Run Mac OS 9 on a PM 6100?

[Dennis Nedry]

You could hook a regular DVD player up to an S-video input of an AV card in the 6100.

[ClassicHasClass]

I agree that's the most practical way. That's how I "played DVDs" on my IIci (using a Video Spigot, which should work with the 6100 too if you don't have an AV card). The only downside to that you should try to find a DVD player that is ... er ... flexible with Macrovision or it will screw around with the automatic gain control on the card and give you a distorted image. I have a region free I "imported" from Taiwan for this purpose that doesn't even implement the Macrovision circuit, let alone RCE, and this works well. It plays both NTSC and PAL as a bonus.

It's a shame you really have to go grey-area to get this totally legal application to work. This is another reason I stick with upscaled DVDs instead of Blu-Ray -- Blu-Ray is just another means to ensure you don't actually own what you buy, and upscaled DVD is "good enough" with an HDMI connection and a good upscaler, like a Sony player.

[mcdermd]

I disagree. Upscaling may look the same (or "good enough") to your eyes but it looks pretty blurred to mine, even when compared to HD streaming content.

[ClassicHasClass]

Like everything, it's a matter of taste, of course. But there are crappy upscalers and there are good upscalers, and a good upscaler makes good output. (I didn't say indistinguishable. )

But that's orthogonal to the OP.

[Bunsen]

Any idea if I could do anything with the NuBus Slot?

Er ... Put a Nubus card in it? Not really worth it, IMO, because a/ you can only use 7" cards, without severe case surgery, and b/ you can't mount a G3

the only problem would be a decoder card? Sounds like a hack/mod begging to be made!

Uh, no. You still have to find some way of getting data off the disk, fast enough, to the decoder card, and then back to the video controller in some form recognised by both the hardware *and* the OS, and find some way of driving it from the OS as well. In short, not impossible, per se, but also not gonna happen, unless you're a very bored qualified EE with classic Mac OS coding experience.

Use a faster machine to transcode files to VCD format if you really want movies on your 6100.

[Nathan]

Totally necro'ing this for amusement..

There's a dvd decoder card that goes in the PCMCIA slot for the powerbook g3 isn't there (like this --> http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DVDMPG2&Category_Code=_pbg398&Product_Count=1)? Not that adding a pcmcia card would be trivial or anything, but that seems like one plausible direction to take. Assuming you fit the qualifications below, some kind of wacky nubus pcmcia controller might allow you to use that. I expect you'd seem some kind of special software to make that work... Or, maybe this -> http://micha.freeshell.org/pcmcia_drive/index.php could be repurposed for that...

I hate theoretical possibilities... They are always incredibly unlikely to be doable, work out, especially not for the average person.