firewire Possible to rip out USB for pci support on a Stick PC

[Chaggot]

I'm trying to plan out a project for a portable pc setup that needs to as compact and light as possible, has an external pcie riser (only needs to support 1 lane), and likely needs to be x86, (so no raspberry pi).

The purpose is to replace the uncommon and overpriced firewire recorders such as the SONY HVR-MRC1, or Data Video DN60, which are used to make old MiniDV and Digital8 Camcorders functional without using tapes, and retaining the original quality that they're capable of. They work by taking the signal out of the camera via firewire and writing the same data to an internal drive as the camera would to a miniDV tape.

 

They're especially useful to skaters who have a cultural attachment to using specific period cameras and other people like me who just want to shoot using old cameras for the fun of it. But the tape drives of minidv cameras are prone to failure and the skaters have been buying up any remaining stock so prices on new tapes are getting unreasonable for 25 year old technology.

Other Firewire equipment is plentiful but these recorders are a PIA to get ahold of, so I started imagining how to build one, or a rude imitation of one.

 

I've done a bunch of googling and scouring and my current leading ideas are, in order of complexity,

1. find an old tablet or single board pc that has a firewire port AND still works. I've tried looking around for one but looking up old HP model numbers and looking for signs of a 1394 port got old, and at this point you might as well have an old MacBook hanging off the side of the camera. And if this was a good enough solution for the skaters there would just be a run on all the remaining units like has been happening to tapes and to the recorders. I'm only considering this as an option incase I come across something randomly in a thrift store, and even then who knows how long it would continue to work for, its just not future proof enough.
2. get a minipc with either a pci slot or an m.2 slot and an extender to slot a firewire card into, and rig up some battery setup to power the pc and probably the pci riser too, a little screen, just enough i/o to start a capture program like winDV, maybe I could even set up scripts so that it can capture as soon as its plugged in and you don't have to even have a screen and i/o.

That seems like a good backup plan if this next one isn't possible, and I'll make a new thread for it if that's the case,

The next one is almost the same but its seems difficult, and its the idea that I titled the thread after:

1. 3. a really mini Stick PC, none of which to my knowledge have exposed access to pcie, and performing a procedure like this (link) on the usb or wifi chip in order to get a riser coming out of it like in the 2nd idea. That article is for a Pi, which you can get a real exposed PCIe bus for now, but Jeff Geerling couldnt get a firewire card working on a PI so I really doubt my own abilities to. So I'm not considering ARM SBCs, and I don't have any experience capturing DV on linux so even if it would be more reliable in the long run I'm envisioning doing it in windows since win10 still has native, driverless DV capture that has worked well enough for me. The lack of USB port or Wifi functionality may not matter cause the device only needs to be used for such a specific purpose, (starting and stopping captures)

I wish that they just had clones of the sony mrc1 on AliExpress, but the fact that firewire's firewire probably means that it was too locked down, documentation nonexistent, and demand too little for those to be created.

If someone way more knowledgeable than me wanted to, would it be possible for a regular person to recreate the internals and print pcbs on something like PCBway, and harvest controllers from firewire devices to make your own bootleg device in the 2020's, lol I wish there was a scene for that.

 

Do any of you know that the usb controller would likely be PCIE under the hood on a stick pc? or that theres actually a stick pc out there with m.2? or that m.2 to full size pcie wouldnt work for these reasons?

 

Sorry if this doesnt make any sense. I'm already out of my depth especially with anything relating to actually making this portable and making a battery rig, but I'll deal with that after I've learned that the idea is even possible. I'm very willing to hear anyone's knowledge that contradicts any part of my thinking, so that I can get on the right track. 

 

edit: also if anyone knows of a more specialized forum on the web that this would make sense to ask in, please let me know!

Edited February 4, 2023 by Chaggot
clarifying message at end

[Dutch_Master]

For geek points, post this on https://forum.level1techs.com

 

Reading the opening paragraph, I'd say you're better off creating a Flash replacement for the DV-drives that go into these recorders. Memory chips can be obtained on the open market and you'd only need a microcontroller instead of a full blown mini-PC. Does require to modify the recorder to have an electrical connection instead of a magnetic read/write head.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Chaggot said:

Do any of you know that the usb controller would likely be PCIE under the hood on a stick pc?

Usually USB would come straight from the SoC or chipset if any i.e. including a lot of other functions at the same place.

[Chaggot]

Update: I've gone along a bit with the second option. I've acquired an HP t430 thin client, an ADT link m.2 adapter, and a second m.2 adapter from AliExpress, 

https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t430/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z4RCDKZ

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804942159379.html

I've all but confirmed that it's possible. My 1x firewire card was detected by lspci in linux mint, but I was not successful using the dvgrab tool to capture footage straight from the camera. That's almost certainly down to my lack of ability in the terminal and unfamiliarity with dvgrab. Most of the commands I was copying from forums and messing with, I believe were written only with the intent of capturing tapes, whereas I wanted it to more or less act like a webcam. 

I then tested a gigabit nic and it was able to connect to the internet so I'm almost certain the pcie connection works fine. I know that the 1x card works after using it in a fullsized desktop. 

 

Battery power should actually be a lot simpler to solve than I was anticipating, as the t430 can be powered by USB C pd, so I should be able to get a fancy battery pack instead of cutting any wires.

 

My next expected hurdle is that I've run into problems trying to capture DV footage to a non boot hard drive (at least in windows), and the onboard storage of the thin client is only 16gb.

 

I most likely will not be able to do more with this for a while so if I make any progress on this outside of the next month I would end up making a new thread way down the line, posting this here in case someone's trying to follow my footsteps.

[Chaggot]

and this is all, of course, a lot more of a hassle than simply using an old Macbook

but you gotta love it