I archived all my MiniDV tapes using a cheap firewire card and dvgrab on Linux, it can be set to automatically split noncontinous clips into different files for easy viewing. It's very straightforward to use and can be done unattended.
Just thinking back 10 years ago when I was arching all my DV tapes on my Dad's old G5... I did it all by hand through Final Cut Express. It would've been sooo much easier had I known about dvgrab back then!
I have a long-in-the-tooth investment in Fireware audio devices (Presonus) in my studio - 19” rack interfaces with 10 I/O’s, as well as the StudioMix mixer with 20 or so .. I’ve been keeping an aging iMac around to use all of this with and it still just plain works, but having the option to replace it with an rPi is really appealing. The system is mostly used for tracking, so having REAPER on the rPi, connected to all that FireWire gear, just seems such a nice idea…
I wonder what the load will be like, though? Can the latest rPi with PCI hat and Firwire interface handle 40 channels of audio over FireWire, I wonder? I know the issue would mostly be SD-card write speeds and so on .. maybe this disqualifies the rPi - but certainly there are other ARM-based SBC’s that this same technique could be applied to ..
I have a Focusrite Saffire that has lots of nice, quiet preamps and ADC channels. I managed to get an old Mac to connect over FireWire and using the Focusrite Control app, I configured the routing to map all the analog inputs to ADAT. That works great but it's always at the wrong sample rate, and I can't change that without getting the old Mac out. Maybe I'll look into one of these rPi shields too. Anyone got any reverse engineering tips for the control protocol?!
Audio shouldn't be a big problem for the Pi unless you're pumping it through tons of heavy filters. The Pi 5's CPU can hold its own against 2010-2015 era iMacs, and a good microSD card easily holds 40-50 MB/sec writes.
For better performance, I'd plug in a USB SSD (USB 3.0 can put through 300 MB/sec or more), or even use built in Ethernet, good for writing 100 MB/sec out to a NAS or another networked computer.
Out of curiosity, what version of the OS is that iMac running? Using it as essentially dedicated piece of audio equipment instead of a daily driver would be fine by me. I've done it with the 2012 cheese grater MacPros running 10.6 for eternity essentially as a dedicated video capture device. It just happens to look like a computer, but it remains in use for one singular purpose. No more updates. No WAN access.
Delightful that this still works. It would be interesting to go through the kernel tree and see how much maintenance goes into Firewire related code. Other than pulling data off of old devices, I wonder how many people are out there still using Firewire.
There is an industry of capturing old tape formats to digital files. One place I was at had tape decks of every format form 3/4" U-matic all the way to HDCAM-SR with everything in between. The DV type decks were studio that had SDI outs, but from time to time, we'd have someone with a tape that just would not work in anything we had, except one of the employee's personal camera. We'd connect it to a firewire port on the front of a Mac, and keep on truckin'
There's still a thriving (albeit small) community of skateboarders, retro enthusiasts, and even some AV pros who have FireWire equipment in active use.
In the kernel, the last commit in the IEEE 1394 area was a month or so ago—it's not 'active' maintenance, but its definitely being maintained, and is quite stable in my testing. (Thanks a ton to the current maintainer, who's going to go through the 3 year process of sunsetting full kernel support, and coordinating that with external projects!)
Firewire user here! I have an old-but-very-functional rack mixer (Presonus) that will cost £700+ to replace, _plus_ I have to configure and set up the new one. I have a 2007 Macbook Pro that I keep around just for interfacing with it.
Same: a single StudioMix mixer with 2x FP10’s in the racks. This setup is just so lovely and functional I don’t want to upgrade it really, it just plain works. I have an old iMac as the DAW for the job, but the idea of replacing it with an ARM-based system, if it works, is so very appealing…
I'm still sad that Linux dropped support for i486 and early-i586 CPUs.
And more disappointed that distributions especially Debian the "universal operating system" has dropped support for i586 already (and is dropping support for i686)
Open-source doesn't have the same pressures of commercial software from Apple or Microsoft. I really love the idea of obsessive, perfectionism approach of providing indefinite hardware support to obscure old hardware (but especially once-popular old hardware), with adequate automated testing suites to test ancient hardware.
Maybe with agentic AI coding we'll be able to expand support windows, and even bring back hardware support for older hardware.
I archived all my MiniDV tapes using a cheap firewire card and dvgrab on Linux, it can be set to automatically split noncontinous clips into different files for easy viewing. It's very straightforward to use and can be done unattended.
Just thinking back 10 years ago when I was arching all my DV tapes on my Dad's old G5... I did it all by hand through Final Cut Express. It would've been sooo much easier had I known about dvgrab back then!
