Black DVD Player Screen, Ibm 770 WinSE Has got us stumped.

[tomstarich]

Windows 98Se was loaded to a blank hard drive using IBM instructions that included the suplemental files. The APM registry change and the Monitor registry change were also made right after installation.

The system is an 770 thinkpad is IBM 95491AU with a 233 Mhz processor and 224 meg of ram.

Then the IBM 770 Video driver, Audio driver and Mediamatics Express were loaded followed by the correct mpeg driver.

Then the update for Mediamatics was loaded, followed by the Mpeg driver once again. (because it gets corrupted every time media matics is installed)

The result was a good solid load of windows SE with no flaws in the device manager however when DVD's are played

We get a black player screen. The dvd drive light flickers and the hard disk reads/writes like a dvd is indeed playing but only a black screen shows up.

Upgrading to Xp or 2k on the machine is not an available solution.
your experience would be greatly appreciated.

[rodgermcliff]

I have the same Thinkpad with Win 98SE as you have and used to play DVDs on it regularly. (I now have a 770X that is my prime laptop.)

Here are some ramblings to look into...

- Load all the latest drivers including the modem drivers. After everything is loaded, reload the MPEG drivers again.

- Shut down as many things at startup as possible. RealPlayer can be a Real problem. You don't have a lot of processor power to spare. Shut down IRDA also.

- I had no problems with (and recommend) doing all the Win98 updates including DirectX and Windows Media Player. (I do skip .NET on most older machines.) Some folks said not to use the latest versions of these two but they never gave me any problems.

- Because of other things that I was doing at the time, I made sure that the latest BIOS was loaded. Again, some folks say that this not necessary but consider that DVD playback was an option added to this laptop (not designed in).

- Can you read files from the DVD drive? Have you swapped the EVA card into another laptop to see if it works?

Good luck.

[tomstarich]

Good Ideas.

Were using the IBM CD1M Mpeg-2 Decoder Card driver for our mpeg driver.

Is that the same one your using.

It was loaded again at the end after all the Mediamatics DVD express software and its updates were loaded.

On a side note************

We had a recovery CD for Windows 95 but it carved the Hard drive into 2 gig partitions and we wanted 98SE so we have loaded 98SE to a blank hard disk that is what were using right now and that is why were having this trouble.

If the (IBM Recovery 95 / 2Gig unacceptable load) is used the hardware works fine and we get DVD playback so we know the Mpeg card and hardware works.

*************** end side note

We are currently have done a google search on the words Mediamatics black screen and the first link recommends downloading Windows Media Player and installing to fix the problem. We are using a dial up to do the download and having a difficult time of it. As soon as persistance makes us successful we will post with more information

Thank you for your assistance and comments. No doubt this thread will help other if we are able to find a solutiion.

Thomas and Peter Starich
Monroe, Wisconsin and Ironwood Michigan

[tomstarich]

The plot thickens as the following were done to try to get more than a black screen when DVD's are played on this Thinkpad 770 W98SE Load.

As you recall Mediamatics DVD Player and its update are being used as the application along with an EVA or Mpeg card for hardware support.

The latest an Greatest version of Windows Media Player and All the Updates for Windows 98 with the exception of the foreign language updates were downloaded and installed.

The symptoms: When a DVD is played.
The DVD reads like its scanning through all of the chapters on the DVD before it starts - In other words the chapter numbers roll by very fast.
the hard disk reads continuously and the DVD drive continues to flicker.

Then the black player screen an thats where it ends.
No error messages or other issues.
No inconsistancies in the device manager
The player is pron to freeze up if you mess with or click on other buttons during "black screen playback"

Were still stumped on this one.
We searched all day today on google and msn searching & looking for another option or another place to go.

We thought we had the problems soved when we read last night to download the latest Windows Media Player and the Windows Updates.

No questions marks in the device controller are noted.

Here is a list of what we have in sound video and game controllers.
If you have a 770 runnng 98Se could you compare it to your Sound Video and Game Controllers to see if were missing anything.

-Crystal Pnp Audio System Codec
-Crystal Pnp Audio System Codec Control Registers
-Crystal Pnp Audio MPU 401 compatible
-Game port Joy Stick
-Ibm CD1M Mpeg-2 Decoder Card
-Ibm wave device for voice modem

Thanks again for any assistance you can offer.
Thomas and Peter Starich
Monroe, Wisconsin and Ironwood Michigan.

[rodgermcliff]

I don't have any really good solution for you right now, but here are some answers to your questions.

- I also avoided the Win95 recovery disk in favor of a fresh Win98 load, so if this was done correctly then it is not the problem.

- That laptop (my 770, no X) is currently running Win2K and has no EVA or DVD drive, so I can't help too much more.

