Possible to video conference on PB G3?

Tronman · #1 September 19th, 2007, 10:51 PM

Hi all

I've got a Powerbook G3, the first model with USB and firewire, the Pismo model. On my Quicksilver I can plug in my Panasonic PV-GS500 firewire video camera and it just works fine in iChat AV. However on this machine it says 'this computer does not support video conferencing'. If I install 10.3 instead, will it work then? I know it'd be slow, but it seems like it should work-I did video conference with my old blue and white G3 at 450, also a 100MHz system bus machine, and it had 512MB, the same RAM as this one. Performance was surprisingly decent on that box. I had 10.4 then as well.

Is there a utility I can use to fool iChat into using this Mac to video conference? This isn't my main machine, but I'll be soon going to Europe on vacation, and I bought it an Airport card as well, so it'd be nice to be able to plug the camcorder into it when videoconferencing with the folks at home, so they could see what was up.

I searched the forums for iChat, iChat video, and iChat video conference and surprisingly, nothing came up at all. But I did try before asking. Thanks in advance!

symphonix · #2 September 20th, 2007, 02:07 AM

I'm pretty sure that when Apple first released the iSight and iChat AV, they set it so that it wouldn't run on G3s slower than 600mhz. This was a decision they took to ensure people wouldn't be running it on machines that aren't going to give good results, but it annoyed a few people (back then my iBook was a G3 500 which *should* have been fine).

You could try a different application for your video conferencing, such as Skype. Each app will have different requirements that it will check for in order to work. With any luck, you should be able to get something to work well with your Pismo (although, as you already understand, the speed/clarity will be pretty lousy).

Tronman · #3 September 20th, 2007, 11:47 PM

Well maybe I'll upgrade it to the G4, when one comes along at a reasonable price. I'm pretty happy with it overall, and it cost me a total of $56 with the new keyboard I had to buy :-) That was what was wrong with it, why it wouldn't boot. I could sell my Lombard and use that money for most of the G4 upgrade. :-) IIRC the G4 for the Pismo is at 550MHz, which would work real well for that machine.