ATI Xclaim TV

[InkBlot]

I bought a used ATI Xclaim TV quite some time ago for next to nothing. It was a small external box for either receiving Cable television or via an attached antenna. While an attached antenna is now useless in the U.S., it could still receive a TV signal via cable. However, I never got it to work properly. Since I paid so little for it, I gave up. Enough time has passed that I'm tempted to give it another go.

I tried to connect it to my Beige G3 MT. I had all sorts of problems because the built-in ATI card was not supported in the Xclaim TV's use. Also, I had an ATI RAGE Orion installed, but the installer didn't recognize it. In some of the installer's documentation it mentioned the Xclaim TV could be used with a Beige G3, but that some issue would have to be overcome. The problem is, the documentation never described how to overcome these issues! Even at the time I had purchased the unit, ATI had already dropped support beyond providing downloadable driver updates. Has anyone out there gotten one of these to work with a Beige G3? Has anyone out there used one to any extent with any Macintosh? I would love to be able to do something with it other than point it out to people as a piece of computer history.

 

[Unknown_K]

So you have the TV tuner card that connects to this video card:

https://kbscomputer.com/store/images/1c0ad1a2962d098d2e2cc04d903fe7e7c475a68b.jpg ?

 

[InkBlot]

No. There is no TV tuner card. The ATI Xclaim TV box actually refers to it as an "External TV Tuner". Plus, I don't remember seeing any remarks about a TV tuner card in all the documents. If a Beige G3 came with the "Wings" personality card, which provided audio and video I/O, one could send the signal from the Xclaim TV through these RCA ports. No other card necessary. However, I think it required an ATI graphics accelerator card be present, as the built-in cards either weren't powerful enough, or didn't have enough VRAM.

 

[ccmac]

Found the following in one of the ati updaters readme which may offer some clues to the issues that have to be overcome when using the xclaim tv with a beige G3:

Apple Video Player and XCLAIM TV-G3

When using the Apple Video Player with XCLAIM TV connected to a G3 system, click on S-VIDEO then click on TV to properly see XCLAIM TV's output.

XCLAIM TV-G3 and Multiple Monitors

If a video card other than XCLAIM VR is installed in your G3 system, the following requirements are necessary for Xclaim Video Player to work correctly:

1. The monitor connected to the G3's onboard video must be selected as the primary monitor. To do this, open the Monitors & Sound control panel and drag the menu bar icon to the monitor connected to the G3's onboard video.

2. The Xclaim Video Player window must appear on the monitor connected to the G3's onboard video.

I think the second requirement (G3 and Multiple Monitors) is the key to the problem. I am not sure about this but my understanding is that the way the xclaim tv pod works is that it only displays tv to the monitor that the tuner pod is actually attached to. In other words, if you have the xclaim compatible Rage 128 VR installed with the pod attached to that, the monitor must be connected to that card for tv viewing. Likewise, if you have the xclaim pod attached to the Beige G3's onboard video connections, then the monitor for viewing tv must be connected to the Beige G3's onboard video connection. Stated another way, if you have any video card other than than the Rage 128 VR and only one monitor, the only way to use the xclaim pod on the Beige G3 is to make sure to have the monitor attached to the onboard video and not the installed video card. Of course, you could still make use of the installed video card by attaching a separate second monitor to it.

Also, there is one hardware issue that some may not be aware of. You can't use regular s-video cables with the pod. Instead you must use a special enhanced 7-pin s-video cable(http://www.svideo.com/7pinto7pin.html) which provides power to the pod. These cables often go missing when used xclaim pods change hands. I don't know if these cables are still available from ATI and the only other source was svideo.com and they have discontinued them.