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Leopard wont recognize DVD player running on a 400Mhz G4

M

mac400

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 14, 2008
2
0
I have a 400Mhz G4 with 1GB of ram running Leopard. Works great except it does not play DVD's. When a DVD is inserted the following Error box is displayed:

"A valid video device could not be found for playback. [-70017]"

In addition, when trying to change screen savers, "Error: Can't load bundle" appears.

Does anyone know of a work around for the DVD? Windows Media Player does not work and VLC will play only audio.
 
Congrats on getting it to run Leopard, but could this be happening because it isn't supposed to do so?

Just thinking out loud here, so it may be nothing but crap, but: maybe Leopard doesn't have a proper driver (you're right; it's ludicrous...) for a DVD drive from that long ago (because it's not supposed to run on that machine)?
 
Are you suggesting that it is simply a driver? This would indicate a newer combo drive would work? Is it not an issue with the video card?
 
I have the same Problem.

I have the same problem, Leopard is saying the same thing when I try to open DVD player, But I have a superdrive in my machine. I can't figure it out everything else works perfectly. Any ideas about what I could do? Oh and mine is 533mhz G4 processor, running on a dual 1ghz Quicksilver motherboard.
 
Is it possible that it's not powerful enough to play the DVD?

I remember when DVD drives first came out, my Dell laptop required a special DVD decoder PCMCIA card to play DVD's because the 300mhz CPU wasn't fast enough and there wasn't MP2 decoding built into the video card.

Is something like that happening to you, too?
 
I am having the exact same issues. Both with the DVD player not working (getting the error message A valid video device could not be found for playback [-70017]) and my screen savers, with the exception of the Computer Name screen saver and the Flurry screen saver gives me the following error message:

Screen saver did not load properly. Please select another screen saver.
Error: Can not load bundle.

My screen savers worked perfectly in OS X 10.4.11 as well as the DVD player application. This is the Hardware overview:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics)
Model Identifier: PowerMac3,1
Processor Name: PowerPC 60? (2.1)
Processor Speed: 1.8 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 2
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.8f1
ATY,Rage128Pro:

Chipset Model: ATY,Rage128Pro
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-A
VRAM (Total): 16 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x5046
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-63001-110
Displays:
VGA Display:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Software
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

Seems Leopard has a ton of problems. Can anyone assist with these issues? Does anyone know what's going on or are we just going to have to wait for 10.6?
 
Have you tried VLC?

FYI iPhone has more processing power than the really old G4.
 
Tried VLC and doesn't work that well. Also doesn't affect the screen savers. Going to try the link on the prior post and see what happens. Wish me luck.. will post after changing permissions of the files (cross your fingers it doesn't hose my system)
 
sphoenix77 said:
Seems Leopard has a ton of problems. Can anyone assist with these issues? Does anyone know what's going on or are we just going to have to wait for 10.6?
Click to expand...

The "ton of problems" in this case are due to installing it on unsupported hardware. 10.6 won't help as that requires an Intel system.
 
Nermal said:
The "ton of problems" in this case are due to installing it on unsupported hardware. 10.6 won't help as that requires an Intel system.
Click to expand...

But these issues I am having are being reported on Intel based Macs and supported systems. I should have clarified that the "tons of issues with Leopard" are not my own, but those mentioned by others. The only issues I am having are with the DVD player not working and my custom screen savers as mentioned above.
 
Do you know someone who has an external DVD drive? Perhaps try that and see if that will work, if it is indeed some sort of driver issue...

Good luck to you, but as others have pointed out, you can't be too critical, seeing as you are running Leopard on a machine that it was never designed to run on. And don't expect anything great for DVD playback performance, seeing as the machine you have is pretty darned ancient (comparatively)...

Of course, you could just use a real DVD player. Just throwing that out there :p
 
DVD Playback issue

Installing the drivers as shown at:

http://nanchatte.wordpress.com/2008...ro-128-video-drivers-from-tiger-into-leopard/

will give you a reasonably responsive system on a stock Cube or old G4 with ATI card, but you WON'T be able to play DVD.
Don't bother trying with an external drive, the problem is the output device (graphics board) not the input device (DVD drive)

IMBW but I believe the new Leopard DVD player users Core Graphics rather than Quartz Extreme 2D to render the output, which the ATI Rage series does not, of course, support.
 
@ EG: If you install Leopard through Target Disk Mode by using a computer than meets the hardware requirements as the host and using the unsupported Mac as the target, the installer ignores failure to meet the system requirements.

Don't have anything to offer on the main thrust of the thread, sorry...
 
Installing 10.5 Leopard on an old Mac without a PPC Mac that meets the minimum spec

Here's how I got my shop copy of Leopard installed on an iMac G4 700MHz without creating a new disk image, using an external drive or otherwise.

Just run this little 2 minute hack shown below and install your bought copy of Leopard straight out of it's cute black box!

http://nanchatte.wordpress.com/2008...an-imac-700mhz-or-even-an-unmodified-g4-cube/
 
@GraXXoR: That is fine as long as you are prepared to deal with many issues like missing drivers that are not there because no supported Mac has the old hardware. What has been hinted to before, if you install on an unsupported system, especially with a trick involved, expect problems... they stopped you from doing it for a reason.

