that is about 1.5X2". That would be your DVD decoder. I think it needs the decoder to work.
I play DVDs in OS9 using a patched Apple DVD Player ( http://www.os9forever.com/DVDPlayer.html
)
You might want to keep your eye out for a Wired4DVD PCI decoder card. I picked one up on eBay last year for $3. The quality is excellent and it works with any VGA video output. I've found the software DVD hacks for the Rage card to be unacceptable. Oh wait, you're using OS X? It doesn't work in X. Well, the Radeon card DVD is excellent in X.
Have you tried VLC? It's small and light, and it may just solve your DVD problems.
Cheers,
The Czar
The original poster said that VLC works, but they want apple dvd player. The way to do it is to use PACIFIST. I got it from version tracker.
You run pacifist with the 10.x cd's in then open extract the DVD player from cd, making sure to install all related files to their default locations.
If you tried to do this with a download from apple (like i did)
or tried with the os 9 patch, you'll find files are missing. This way works great.
Pacifist is a package extractor that can be used to bypass the normal install checks. For fun I used it to reinstall 10.3 in full ontop of 10.3.9 . It worked, but not super stably. It's great.