Multi-Monitor on OSX/9

[DracoDeus]

Hey, I've just plugged in another monitor to my Powerbook G3 (sorta the one between the bronze and the first with firewire, dun remember the model name, anyone know which one i'm talking about? the one with only _one_ pcmcia slot?) Anyways, so I tried watching a dvd on OS9 using the second monitor as the window to watch it in... but it was HELLA choppy, so bad that it was almost unusable.... So I was wondering if that was a RAM problem, or just an OS9 prob. Cuz if that's just an OS9 prob, then I should be able to use the DVD player on the second monitor while still doin other stuff under X with far less of a performance hit, right?

oh! here's the specs: 128MB RAM, 6gb HD, 400mhz G3 and... the portable pro graphics card, with however many megs of VidRAM that the thing can handle (or that it came with, cuz it sez its maxed out).

OKay, thanx!

 

[magikpersn]

Using a second monitor eates up some extra video ram (you have 8 megs vram i believe with that model). I have a pb g4 and i use s-video to a TV and set the screen res to 720X480(optimal res for DVD). Try that! It may help.

 

[strobe]

A larger hard drive isn't going to help you. Maybe a FASTER one |-\

Also 128MB is nothing these days

 

[kilowatt]

try mirroring your two displays. that outa work. Oh, and the svideo trick is wonderfull when you have a few friends and some dvd's...

 

[IanTheTerrible]

You're facing a system architecture problem. Using the built-in display, the DVD player can blow video straight to the screen via DMA. Using an external monitor, the video data has to get moved along the bus, which is *way* slower.

Mirroring should solve it, because then the system will use DMA (Direct Memory Access, should you be wondering) to shoot the video data straight to the external port, bypassing the system bus.

Of course, if you wanted to watch a DVD *and* do something else at the same time, this doesn't help much. But at least you know why you can't do it.

--Ian the Terrible