Possible to use DVD player on Lombard G3 in OS X?

[Tronman]

Greetings

I've got a Lombard G3, the one with the bronze keyboard, USB and SCSI but no firewire. 400MHz, factory DVD hardware assist on ATI 8MB display card.

The DVD player will not play DVDs in X-it mounts them, but when you start DVD player (what comes with the OS) it just says the hardware or configuration is not supported. Seems odd since it's all factory Apple hardware and didn't need XPF to put X on there, but I've heard of this before.

If I do the common trick of sticking a newer ATAPI laptop DVD drive in the extant housing/bezel, will that newer unit then play (and possiby burn) DVDs?

More cheaply, can I get some sorta 3rd party driver or hardware hack to make it work instead?

Thanks!

[arrowone]

Hi;Which version of OSX are you using? There was a software bug with 10.2.2 which messed up dvd playback,it was corrected with 10.2.8.You might try going to here"http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106470"For further help..There is a company called MCE that makes a combo drive for the lombard but the cost is outrageous, as much as a used lombard!

arrowone

[DeltaMac]

From an Apple discussions thread -

The version of the DVD Player provided with Mac OS X is not compatible with the Lombard G3, as it does the decoding in software and your computer's processor isn't fast enough to effectively handle it. Mac OS 9's DVD Player works by accessing the computer's hardware decoder, for which there are no Mac OS X drivers.

Having Apple-provided hardware does not guarantee that Apple will continue to support that accessory hardware. The hardware decoder card for your Lombard is one of those that resulted in a class-action lawsuit for Apple. I think you can only join that lawsuit if you are the original purchaser, and the 'including' date range is probably several years past.
If you can get a DVD burner that works with your G3, it would be a slow burn, indeed.

[Tronman]

Huh, never heard of a class action lawsuit of Apple regarding these cards. Why would they get sued for it? The card seems to work in 9. I'm running OS X 10.3.9 btw. Did they get sued because they stopped supporting it in X? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just make the driver work versus paying for all that court time and attorney fees?

I don't really have a need to burn a DVD with this machine, but I do have a need, on road trips, to watch DVDs with it, or more precisely, have the kids watch DVDs on it in the back of the Aztek ;-)

[fryke]

The lawsuit was there. Have you tried using VLC - www.videolan.org - for watching DVDs? I'm not sure it would work, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't try to use Apple's software for decoding the video. It's worth a try at least.

[DeltaMac]

Originally Posted by Tronman

Huh, never heard of a class action lawsuit of Apple regarding these cards. Why would they get sued for it? The card seems to work in 9. I'm running OS X 10.3.9 btw. Did they get sued because they stopped supporting it in X? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just make the driver work versus paying for all that court time and attorney fees?

If you were the original, registered purchaser, you would (probably) have been contacted to join in the suit.
Apple refused to provide support for the hardware DVD decoders in OS X. Perhaps the cards were crap, and a reliable driver could not be developed for OS X - You'd have to ask Apple, I guess.
I agree with the idea to try VLC... might work !