DVD Player external drive patch

[Project Alice]

Hey everyone
I got an external FW DVD drive. I thought it would be useful to have with PPC Macs with broken drives or CD only. Also the drive in my iMac G5 doesn't work reliably at all and I like to use it for CDs.
Anyway I know there is a patch for DVD player that allowed use of external drives but I can't find it. I found the Mac OS 9 one on the garden, but not the one for OS X. The best thing I found was here, and it lead to a dead link that is also not archived on the web archive.

I don't really watch DVDs on the computer anymore, but I also don't want to be locked out of doing it if I wanted to. So, does anyone have the patch for OS X?

 

[Hughmac]

I don't have a patch as such, but I have instructions on how to patch the relevant framework yourself:-

Modify the DVDPlayback framework so DVD Player will recognize the external player.


Replace four instances of the word 'Internal' with 'External' in the DVDPlayback file, using an editor like 0xED.
This option is to modify the DVDPlayback framework that DVD Player uses, so that it will recognize your external drive as a valid DVD playback device. Keep in mind that if you do this the system may no longer recognize the internal drive, so I only recommend it for systems where the internal drive no longer works and your only option is to use the external player.
1. Download a hex editor that has text-searching capabilities (0xED is a useful one).

2. Go to the folder /System/Library/Frameworks/ and back up the file "DVDPlayback.framework." If you have a regular Time Machine backup of the system that should suffice, or you can copy the file to your desktop.

3. Open 0xED or your preferred hex editor and use it to open the following file:
/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback

4. Using the editor's searching options, search for the text "Internal" and replace all occurrences of it (there should be four) with the text "External" and save the file. If you cannot edit the text with your program, then locate the hex code for the word "Internal" (which is "496E7465726E616C") and replace it with the hex code for the word "External" (which is "45787465726E616C").

5. Close the file once saved, you will need to “save as” then drag it back into the folder and authenticate and replace, and then run a permissions fix on the boot drive using Disk Utility. Then restart the system and you should now be able to play DVDs off the external drive using DVD Player.


I used this method in Snow Leopard on my Dell Mini 10, which doesn't have an internal DVD drive.
I also have the hacked framework saved and available, but being from SL it won't be a lot of use to you.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Project Alice]

I don't have a patch as such, but I have instructions on how to patch the relevant framework yourself:-

Modify the DVDPlayback framework so DVD Player will recognize the external player.


Replace four instances of the word 'Internal' with 'External' in the DVDPlayback file, using an editor like 0xED.
This option is to modify the DVDPlayback framework that DVD Player uses, so that it will recognize your external drive as a valid DVD playback device. Keep in mind that if you do this the system may no longer recognize the internal drive, so I only recommend it for systems where the internal drive no longer works and your only option is to use the external player.
1. Download a hex editor that has text-searching capabilities (0xED is a useful one).

2. Go to the folder /System/Library/Frameworks/ and back up the file "DVDPlayback.framework." If you have a regular Time Machine backup of the system that should suffice, or you can copy the file to your desktop.

3. Open 0xED or your preferred hex editor and use it to open the following file:
/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback

4. Using the editor's searching options, search for the text "Internal" and replace all occurrences of it (there should be four) with the text "External" and save the file. If you cannot edit the text with your program, then locate the hex code for the word "Internal" (which is "496E7465726E616C") and replace it with the hex code for the word "External" (which is "45787465726E616C").

5. Close the file once saved, you will need to “save as” then drag it back into the folder and authenticate and replace, and then run a permissions fix on the boot drive using Disk Utility. Then restart the system and you should now be able to play DVDs off the external drive using DVD Player.


I used this method in Snow Leopard on my Dell Mini 10, which doesn't have an internal DVD drive.
I also have the hacked framework saved and available, but being from SL it won't be a lot of use to you.

Cheers

Hugh

That will work even better. Thanks!
The iMac doesn’t recognize the original drive anymore after plugging in the external one anyways so no issue there lol