DVD drive for Beige Power Mac G3 tower

On a beige G3, the DVD-ROM drive was a build-to-order option, so that it included the A/V personality card with the onboard Qube MPEG decoder chip. The B&W G3 and G4 PCI graphics had the piggy-back MPEG decoder board that attached to the ATI Rage 128 graphics card. These Macs used hardware-based MPEG decoding and version 1.x of the Apple DVD Player software would scan for the necessary hardware components before the program would launch. If a DVD drive and the decoding chip weren't found, an error message would appear that the software wasn't compatible with the computer. A newer, OS 9-compatible version of Apple DVD Player (2.x) used a software-based decoding scheme, but would only install on newer computers with faster G3 or G4 processors. The workaround for the beige G3s and B&W G3s running OS 9.0.4, 9.1, or 9.2.x was to use "Tomeviewer" to extract "Apple DVD Player 2.7" from the installer tome and manually place the corresponding files as directed (follow the instructions on this page). After that, download and run the "Apple DVD Player 2.7 Patch." I successfully did this and was able to watch DVD movie playback on my beige G3s (266 and 300 MHz) having the Radeon 7000 graphics card. For all but one of my G3s, I flashed ATI's retail/boxed version of their Radeon 7000 graphics card for PCs. Buying ATI's "PC" version card enabled having a card with 64 MB DDR memory, which the Apple versions didn't have. Playback wasn't bad, as I recall. I'll have to connect one of my beige G3s and test the playback again.

Hi Chris,

I think the jumpiness will always be there. The Beige G3 (my all-time favorite Mac, by the way) does not support Apple's Quartz Extreme technology that debuted in those versions of OSX. The Radeon 7000 can do 3D graphics well enough but QE controls 2D display elements. I saw the lack of QE supoprt on my Beiger G3 when I opened/closed windows, scrolled in teh Finder, and dragged anythign about the Desktop. QE required AGP graphics and your fine old Beige has PCI graphics.

There once was a hack to enable QE on a PCI Mac but it tended to shut down any other PCI cards like your USB and FW cards.

ATI Radeon 7000 graphics card with 64 MB of VRAM

That must be a PC card that was flashed. The retail Radeon Mac Edition 7000 was only 32MB VRAM. However, L have run three "real" Mac Edition ATI cards--a 16MB Rage Orion; an original 32MB Radeon (much faster then the RME 7000 that replaced it); and a 128MB Radeon 9200--in my most upgraded Beige G3. The first two had no issues in OS9 but showed the 2D stutters in OSX. The 9200 was never properly adapted to OS9 because it came out as Apple was making the transition, but showed the same lack of QE support in OSX.

I should have written "C-Cube" as the semiconductor manufacturer of the decoder chip. I didn't address your question regarding a compatible/bootable brand of DVD±RW drive for your beige G3. Pioneer's original ATAPI DVD±RW drives were always considered to be the best, third-party choice, before they began having ASUS manufacture their drives (18x and faster). If you checked ebay for an older 8x, 12x, or 16x Pioneer, it should be their product. I have a bootable, combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW Toshiba drive in a B&W G3 and a beige G3. I had good luck with Lite-On's CD-RW drives also, but not with a "Memorex" branded DVD±RW drive manufactured by LG. It would not respond to the shortcut keys for booting.

Chris of AZ wrote:

...Apple DVD player didn't install during Mac OS X installation. Anything I can do about this?

If the DVD drive was not found during the OS X installation process, then the .app won't get installed. You could reinstall the entire OS X after the DVD was installed in the machine. Or, you can try Pacifist to install just the DVD Player app from the OS X installer packages:

Pacifist — Older Versions