Blonde Guy

Installing RealPlayer 5.0 in Netscape 4.61 for OS/2

I've got RealPlayer 5.0 working in my copy of Netscape 4.61 for OS/2 as a plug-in. There are a couple of things I needed to do to make it work. First, I needed to download the player (RP16_50.EXE) and Video Player for Windows (WV1160.EXE). Then I needed open a DOS window and run WV1160.EXE in its own directory. With this done, I had one directory (which must be named with 8.3 compliant names) with RP16-50.EXE in it and one directory with all the files expanded from WV1160.EXE.

I made sure I had no instance of Netscape running. Next, I went to the Netscape directory, and created a directory called Plugins. This is the directory to receive the RealPlayer plugin. Now I opened a seamless Windows session (WinOS2 window). From File | Run, I selected the setup.exe from the Video for Windows session, and I ran that. When that was done, I exit WinOS2.

I opened WinOS2 again, and this time I ran the RP16_50.EXE file. I installed to an 8.3 compliant directory, and I let the install program scan to find my browser. It found Netscape Navigator |#||*F|F_|o|F|||||||. (I hope your browser can render that name better than I can type it in). Anyway I let it install, and at the end it reported success installing both RealPlayer and RealPlayer Plugin.

Next, I exit WinOS2. Actually I failed to exit WinOS2, started Netscape, started listening to Real Audio, and while the audio was playing, I exited WinOS2, and I experienced a system stop due to Trap E. I strongly recommend exiting WinOS2 first.

Next, I copied NPRA16.DLL from C:\Netscape\Plugins to C:\Netscape\Program\Win16\Plugins. I started Netscape, and went to a test page (http://abcnews.go.com/) and tried the audio session. It worked! The sound was about AM radio quality, but there were no skips and it did not crash at all.

About the real player plug-in

The Glitch

OK, there is one glitch. After closing the Real Player audio session, the CPU is pegged at 100% until Netscape is closed.

Last Modified: 19 May 2000
Graphics by Colorful Language
Copyright 2000 by Blonde Guy