Firewire support was removed from the Linux kernel so I had to switch to Mint Linux to accomplish the same thing
> Firewire support was removed from the Linux kernel
This is very much incorrect. Maybe the subsystem wasn't built into a custom kernel you're using?
edit: google says improvements through 2026, support through 2029
This is an awesome project.
I have a long-in-the-tooth investment in Fireware audio devices (Presonus) in my studio - 19” rack interfaces with 10 I/O’s, as well as the StudioMix mixer with 20 or so .. I’ve been keeping an aging iMac around to use all of this with and it still just plain works, but having the option to replace it with an rPi is really appealing. The system is mostly used for tracking, so having REAPER on the rPi, connected to all that FireWire gear, just seems such a nice idea…
I wonder what the load will be like, though? Can the latest rPi with PCI hat and Firwire interface handle 40 channels of audio over FireWire, I wonder? I know the issue would mostly be SD-card write speeds and so on .. maybe this disqualifies the rPi - but certainly there are other ARM-based SBC’s that this same technique could be applied to ..
I have a Focusrite Saffire that has lots of nice, quiet preamps and ADC channels. I managed to get an old Mac to connect over FireWire and using the Focusrite Control app, I configured the routing to map all the analog inputs to ADAT. That works great but it's always at the wrong sample rate, and I can't change that without getting the old Mac out. Maybe I'll look into one of these rPi shields too. Anyone got any reverse engineering tips for the control protocol?!
Audio shouldn't be a big problem for the Pi unless you're pumping it through tons of heavy filters. The Pi 5's CPU can hold its own against 2010-2015 era iMacs, and a good microSD card easily holds 40-50 MB/sec writes.
For better performance, I'd plug in a USB SSD (USB 3.0 can put through 300 MB/sec or more), or even use built in Ethernet, good for writing 100 MB/sec out to a NAS or another networked computer.
Do you have any preferred SD card brands and models? Speedy and durable cards suitable for RPi
Out of curiosity, what version of the OS is that iMac running? Using it as essentially dedicated piece of audio equipment instead of a daily driver would be fine by me. I've done it with the 2012 cheese grater MacPros running 10.6 for eternity essentially as a dedicated video capture device. It just happens to look like a computer, but it remains in use for one singular purpose. No more updates. No WAN access.
Delightful that this still works. It would be interesting to go through the kernel tree and see how much maintenance goes into Firewire related code. Other than pulling data off of old devices, I wonder how many people are out there still using Firewire.
There is an industry of capturing old tape formats to digital files. One place I was at had tape decks of every format form 3/4" U-matic all the way to HDCAM-SR with everything in between. The DV type decks were studio that had SDI outs, but from time to time, we'd have someone with a tape that just would not work in anything we had, except one of the employee's personal camera. We'd connect it to a firewire port on the front of a Mac, and keep on truckin'
There's still a thriving (albeit small) community of skateboarders, retro enthusiasts, and even some AV pros who have FireWire equipment in active use.
In the kernel, the last commit in the IEEE 1394 area was a month or so ago—it's not 'active' maintenance, but its definitely being maintained, and is quite stable in my testing. (Thanks a ton to the current maintainer, who's going to go through the 3 year process of sunsetting full kernel support, and coordinating that with external projects!)
The F-35 uses firewire [0].
[0]https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20060009084/downloads/20...
Firewire user here! I have an old-but-very-functional rack mixer (Presonus) that will cost £700+ to replace, _plus_ I have to configure and set up the new one. I have a 2007 Macbook Pro that I keep around just for interfacing with it.
Same: a single StudioMix mixer with 2x FP10’s in the racks. This setup is just so lovely and functional I don’t want to upgrade it really, it just plain works. I have an old iMac as the DAW for the job, but the idea of replacing it with an ARM-based system, if it works, is so very appealing…
TIL Linux does eventually drop support for old hardware.
It's more about maintainability than age.
Some ancient hardware which is still actively being used and which has plenty of maintainers willing to keep it up-to-date will stick around.
A driver of only a few years old with roughly zero drivers, no maintainers, and which forms an obstacle for other work? That'll be gone very quickly.
I'm still sad that Linux dropped support for i486 and early-i586 CPUs.
And more disappointed that distributions especially Debian the "universal operating system" has dropped support for i586 already (and is dropping support for i686)
Open-source doesn't have the same pressures of commercial software from Apple or Microsoft. I really love the idea of obsessive, perfectionism approach of providing indefinite hardware support to obscure old hardware (but especially once-popular old hardware), with adequate automated testing suites to test ancient hardware.
Maybe with agentic AI coding we'll be able to expand support windows, and even bring back hardware support for older hardware.
Real question though: who's gonna run a CI farm of old hardware? That sounds not-cheap and commercially untenable.
Posted a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509902