@sphoenix77: Many of my Tiger screen savers stopped working in Leopard. And I don't like VLC for DVDs either. I like MPlayer OSX Extended mplayerosx.sttz.ch I use it when I want to play a DVD but don't want to listen to the disk sinning (usually on trips)
 
@ Ronin 11 - Why all the negativity???

RoninXI said:
@GraXXoR: That is fine as long as you are prepared to deal with many issues like missing drivers that are not there because no supported Mac has the old hardware. What has been hinted to before, if you install on an unsupported system, especially with a trick involved, expect problems... they stopped you from doing it for a reason.
Click to expand...

Sorry to fill your little negative bubble with positivity, but there are very few problems. Only one, actually in the case of the iMac G4 700 Flat screen: (Wake from Sleep causes graphics to go snowy - still no 100% sure fix) and one in the case of the stock Cube G4 (Need to grab six ATi Rage drivers -or kexts as I've seen them called- from a Tiger install - fixes all probs except 3D / DVD playback : See this link for instructions)

>> they stopped you from doing it for a reason.

Oh, yeah, like Apple is doing it for our benefit? You may be smoking Jobs' weed, but I know that Apple are a bunch of brilliant, money grabbing wannabe monopolists.

They did it for the money, plain and simple, not out of some hippy benevolence.

For the record, I have in my possession:
a 2007 24" C2D iMac, a 2007 C2D Mac Mini, a 2005 1.5GHz Mac Mini, a 2005 12" PowerBook, 2 x 700MHz iMac G4 lampshades and my pride and joy and main workhorse (in the office) an old Cube G4 with a 1.5GHz CPU Upgrade.

The underspecced G4s run Leopard almost as stably as (albeit a little slower than) my fully supported G4 Mac Mini and PowerBook, so long as you don't sleep the iMac G4s or require the cube to play a DVD or render 3D (Which I use my beastly 24" to do!).

Where I come from, one issue per machine is rarely called many.

- Sorry about the vitriol, but I can't stand naysayers and it's been a hell of a month!

namaste (as the Fake Steve would have said).
 
>>You may be smoking Jobs' weed, but I know that Apple are a bunch of brilliant, money grabbing wannabe monopolists.

The "stick it to the man" and insults are just stupid. There is no reason to berate anyone just because you disagree. Why did you take this as a personal attack any way? You admitted to issues yourself.

I have seen problems like video not working right or lagging, OSX itself freezing, older hardware not running though the DVD player is a new one and in general just plain slow. It is not negative it is realistic, I think Apple was being generous saying Leopard could run on so little ram. The fact it can't be put to sleep or run DVDs or get quality video or render 3D in current programs is exactly the reason why you would stop support. You may be willing to deal with the issues but Apple does not want to have to tell a customer, "well you installed Leopard so you can't play DVDs or sleep your Mac now." That is like telling someone they upgraded so we will turn things off now.

To put is simply "few problems" are not "no problems" and losing functionality for devices in is not something any company should allow during an upgrade.
 
RoninXI said:
>>You may be smoking Jobs' weed, but I know that Apple are a bunch of brilliant, money grabbing wannabe monopolists.

The "stick it to the man" and insults are just stupid. There is no reason to berate anyone just because you disagree. Why did you take this as a personal attack any way? You admitted to issues yourself.

I have seen problems like video not working right or lagging, OSX itself freezing, older hardware not running though the DVD player is a new one and in general just plain slow. It is not negative it is realistic, I think Apple was being generous saying Leopard could run on so little ram. The fact it can't be put to sleep or run DVDs or get quality video or render 3D in current programs is exactly the reason why you would stop support. You may be willing to deal with the issues but Apple does not want to have to tell a customer, "well you installed Leopard so you can't play DVDs or sleep your Mac now." That is like telling someone they upgraded so we will turn things off now.

To put is simply "few problems" are not "no problems" and losing functionality for devices in is not something any company should allow during an upgrade.
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry for the vitriol... I've just had it up to here with people naysaying all the time. Let others play and make merry.

After all, this is a forum all about rumours and trying to get things working. Just saying it's broke or don't bother isn't really in the spirit of things, just go and see how popular Low End Mac is.

The fact is, that due to Apple engineers' sweat and blood, Leopard works on older systems than Apple would like to admit. As such, they've imposed a somewhat arbitrary barrier on the system specs imposing a weakest link rule.

An 800MHz G4 (especially with a gig and a half or more of RAM, a nice big drive and an ATI 9600 with 128MB will be no worse off than when running Tiger, escpecially considering the improvements to Finder and Networking. Neither of the problems mentioned above will occur and the system will run rock solidly despite being below spec and would likely be faster than a 1GHz iMac with 512MB RAM, stock HDD and hard wired NVidia 5200 / 64MB RAM.

Leopard will install on the latter, not on the former.
 
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