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Simon · 10:48 AM

A friend of mine has an iBook 500MHz with a Combo drive and 10.2.3. Recently he was watching a DVD and suddenly DVD Player crashed. He started it up again and ever since that he gets just the sound of the DVD but instead of seeing the movie in the player window it's just pitch black.

He told me that he trashed the prefs and that didn't change anything. He claims to then have installed a fresh version of Jaguar on another disk partition and trying to boot and play the DVD from that partition. Still the same. He also changed DVDs, but it didn't make any difference. The player still just sounds, but doesn't display a picture. A PRAM reset didn't change anything either.

After doing all this it at first seemed like a hardware issue to me, but why would he still get the sound track if the combo drive was broken?

Is there some chip on the motherboard that does the DVD video decoding that could have broke (IIRC since the G3 intro, this is done by the CPU)? Doesn't sound very likely, but since he has tried all kinds of tricks to fix software issues I started to think about hardware problems.

Could it be that VRAM has gone bad? Or the additional SO-DIMM in his user-accessible slot?

Does anybody have an idea what is going on here? Does this problem sound familiar to anyone here? My friend is a "poor" student so he doesn't look forward to bringing in his Mac to the dealer and paying 150$/h just for that guy to tell him that it was some software problem that he could have solved by himself in 15 minutes.

Any hints? Guesses? Tips? I'd be very grateful for any ideas.

Jeffrey P. Kempster · Jan 13, 2003, 10:48 AM

Some one I was talking to this weekend also had some problems on an iBook 500 with the DVD player. I think there are two pref files. One in your directory and one in the main Library. He also set his screen to 800x600 and that helped a lot.

Good Luck

superblue · Jan 13, 2003, 08:00 PM

Just a thought, but sometimes I get the sound but black image when headphones are plugged in. The iBook thinks it's connected to a TV.

You said it crashed mid-way, so I don't see how this could be the case, but you never know...

iExcel · Jan 14, 2003, 01:50 AM

Sometimes just reinstalling the system files won't help...before your friend take that to the repair shop, tell him to do a clean installation...that mean erasing the whole hard drive and reinstall everything back on again from system files and all apllications ....but before he does that, make sure he back up all the data he needs since by doing clean installation...he would be erasing everything on his hard drive. This has always worked for me when i can't not find a solution to the problem.

Simon · Jan 14, 2003, 06:29 AM

Originally posted by Jeffrey P. Kempster:
Some one I was talking to this weekend also had some problems on an iBook 500 with the DVD player. I think there are two pref files. One in your directory and one in the main Library. He also set his screen to 800x600 and that helped a lot.

Good Luck

Thanks for the tip. But since he re-installed the OS and re-booted from there, I'd guess he wasn't running on the old prefs.

Simon · Jan 14, 2003, 06:32 AM

Originally posted by superblue:
Just a thought, but sometimes I get the sound but black image when headphones are plugged in. The iBook thinks it's connected to a TV.

Well thanks. I hadn't thought of that. I'll ask him just to go sure.

ccsccs7 · Jan 14, 2003, 06:33 AM

Has your friend tried playing the a DVD out to the TV? Different DVD window player sizes? Tried plugging in and unplugging headphones? Checked for dust or other debris in the AV port?

Simon · Jan 14, 2003, 06:36 AM

Originally posted by iExcel:
Sometimes just reinstalling the system files won't help...before your friend take that to the repair shop, tell him to do a clean installation...that mean erasing the whole hard drive and reinstall everything back on again from system files and all apllications

Actually, I told him we should do that. But he doesn't have an external FW disk to back up to and he has a full 20 gig HD, i.e. no buring to CD either. I told him to go to hook it up to his institute's network and copy the stuff to the server. I'm not sure he's done it already and he's pretty lazy, but I know he should do it. Thanks for the reminder.

Simon · Jan 14, 2003, 06:39 AM

Originally posted by ccsccs7:
Has your friend tried playing the a DVD out to the TV? Different DVD window player sizes? Tried plugging in and unplugging headphones? Checked for dust or other debris in the AV port?

I'll ask him about that too. Thanks.

Simon · Jan 14, 2003, 09:12 AM

OK, he solved the problem, but he doesn't know why. He installed the recent QuickTime update and the iSync update and ever since it's been working again.

Honestly I don't believe it has anything to do with that software, probably just a coincidence. I think it must have been something like some debris in the A/V port. BTW, he told me the console/terminal (he wasn't able to understand the difference) gave an error code: ASC=0x24, ASC Q=0x00. Is this domething else or does it really have to do with the problem?

BTW, thanks for all your help guys.