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[thirdbanana]

So I found one of those iSight cameras. I connected it to the FW400 in my Mini G4 (running OS9), and nothing: Apple Profiler did not even acknowledged it was there. Does that mean said app only acknowledges devices it has drivers for?

Later on I found its glorious 640×480 capabilities was aimed at OSX. Has anyone been able to make it work in OS9?

PS: to make sure it works, I am thinking on booting the mini off a linux USB disk and then see if dmesg sees it.

[aBc]

Don’t recall whether or not I attempted use with OS 9 but I’m certain that I tested it with OS X. [Also used the iSightUpdater103.dmg file.]

Drawn initially to the design of the iSight - but found it very lacking in overall image quality; especially compared to what you can achieve with even an early iPhone 5, 6 or 7. I shoot a lot of quick “grab shot” tabletop photography here and thought that the iSight would be handy, possibly left connected for such use.

Check comparison images. First image shot with an iPhone 5. Other two images via an iSight.
(Similar results with video as well.)







Hopefully you may obtain better results with OS X and possibly OS 9? But for me the iSight camera is optically inferior. Still, a bit of fun to examine.
Two more recent iPhone 7 shots. (Would not even attempt these using an iSight.)





See also:http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=5457.msg40210#msg40210

and:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6613.msg49590#msg49590

You could also setup your G4 Mac mini as a dual boot machine with OS X installed on a second partition - which would allow you to use the iSight IF not possible with OS 9 alone. Then you could simply move the image files to your OS 9 partition afterwards.

[GaryN]

Wow… this is like a long-dead ghost from the grave. Like many other ≤OS9 apps and such that were never ported to OSX, I remember this issue being lamented at length 20 years ago when the iSight first appeared.

The iSight was released in 2003 in the time of OSX10.2…10.3. It was specifically made to be used for videoconferencing with iChatAV. For that use, the 640x480 resolution was perfectly adequate.
The reason it was a Firewire device was because video + audio over USB1 was simply impossible. Even over FW, there is a noticeable latency.

So, since there never was a version of iChat for ≤OS9, there was never an OS9 driver for the camera either.

[smilesdavis]

i really dig the lowres quality for artistic purposes.

[Knezzen]

i really dig the lowres quality for artistic purposes.

Me too!

[ssp3]

i really dig the lowres quality for artistic purposes.

There's nothing artistic about the unsharp picture. Looks like a decentered element in the lens to me.

[smilesdavis]

autofocusing at 50mm up at work :D