- I don't have the other laptop (770X) handy (with EVA card installed) to tell you the FRU#. There are two versions of the EVA card and as I recall either version will work with your laptop. (The older version EVA doesn't work with the 770X/Z, as I recall.) (Also, referring to actual FRU#'s on the parts is usually helpful when discussing problems.)

- I never had the exact problems that you describe, but similar problems were fixed by either reloading the MPEG drivers (doesn't hurt, no matter how many times you've already done it) and shutting down unnecessary processes.


Are you in fact able to read files on the DVD's (not just CD-ROM/RW/R's) from that DVD-ROM drive? Just an easy check to make sure that the drive is working correctly.

[tomstarich]

Its not looking good. The problem is that this is a very specific machine and a very specific issue. Its like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Could be a file or something in the custom load from the manufacturer IBM that enabled the 770 to play DVD's

IBM is not available to comment since they have quit all support for this machine years ago. Were out of luck... Perhaps one way to get a resolution is to reload with the original WIN 95 recovery CD even though it will carve up the hard disk into 2 gig partitions.

Then if the DVD player works... Which it probably will.

To focus on the task of Upgrading to Win98SE and somehow knocking out the 2 gig partitions and expanding the C: Drive so it is the size of the whole hard disk. In this way we would keep some of the componants of the original load that may enable the Mediamatics DVD Player to work.

What do you think of the above idea and do you know of ways to expand the C drive to be one single drive as large as the hard disk.
We will wait some more time to hear what thoes interested in this thread have to say.
Thomas Starich
Monroe, Wisconsin

[pkiff]

I noticed Greg's (sickofit) comment in your earlier thread about installing 98SE on a 770: he said he had been unable to get Mediamatics DVDExpress to work properly under Windoze 98SE on his 770X. For what it's worth, I too was unable to get it to work properly on either a 770ED or a 770Z using the DEVA. I was using a clean install of 98SE on a blank hard drive from an OEM disk. Everything else with 98SE worked perfectly (to the extent that is possible with 98SE!). I was using Direct X 8.1.

I had very similar symptoms to you: scanning through the chapters, appearing to register them or skip them or something, then just sitting at a blank screen. I tried various upgrade versions of DVD Express, and various install sequences relative to the MPEG drivers and Video drivers, to no avail. I recall being able to play MPEG-2 files from my hard drive and/or sometimes play specific "special" items off of a DVD if I opened them directly off the disk, but was unable to play the full DVD itself.

This was a difficult problem several years ago when the 770 series was still in high circulation, and I read various postings suggesting that it was a question of installing the items in a very specific order. As Greg suggests in his posting, I know there are folks who managed to install this and get it working correctly, so it must be possible, but I have not seen a foolproof solution.

Phil.

[tomstarich]

This thread is dead and we will not return to it. Recommend others not waste as much time trying to get IBM 770's to play DVD's with out simply reloading the original software on a separate partition and then loading a new operating system on a second partition and making the machine dual boot.

In this way you can have the best of both worlds.

You can use the original load to play DVD's and the other OS of your dual boot machine for general purpous daily work

I have done this with some 770Z's and made a Win98 Factory Load for DVD's and then a second Xp load to handle everything else.

Good luck to all who follow and a Big Thank you for all who took interest in our question an posted.

Thomas and Peter Starich
Monroe WI and Ironwood Michigan.

[rodgermcliff]

Excuse me folks, but there were many of us running 770's with Win98SE and playing DVD movies at one time.

I ran a 770 9549-1AU with Win98SE (a fresh reload with 1 partition per IBM instructions), an EVA card, and both FRU# DVD-ROM drives for many years. I last ran it with the latest version of DirectX (9.x?) and Windows Media player (9?) with no problems. I have converted this machine over to Win2K for other reasons and did test it once with the DVD-ROM drive and EVA card. No problems.

I currently run a 770X with Win98SE (a fresh reload with 1 partition), the same EVA card and DVD-ROM drive and just recently used it to play a DVD for high school assembly honoring verterans (last minute request and no DVD players at the school).

Do the following:
- Make sure the BIOS is the latest.
- Make sure ALL the latest IBM drivers are installed (including modem and audio).
- Make sure all the Windows updates are installed (other than languages and Euro currency support, etc.)
*- Do whatever you can to verify that the hardware (DVD-ROM and EVA card) works; swap with other machines if possible
- Turn off all unnecessary processes and services, especially IRDA, and anti-virus/firewall applications; use the Thinkpad configuration application. You do not need to activate TV-Out to play DVDs on the LCD or out through the EVA video port.
- Make sure that your DVD-ROM drive is set to Zone 1 (assuming that you are in North America).
- DO NOT BE AFRAID TO RELOAD THE MPEG DRIVERS SEVERAL TIMES. It is surprising how many updates and programs overwrite these drivers.

