PowerMac G4 Digital Audio - Digital Audio and Video Outputs

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Sep 28, 2005
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Location
Blacksburg, VA - home of System X, making your pow
Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G4 DA 466 MHz
As I mentioned in the switcher's hangout, I just picked up a G4 powermac at a surplus auction for $100. I wasn't expecting much from such old, cheap equipment, but I just installed OS X and i am IMPRESSED! (I don't even have a hard drive yet. I just couldn't wait so I wiped my ipod, connected it via firewire and installed os x on that.) Well, new toys are all fine and well, but I do have a perfectly good PC laptop to do my work on, so my room mate and I were thinking, what do we do with this powermac? Put it in the living room and use it as a media center, of course!

So there are two components to a good media center computer - audio and video outputs. Let's start with audio. I have the Digital Audio revision powermac g4. I know the digital audio output is some annoying proprietary connector (welcome to the world of macintosh!), but perhaps I can figure out the pinout of it and convert it to a regular coaxial digital output to connect to my home theater system? If anyone has had experience messing with this mystery port, your help is appreciated.

Video... The video card has two outputs- one of them appleriffically poprietary (which I'm actually using as my main monitor, since an apple monitor came with it from the auction. Thanks, Virginia Tech!) and the other normal VGA. So, what about continuing to use that proprietary thing as my main monitor and then using a VGA to RCA converter on the VGA output to connect to the television? Is there any limitation regarding using both of these video outputs? Would it just be the same display twice?

Other than figuring out these two issues, I'm thinking a Macintosh makes a PERFECT media center computer. All of the filesharing accros the network works so well and is well-integrated into multimedia software.
 
L

Localoid

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RChickenMan said:
... I have the Digital Audio revision powermac g4. I know the digital audio output is some annoying proprietary connector (welcome to the world of macintosh!), but perhaps I can figure out the pinout of it and convert it to a regular coaxial digital output to connect to my home theater system? If anyone has had experience messing with this mystery port, your help is appreciated. ...

Dunno if this will help (or not), but... is this the interface you're asking about?

http://developer.apple.com/document...cintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMac_G4Jan01/PMG4-73.html
 

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