Hi! My Mum and Dad have given me their old iMac g3 and I have no use for it as we have been unable to get the Internet or anything for me to do on it. I really love it and so I am desperately trying to find an excuse to keep it so I thought about using it to play DVDs on, but when I tried I couldn't get it to work! Help! I'm so confused! Thank you!
iMac G3-OTHER
Does this G3 iMac have a slot-loading optical drive or a tray that pops out? If the former, and if it has FireWire ports, you could use an external DVD drive to watch movies. If it has a tray-loading optical drive, the very slow USB 1.1 ports wouldn't be adequate for playback from an external USB-connected drive.
Your G3 does not read DVDs, only CDs.
Turns out http://www.macsales.com/ and http://www.mcetech.com/ have made all but probably the iMac Rev A-D DVD compatible. I would check with them to see if there is a DVD solution for you.
Sorry to say Miriam but you are dead wrong ! if the OP does indeed has a slot loading iMac G3 then there were models that came with a DVD drive and so can play DVD movies using the built in DVD player in OSX or OS9.
Models with a DVD drive :
400Mhz DV and DV SE (Oct 99 - July 00)
400/450/500Mhz DV and DV SE ((summer 2000) July 00 - FEb 01)
The early and later 2001 models only had a CD-RW
Custom Mini.
That's why it's so helpful for the OP to post the exact model and year of his Mac.
It is possible to purchase a DVD slot loading drive. Tray drives will no play DVDs. Make sure that you have the OS updated and intall any software that came with the drive. This should work, if I doesn't, see if anyone else has any ideas.
Hi
I've had no success with DVD Player and using an external drive.I keep getting the message"initialization error- cannot find a valid DVD Player" and then gives a code of numbers.I have been told that if you use a late model firewire 400 case with the firewire port on the iMac G3,the iMac may not recognise it (as in my case).I proved this by borrowing a friends external caddy of Imac G3 vintage and had no problems.Apparently its due to the revised chips in the later drives & caddies not being recognised by earlier machines.So,just because you have a Firewire 400 external device does not mean the iMac G3 will be able to use it.Trial and error,I'm afraid!!
Some DVD players might work, if you have the necessary http://www.patchburn.de/ drivers. If not, read about the stores I said earlier have DVD players available for the iMac.
How/can you play a DVD on the iMac g3?
