Thinkpads Forum

I want to use the dvd as a dvd player at work and on the road as I travel on a motorcycle and cant haul much more. I am also using it for email and some office apps. I am running on UBUNTU and have had no problems with that OS. The 600 only sees the dvd as a cd rom and will not run it I know the unit works as I have tested a few cd rom's but cant get the dvd to play any dvd's. Any help ?
I am using the 600 X on my dsl with an adaptor and have no problems. I would like to get the dial up working but dont know how with this OS. Any help greatly appreciated in advance...Thank You!

Please pop the drive out of the machine and provide the FRU# on it. What are you using for DVD player software?

You could also make sure to try using a store-bought, single layer DVD from the 1990s. I don't know about stories with people running Ubuntu, but there are stories of folks using Windows XP where the DVD drive was not recognized as a DVD drive until a readable DVD was inserted, and the DVD drive was not capable of reading various flavours of DVD-RW/R+ or dual-layer DVDs.

Phil.

The following info on the drive is a Toshiba
DVD ROM Drive SD-c2302 Dec 1999 CJ Ver 000 ROM Ver 1617
FRU P/N 05k9196 ASM P/N 05K9195
6X DVD
Video software that I am trying to get to run is a linux type called Totem.

larryp wrote:The 600 only sees the dvd as a cd rom and will not run it I know the unit works as I have tested a few cd rom's but cant get the dvd to play any dvd's.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying here, but the DVD drive in my old 600E will only play disks of type "DVD-ROM", not of the sort you usually burn yourself like "DVD-R" or "DVD+R".

If that's what you're trying to play, there are Windows utilities which can change the type (the "booktype") of a DVD+R disk (not DVD-R) before you write data to it so that the PC's DVD player will recognize it.

Here's a link to LiteOn's utility: http://us.liteonit.com/us/index.php?opt ... Itemid=152

The Nero DVD burning software supposedly has the ability to set booktype on DVD+R disks, but the menu and option scheme is so messy I wasn't able to find it.

Maybe there's something similar for Linux.

It's too late for any existing DVDs you've already burned, but you can try this for any you make in the future.

I have tried a few older commercial dvd's and some newer ones and have not gotten them to play. I am not interested right now in recording to dvd. I guess I will have to forego using the dvd unit as a player for now. Guess that the drivers needed for the dvd to be recognised as a dvd are not going to be found for such an old bios. That is a shame I guess that I will see what else I can do I might be able to get a old dvd add on to work or just sell the unit and get an more modern version.
Thank you for your reply I find it useful to my situation.

Just last night, I was playing a DVD movie on my 600X using GeeXBox. Also tried Xine, which played fine as well. I have not used Totem in quite some time, but there doesn't appear to be a gstreamer plugin to support dvd reading in your set-up.

Your problem may be software, not hardware.

Thanks very much Neil
I will check those out. I am new to ubuntu and have had windows 4 ever I thought that win 98 being unsupported I would be better off to try some thing else. I am almost tempted to format and install xp but there is a compatability issue with sound card software and no windows above 98 will run it I have been told.

You've been misinformed about the sound card issues. The 600X will work with any Windows up thru XP. See driver matrix. As well as most Linux distros. Light Linux distros work better than full ones like Ubuntu. I like Puppy, but there are plenty of choices for you to find something that works and feels right to you.

It was the 600 and 600e models that have sound card issues with Linux. All Windows up to XP work fine with the older 600 series machines also. I have nlite XP on my 600e and sound works fine.

Well that sounds fine! I will have to think about going back and putting XP on as all I have for 98 is the upgrade version. Thanks for the info Neil.