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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Now that I have the DVD-ROM drive working properly without DMA/IRQ 
conflicts, and with the ISA AWE32 card, it would not play DVD's any more.

In CMOS I had to set IRQ5 to ISA/EISA rather than PCI/PnP so that I could 
read software CDs with the DVD-ROM drive - otherwise it was about 20 sec 
wait for it to time out on trying to use an IRQ and DMA.  The sound card 
is ISA/pnp.  The other IRQs were left at PCI/PnP.  I have an ISA (I don't 
think pnp) modem (IRQ 3). Every single IRQ is taken in DOS (USB, scsi, 
ethernet).

The player was playing when I had a PCI sound card (despite having 
problems reading software CDs) but not when I switched to the ISA card. On 
four DVDs, it would play one for a few minutes, one for a few seconds, one 
for a millisecond, and one not at all.  I was getting various error 
messages about slow CPUs, or end of file.  Vesa or X -framedrop, same 
results.

So today I tried setting IRQ 3 (modem) and DMA channels 1 and 5 (sound 
card) to ISA.  This seems to have fixed the problem with playing DVDs and 
it continues to mount CDs immediately (which required IRQ5 - ISA in CMOS).

S3 Trio3D AGP VESA 2.0 card and a 605MHz cpu.

On two other DVDs, a while ago, I could type
mplayer -dvd-device /dev/hdc -vo vesa dvd://1
and it would play the whole movie.
-vo x11 -framedrop also worked

DVD number one - track 1 (DVD://1) gets me as far as the FBI Warning and 
Image Entertainment then I just have a black screen (in VESA mode).  I can 
select track 2 instead and it does the next track (which is longer - I got 
out of it with Ctrl-C).

DVD number two - Track 1 is a black screen. Ctrl-C exits.  Next time I 
tried playing just track 2 (that worked, now that I have set the DMA's to 
ISA) but I again have a black screen after that track, and this time I 
cannot get out of it with Ctrl-C or Alt-F2 or even a warm reboot.

So I read the man page (mplayer.gz - use zless) and changed dvd://1 to
dvd://1-3 - I was already told there are three 'titles'.  I now progress 
past the introductory screens to the actual movie.

p toggles pause
right arrow skips 10 sec forward, up arrow 1 min, PgUp 10 min

Very nice - I cannot do this with the hardware DVD player (lacking remote 
control).

/ and * - softer and louder
9 and 0 on the top row do the same
9 on the keypad gives me a black screen, possibly because I have numlock 
turned off.  Ctrl-C won't exit, warm reboot.

v is supposed to toggle subtitle visibility and it does not seem to work. 
Good thing I know some German.   I tried in both vesa and x11.  In X I 
lost sound within a few seconds without -framedrop.

Die Fledermaus, with subtitle languages D GB F SP JP.
The credits are in French as is the producer, the jacket in English, the 
singing in German.

q for quit - again the black screen from which I cannot exit or switch 
consoles.  (q worked on number 3, exited to a prompt).

DVD number 3 (dvd://1) would play for about 10 seconds yesterday then give 
me a black screen.  Same thing happened today.  Ctrl-C exits.  There are 
two titles.  I discovered this after typing dvd://1-3.  I am now seeing 
the second part of this DVD.  q is not working here at all, or ESC (in X) 
or Ctrl-C.


Probably the first two DVDs that worked with dvd://1 had just one 'title'.

How do I get at the subtitles?  Everything else is now working perfectly 
and I can if I want skip past the warnings.

mplayer says it can work with svgalib but David seems not to have compiled 
for it.  Would that take less cpu than vesa?  It would work with more 
video cards.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org