[pkiff]

Mmmm...I don't see anything in your list the original poster hasn't already tried or that I haven't already tried on one of my 770s.

I know that there were people who had their 770s running fine, but there were also lots who had problems, in particular with DVDExpress.

Just to be clear, I can play DVDs on both my 770ED and my 770Z using another software DVD player. The problem is getting them to use the DEVA and therefore, in Windoze 98SE, also using DVD Express. I can also get video out onto a TV using the DEVA with these machines, but I don't think I am getting hardware acceleration out of the DEVA unless I use DVD Express under Windoze 98SE. Windoze 2000 apparently has the proper drivers built in so you can use any number of software players and still get the hardware acceleration from the DEVA on that OS.

I wonder if it depends on what version of DVD Express you use? Which version are you using? Where does that version come from?

Mine is on a Mediamatics CD, not an IBM Recovery CD. And after a fresh install it doesn't play properly. I've also tried to upgrade it to various versions that I found updates for on the IBM site (starting with the upgrade that they recommend for the 770 naturally). This same CD will install DVD Express on my 600X no problem and everything runs properly on that machine under Windoze 98SE, using almost the exact same configuration.

Phil.

[tomstarich]

If you have it working please send me a few images of your device manager especially the Sound Video and Game Controlers section.

Can you take some snagit snap shots with SnagiT and send them to me.

We need specifics of what the IDE controllers are on your load
We need to know what Mpeg driver your using for your EVA card.
We don't know what IRDA is to turn it off. (Do you mean the infared ports)

You can send them to my email at tomstarich@hotmail.com

If your one of the "Gods" that got this to work we sure want to hear more from you.

Thomas and Peter Starich
Monroe, WI and Ironwood Mich.

[sickofit]

Yes he means the infared ports....Use the Configuration utility to disable them....I also disabled most other ports in there,as I never used them(Except USB)

Greg St.L

P.S Do you ABSOLUTELY need 98..??...Or is it you just don't have a copy of W2K or XP..???...if so PM me...

[tomstarich]

We loaded the original 95 recovery CD for the 770 and at the point just after the cd drivers were installed just before you agree to the license agreement for windows 95, we stuck in a Recovery CD for a 770X

(because the 770X CD had a newer load of Windows 98. The recovery completed successfully and the DVD player worked.

We had to get one file from c:\windows\system folder on another windows 98 machine called (cwcprops.cpl) and put it on the newly loaded machine in the windows system folder to get rid of a file missing or dll error at start up.

To our suprise the DVD player worked even without the mpeg card?
It played most DVD's with the exception of the DVD's that had 5.1 digital surround sound but seems to play DVD's with dolby surround sound just fine.

We used partition magic to knock out the 2 gig partition that was left by the recovery cd and expand the hard drive and make it a full 5 gig load.

The 770 is up and running and playing DVD's with the Windows 98 load we wanted. Others have proposed solutions where Windows 2000 should be loaded.

We have successfully run Xp on the IBM770 but Xp like Windows 2000 seems to hog so much in resources that playing DVD's was challenging for us.

Please read the whole post because there is much valuable information and suggestions above

Thank you everyone for your time and effort and your assistance

Also be sure to format the C: drive in fat 16 or the old recovery cd's wont work.

Thomas and Peter Starich
Monroe,WI and Ironwood Michigan.

[Katch]

I remembered that when I first got hold of my laptop that the Mediamatics player was pretty good. So I thought I'd try and dig it out and try it again. (having had appaling playback using WinDVD)

I got hold of an early V5 of Express DVD then upgraded it using the patch from IBMs website. After installing trying to play DVDs I also recieved the black screen you are experiencing.

I uninstalled it and put a copy of Power DVD V4 on and that works better than any of the other players I've tried.

[TPCollector]

Hi All,

In an effort to get the MPEG-2 (EVA) hardware accellerator of my TP 770 to work I discovered that IBM had desiged the drivers only for its OEM version of DVD Express adn SoftDVD (W95/98 and W2K for DVD Express only). However, the orginal DVD players and MPEG drivers are not enough as one should also add a software region lock that comes on a separate diskette with the EVA card. This is explanied in detail in
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... WIK-3PLTZJ

I was not able to find this diskette and would appreciate if anyone who has the diskette would agree to share the files with me.

Regards,

[pkiff]

I think these instructions are for using/installing the EVA when you want to use SoftDVD as your DVD player. In my installations of DVDExpress on a 770ED and 770Z under Windoze 98SE, I did not need an additional program or disk to set the region. Then again, I wasn't able to get DVDExpress to properly use my EVA either...

I think SoftDVD is really only recommended if you are using Windoze 95 for some reason.

Phil.