Power Mac 6500 Composite Video In Unavailable - TV/FM Card Conflict

[midoFX]

Hello All,

Hoping someone can help here with my Power Mac 6500's video input issue. It is equipped with a composite / s-video in card (820-0745-A). Upon launching Apple Video Player, it does not show any picture or video input controls. However, it will pass audio via both red and white RCA jacks. I tried many combinations of software and drivers on both Mac OS 8.6 and 9.1. I was led down the Apple Video Player rabbit hole via the FM/TV tuner card I was attempting to install. Upon launch Apple FM radio it states conflict between video input (or no audio). I cannot change the video input because my computer doesn't recognize the yellow composite in and enable input controls via Apple Video Player. Zapping PRAM didn't change anything. Thanks in advance if anyone has any leads to get both cards working properly together with the rest of my system.

Specs:

• Power Mac 6500
• 128MB Ram
• Sonnet G3 500hz processor upgrade
• Rage 128 Nexus 128
• IOGear USB/Firewire combo card
• Apple ethernet CS II

Best,
Mido

 

[pizzigri]

Wasnt there a specific software on the 6500? Do you have the original install CD? i can take a look on my old HD if there’s some specific app or control panel.
In case, I have a couple a/v boards dirt cheap if you need one and yours is broken. They’re not worth much.

 

[Burgertrench]

Hello All,

Hoping someone can help here with my Power Mac 6500's video input issue. It is equipped with a composite / s-video in card (820-0745-A). Upon launching Apple Video Player, it does not show any picture or video input controls. However, it will pass audio via both red and white RCA jacks. I tried many combinations of software and drivers on both Mac OS 8.6 and 9.1. I was led down the Apple Video Player rabbit hole via the FM/TV tuner card I was attempting to install. Upon launch Apple FM radio it states conflict between video input (or no audio). I cannot change the video input because my computer doesn't recognize the yellow composite in and enable input controls via Apple Video Player. Zapping PRAM didn't change anything. Thanks in advance if anyone has any leads to get both cards working properly together with the rest of my system.

Specs:

• Power Mac 6500
• 128MB Ram
• Sonnet G3 500hz processor upgrade
• Rage 128 Nexus 128
• IOGear USB/Firewire combo card
• Apple ethernet CS II

Best,
Mido

I'm away from home so can't test, but from memory there were certain monitor resolutions and refresh rates the video input could not be displayed under. Have you tried different settings and see if that works?

 

[midoFX]

Hello,

Long story short... I was able to successfully get the TV/FM tuner card to work by plugging in a second monitor into the original monitor video out port. For some reason, by plugging one of my monitors into the OG monitor port, it enables all composite video to display and subsequently all video controls to appear in Apple Video Player. The Apple FM Radio app works as it should and FM comes in loud and clear. I still very much want to utilize the Nexus 128 card so it appears for now I will have a dual monitor setup unless there is some other way "trick" the OG monitor port that something is plugged into it. The relationship between the TV/FM tuner card, original monitor port and Apple AV card and software is odd to say the least.

Wasnt there a specific software on the 6500? Do you have the original install CD? i can take a look on my old HD if there’s some specific app or control panel.
In case, I have a couple a/v boards dirt cheap if you need one and yours is broken. They’re not worth much.

Thanks Pizzigri. I attempted the original software restore CD with no luck. I actually purchased another video card as your message came in (820-0737-01). There was no difference / improvement comparatively to the 820-0745-A card. Still no video recognition by the 6500.

I'm away from home so can't test, but from memory there were certain monitor resolutions and refresh rates the video input could not be displayed under. Have you tried different settings and see if that works?

Thanks Burgertrench. After testing several resolutions / settings via the Monitors & Sound control panel with no success, your message inspired me to visit the the original monitor connection. As mentioned above, as soon as made the connection and fired up the Apple Video Player, I saw my video feed.

Additional software / hardware details:

• Mac OS 8.6
• Apple Video Player 1.7.2
• Apple FM Radio v1.4
• Apple AV Card - 820-737-01

I'll report back when I have time to test on OS 9.1. Thanks all for your help and suggestions!

 

[François]

The relationship between the TV/FM tuner card, original monitor port and Apple AV card and software is odd to say the least.

Output of the TV tuner goes through the AV card and the output of the AV card is then layered on top of the video from the internal graphics chip, in the analog space. It’s a trickery to not use any computational resources! That’s why it doesn’t work on a monitor plugged into an additional PCI graphics card.

 

[pizzigri]

Output of the TV tuner goes through the AV card and the output of the AV card is then layered on top of the video from the internal graphics chip, in the analog space. It’s a trickery to not use any computational resources! That’s why it doesn’t work on a monitor plugged into an additional PCI graphics card.

Oohhhh I totally missed that the 6500 had a pci additional video card!!!!

 

[François]

I didn’t catch it either at first! We’re so used nowadays to have everything go through the processor. But early consumer grade PowerPCs weren’t that powerful and surely couldn’t do realtime video, especially with the limitations of Mac OS 9 multitasking. So to be able to use your computer while watching TV in a background window, it was done with analog circuitry, like the picture-in-picture functionality of fancy CRT TVs. And that explains why it only works with the internal graphics card. (The AV card allows you to record video in real time to the hard drive, it could be interesting to know how processor intensive it is)

 

[joevt]

The video input of the Power Mac 8500 or 8600 etc (planb) can only be DMA'ed directly to RAM or built-in VRAM (both 50 MHz) which means it would only appear on displays connected to built-in RGB output (control) or composite/s-video output (sixty6). I reverse engineered the planb QuickTime video digitizer component to create a Mac OS X compatible version and to allow DMA over PCI (33 MHz) to an ATI Radeon card but that causes some color fringing and may cause the system to hang.

The Power Mac 6500's video input seems to come from using the built-in ATI graphics which can't send the video directly to another graphics card.
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/apple_hardware_devnotes/PowerMac 5500-6500.pdf