Is there a way to trick my DVD player (Panasonic 940) into playing my
old DivX CDs or are the disks ready for the trash?  My DivX player
keeps asking me to register my player and of course there is no one to
register it with!!

Unfortunately, from what I have read on this subject, you are unlikely
to be able to use your Divx discs.

TechTV's Screensavers has an interesting series of articles about Divx
(the old Circuit City movie rental system, not the video compression
codec.) This link will take you to one of the articles that may be of
interest to you:

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/answerstips/jump/0,24331,3368594,00.html

There is quite a bit of information about Divx here, and even more
data is available elsewhere on the same site:

http://www.the-doa.com/Pages/DoaFaq.html