The Lombard's 8MB Rage LT Pro video card does *not* accelerate playback, and is partially supported by OS X (specifically, later versions of Jaguar).
Neither does the Wallstreet's 2 or 4MB Rage LT card (which is entirely unsupported by OS X).
Neither does the PDQ's (also commonly referred to as the Wallstreet, but actually a different model) 4MB Rage LT Pro (which, like the Lombard's, is partially supported by OS X).
The Lombard and the Wallstreet were both able to play DVDs under OS 9 by virtue of a DVD decoder chipset, in the form of a ZiVA DVD decoder built into the MLB in some Lombard models, or supplied in a ZV-enabled PCMCIA card along with the Wallstreet's DVD drive (or as part of an Apple Store BTO option). However, these extra DVD decoder chipsets are not supported by OS X.
None of these machines are powerful enough to decode DVDs in software -- as a simple check using VLC will show you.
Honestly, if these machines *could* decode DVDs in software, why do you think Apple wasted all that time and money on providing hardware-based DVD playback?
To confirm everything I've been saying, look at Apple's hardware developer notes:
Wallstreet/PDQ -- http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/ Macintosh_CPUs-G3/PowerBookG3Series.pdf (page 27)
Lombard -- http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/ Macintosh_CPUs-G3/PowerBookG3Series_1999/PowerBookG3Series_1999.pdf (pages 26 and 27)
Pismo -- http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/ Macintosh_CPUs-G3/PowerBook/PowerBook.pdf (page 33)
Cheers, Ben
On 23 Jan 2005, at 17:06, Andrew F. wrote:
Actually they are definitely powerful enoug h in software, the problem is
that Apple's OSX DVD Player app lacks a driver for the video cards in these
machines or for the decoder hardware that they offered.
I have both a 400MHz Pismo and a 400MHz Lombard, both with adequate ram and
DVD drives. The Pismo is a little faster, but only a little, however it
plays DVD movies in OSX with terrific quality, no jitters, etc. The Lombard
won't play them at all because Apple's app won't launch. If Apple decided
to write drivers for the Rage 128 video card in the Lombard, I'm certain its
video playback would be very close to that of the Pismo, better than the
Pismo if they would support the hardware video decoder.
Andrew
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