Hello!
I have a Lombard Powerbook G3 333mhz, and I want to buy a DVD-ROM for my laptop. Can I buy it without problems or must I purchase any devices to working with DVD?
Please Help me!!!
pan838423
These are the important parts to using DVDs on a Lombard:
1. If you want ONLY the option to read data DVDs, a DVD-ROM drive is all that is necessary.
2. If you want to watch DVD movies, you will need the DVD-ROM drive, hardware-enabled DVD decoding, and Apple DVD Player v1.3 for MacOS 8.6 > 9.2.2.
3. Apple does not support DVD Player in any version of OSX; you must boot to MacOS 8.6 > 9.2.2 to watch movies.
4. The Lombard with the 400MHz CPU came with both the DVD-ROM drive and the built-in hardware DVD decoder on the logic board. If your Lombard was bought used, it may have been special ordered with DVD but the DVD-ROM drive swapped for a CD-ROM by the former owners. Follow the steps in this article to see if you have the DVD decoder:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58337
Today I can't find anyone that has a Lombard 400 card. E.g. ifixit says "out of stock". I can't even find a G4 433 upgrade card, except for Daystar, about whom reviewers speak glowingly--BUT--that requires shipping your unit to them (pay shipping), have them install it (pay labor), return (pay ...). Pbzone has several reviews of
supposedly installing a Powerlogix 500 upgrade in not just Pismos but Lombards as well. I'm wondering if they have their machines wrong. The Powerlogix site itself implies there is no such, that is, for Lombard. OWC says they have no Lombard 400 processors.
A used Lombard may run ~$500.
If you know any sources of the above, even say a reconditioned 400, or a 433 upgrade, or whether the 500 applied to Lombard is true or false, I'm interested. I've been through all my computer & Mac bookmarks. The above may or may not make these questions & responses moot. I wearing down a bit on upgrading and fixing these old Macs, even if it is fun sometimes. It would, or could, be funny to sit down at the table of other laptops at the sailboat club & while they're doing race results on fancy newer machines I'm doing whatever on my old Lombard.
FWIW, no one who doesn't say "we don't have one" will guarantee they can sell me something that will run OS X with memory in both slots. One (BetaMacs) even said of course you can, and, that "should" not affect the OS you can or cannot run. I did not talk "should" to them; I talked "is" to them--with 512MB, Panther
would not install, it's known on discussion lists this happens (at least some of the time), and it
would install when I took the memory out of the top slot. Good Apple knowledge is not universal among even vendors.
Thanks much; I took the plunge and put down the $$ for PBG, much cheaper than WLM. Not sure how I missed those two despite Favorties and Google. I'll mark this (for now) "Solved" when I find it. This will likely be my last attempt to get use out of these aging Macs; after that it's something more recent. Thanks again.
Premature again--thought I had the answers, but still little net progress. I can't seem to get far enough now either to safe boot or change startup disk back from 10.3 to 9.2.2 . Here are my notes on what transpired:
o Following Macworld's instructions, installed new 400 card, with full 512MB, top & bottom.
o Believe I brought it up in 9.2.2, but not sure. May have had to go past 9/extensions problem ("reboot, w/ shift key")
o Switched startup disk to 10.3 .
o Came up fine, reported 512MB main memory & 1MB L2 cache.
o Restart
o Blue shapes screen/background after "Network Initialization" window--frozen cursor, no response.
o Cmd-Ctrl-Power--same--several times restart & freeze. Pulled AC adaptor plug, battery stepped in, finally physically removed battery (Macworld or someone
does say remove battery first).
o Removed top 256MB, booted to 10.3 fine. But first time only, as before.
o My notes at this point say "change start disk to 10.3" so I'm not sure if there's an omission here or a repeat.
o Reboot
o Freezes after "Network Initialization" window.
o Ctrl-Cmd-Power
o Freezes same
o Ctrl-Cmd-Power, then Shift key
o Says "Safe boot"--& freezes just after dock & menu bar ["Finder"] appear.
o Ctrl-Cmd-Power, then shift--Same (TextEdit, via "Startup Items", appears in dock & starts to bounce, stops again in mid-bounce, system has frozen).
FWIW, the times I've been in 9.2.2,
(1) With the new card, I indeed got "Apple DVD Player" in the Apple menu, and
(2) Clicking it gets the response that an alias for "Apple DVD Player" and/or a disk called "untitled" cannot be found.
I also experimented with Extensions Manager. After the previously encountered "system error" and booting around extensions problems, I set "extensions: basic" and booted fine without the previous "system error." Oddly enough, though, I then set "extensions: all" and booted fine as well. Since then, as I say above, I haven't found a way back to 9.2.2 . I have not done your directions on resolving 9.x problems, beyond the immediately foregoing.
I've read parts of _Panther Bible, 9th Edition_ chapter "Troubleshooting Techniques" and indexed sections on "frozen Macs" but haven't found anything clearly useful.
