TV Tuner card in 6500 not working...

[iamdigitalman]

I discovered this card in my pile of cards, and popped it in my 6500. It's an Apple part number 820-0549-A, with copyright 1994. It has 1 coaxial port on it. I plugged it in, and put 8.6 on the 6500.

When I press the TV/Mac button on the remote, it launches Apple Video Player. There is only one button on the left side of the window, for MPEG files on the HD. I press the channel up and down buttons on the remote, and I get a sound, but nothing else happens. the power, mute and volume buttons also work, but I can't get any signal.

I also tried taking the machine down to the bones. I removed the sonnet 500mhz G3, trimmed the RAM to a single 32mb stick, took out the Comm modem, and removed the PCI ethernet and USB cards.

Do I need to have another display hooked up, or maybe something needs to be plugged in to the coax jack?

Yes, I realize the card will become useless in 2 days, but I just want to see if it will work.

 

[porter]

Do I need to have another display hooked up, or maybe something needs to be plugged in to the coax jack?

I would imagine it would expect a TV aerial of some kind.....

 

[Gil]

No offense, but yeah, you can't watch TV if the cable isn't plugged in.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I removed the sonnet 500mhz G3, trimmed the RAM to a single 32mb stick, took out the Comm modem, and removed the PCI ethernet and USB cards.
Do I need to have another display hooked up, or maybe something needs to be plugged in to the coax jack?

There's no mention of software in your post, have you installed Apple Video Player? :?:

Yes, I realize the card will become useless in 2 days, but I just want to see if it will work.

VCRs are VERY inexpensive at Goodwill, the movies cost considerably LESS than even a NetFlix rental . . .

. . . and after spending $1.00 on each of these obsolescent (think 8-Track and its restored cool factor, BTW) "bits" of Analog Media Storage, you can watch them again and again or recycle them at GoodWill for the use of others sticking to the information cowpath. And the "640x480p" digitized analog content (actually its pixel-doubled 320x240p, but lets not get too testical about it!) looks MUCH better/sharper displayed on a computer monitor than a TV, especially when you can utilize the S-Video input.

jt :b&w:

p.s. the tuner card runs swimmingly in my 6360 w/Sonnet Crescendo G3 466 & OS 9.something-or-other.

 

[iamdigitalman]

Yeah, I have AVP installed, but the only thing available in it is to search for MPEG files on the hard drive.

I tried hooking up an antenna, no dice. Unless the antenna portion is not hot pluggable, and I need to reboot? And yes, a VCR is a great idea. I could use it as a VHS digitizing machine, but I also have a beige G3 set up for that.

However, I seem to recall Apple's software is incredibly slow when it processes, and the audio comes more and more out of sync the longer the video is.

 

[Gil]

WOW! It just dawned on me!!

***YOU CANNOT use the TV Tuner card WITHOUT the Video Card***

The video card being the one with the RCA/S-VIDEO.

I remember I tried to use just the tuner, and it did not work. Putting in the Video Card worked.

The video card must contain other hardware required for use. When the system boots up, it polls for the Video Card, but not the TV Tuner card.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

WOW! It just dawned on me!!
***YOU CANNOT use the TV Tuner card WITHOUT the Video Card***

The video card being the one with the RCA/S-VIDEO.

That makes a LOT of sense. The reason the system works at all is that the Mac never even sees the video. It just throws an empty window onscreen and the Tuner hardware pipes the pixels into the hole onscreen without bogging down the Mac at all.

You can demonstrate this by taking a screen shot with the tuner window active, it comes out blank.

jt :b&w:

 

[iamdigitalman]

Ah yes, that explains it. Now I just need to dig out one of those cards. I think I have one somewhere, and if not, they are cheap.

The pictures over here show the big chip on it has Phillips silkscreened on it, and my tuner card has Phillps engraved on the metal box over the coax connector. Makes sense when you think about it.

Will have to hunt that guy up. Looks to be a weekend project, as the room I have seen it in is all in shambles. Weekend cleanup project will commence in 2 hours, as soon as I get out of class.