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| Author | Some Exciting FireWire Stuff (Read 67220 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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dpaanlka
1024 MB  Posts: 1646 
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on: September 11, 2007, 02:14
So I tracked down and bought an original Apple FireWire Kit, Apple's early 1998 FireWire solution for Beige G3 Macs. Basically it's a FireWire PCI card manufactured by a third party, and bundled with Apple software and a test utility, and some really old FireWire cables. From what I have researched, I could not find any actual system requirements for this card in any of the read me files or anything. Only the printed manual in the box says requires a G3 and Mac OS 8.1. But why would they leave this out in the Read Me files? I had already tried one of my Sonnet FireWire cards in the past, as some of you may remember, with the Apple FireWire drivers form Mac OS 8.6. It didn't work. But I have a hunch this early Apple FireWire card might. It was developed and released less than a year since the introduction of Mac OS 8, and barely a month after the discontinuation of the 9600. I found one, never used, with all the original packaging and materials on the LEM Swaplist, and bought it. It came in today, and I installed it. The installer program runs just fine, doesn't complain that I'm not on a G3 nor have Mac OS 8.1, and installs everything into their correct locations. No need for TomeViewer or ResEdit here. Rebooted, and ran the included tester utility (I wish all PCI cards came with testing utilities). This was my result: This looks promising! Adobe Premiere 5.1 was the first DV version of Premiere, and it also runs fine on 7.6.1. Now, if only I had a DV camcorder here at school with me to test it. I anxiously await getting it from home... |
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Last Edit: December 12, 2021, 17:59 by Bolkonskij
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #1 on: September 16, 2007, 19:34
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So much to update today. I went home and got my DV camera and came back to school for some testing. Here are my observations thus far: FireWire video capture, audio capture, and device control works perfectly. I have no trouble importing video into Premiere 5.1c, nor do I have any trouble controlling my camera from within Premiere. Even scrubbing back and forth works smoothly. Very awesome! 2_capture_1.jpg The Apple FireWire Kit card ships with four system extensions, DV Enabler 1.0, DV Support 1.0, FireWire Enabler 1.0, and FireWire Support 1.0.1. I set out to find later versions of these extensions that will still work. After replacing these four extensions with the ones included in my Mac OS 8.6 install CD, everything still worked. Those are versions 1.0.2, 1.0.2, 2.0, and 2.0 respectively. Replacing them with the drivers found in a Mac OS 9.0.4 CD broke everything. I will be packaging the Mac OS 8.6 FireWire extensions as well as the FireWire test utility for distribution on System 7 Today. Because of this, I see no reason why any other card that would normally work with these versions of the extensions wouldn't work in System 7. This may mean it was not necessary for me to hunt down the earliest FireWire PCI card I could find (the Apple one). I can, however, verify that I have the Allego FW400 card and it does not work... which would make sense since it requires Mac OS 9.x. My external FireWire hard drive does not seem to work. I'm not sure if I'm missing some sort of extension, or if it just plain won't work. I also haven't tried printing video directly back to my camera, as I can't figure out how to tell Premiere to do this over FireWire. Here is the first video I imported, edited, and compressed entirely within Mac OS 7.6.1. I would imagine this is the first time any such thing has been posted to the internet. The quality is low because it's extremely compressed (the best that QuickTime 5 can do). It is full DV quality on my Power Mac 8600. Finally, below is a nifty screenshot. You can see the full 1680 x 1050 size version here. I am going to begin working on a "FireWire" page for the Help Center, which will have more pictures and details about the specific card. I'm also going to try to figure out how low this will go (7.5.x, etc)... and hopefully can figure out this external hard drive situation. Please post any comments, questions, or suggestions you may have to help this project along!
Last Edit: December 12, 2021, 18:02 by Bolkonskij
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wall
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256 MB Posts: 343
Reply #2 on: September 16, 2007, 20:14
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:grin:
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #3 on: September 17, 2007, 04:48
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I don't know anything about Firewire, but in the case of USB, there is a mass storage device extension that is added to the system to support drives. In the case of the first release of USB, that extension was not part of the install and was added later. And in the case of USB the mass storage extension from the second release still works with the first USB software release. bill
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MacTCP
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16 MB Posts: 21
Reply #4 on: September 17, 2007, 05:57
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This is great!
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #5 on: September 17, 2007, 21:50
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Some more testing... I tracked down the final FireWire update available to Mac OS 8.6 users, which is version 2.3.3. Installed those extensions, and everything stops working. So as of now, the latest versions of FireWire extensions that work are versions 2.0, which were on my Mac OS 8.6 install CD. Again, I'll be packaging those up along with other stuff for a FireWire download to be posted soon here at System 7 Today.
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wall
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256 MB Posts: 343
Reply #6 on: September 17, 2007, 22:47
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There seems to be loads of new FW400 pci cards for sale with specs saying runs in os 8.6, so looking good.
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #7 on: September 18, 2007, 00:40
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Quote from: "wall" There seems to be loads of new FW400 pci cards for sale with specs saying runs in os 8.6, so looking good. But they might need the FireWire 2.3.3 extensions, which run in 8.6 but not 7.6.1.
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #8 on: September 20, 2007, 23:22
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I finally made an official FireWire page on System 7 Today - check it out! It is part of the "Hardware Guide" and you can download the latest known working drivers there.
Last Edit: December 12, 2021, 18:02 by Bolkonskij
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p-amadeus
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64 MB Posts: 89 
Reply #9 on: September 23, 2007, 00:03
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I was gonna say what Wall did...look for a Firewire mass storage extension or maybe just a plain mass storage extension...not sure it exists but it's definitely a place to start.
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Wizard of Woz
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4 MB Posts: 5
Reply #10 on: October 03, 2007, 10:21
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Fantastic Dan. So let's look at this. You can capture DV Video on a FireWire card into 7.6.1, edit it with software that does the basic stuff, titles, transitions etc, and compress it down and upload it to the Internet. And this is on a 10 year old machine, with a ten year old OS! Fantastic, great job. Idiots who say these machines are useless....
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JoAT
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32 MB Posts: 58 
Reply #11 on: October 05, 2007, 20:02
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Congrats Dan, hopefully the hard drive issue works its way out. Have you considered a disc driver issue? I assume that you formatted the drive on a newer mac...
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dpaanlka
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1024 MB Posts: 1646
Reply #12 on: October 06, 2007, 00:18
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Quote from: "JoAT" Congrats Dan, hopefully the hard drive issue works its way out. Have you considered a disc driver issue? I assume that you formatted the drive on a newer mac... Yes, but that cannot be for several reasons: 1. I've never had a problem getting 7.6.1 to recognize, read, and write to HFS Standard disks formatted in Mac OS X. I don't see why it would start now. 2. Drive Setup doesn't see the disks, but I'm not sure if it would even see them under Mac OS 8.6. I'll have to do some more testing on that, possibly this weekend.
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douglas
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32 MB Posts: 44
Reply #13 on: October 06, 2007, 07:26
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Congratulations on your progress Dan, I love this site! Wouldn't it be cool if it was possible to get an original firewire iPod working under System 7.6 somehow... Douglas 
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douglas
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32 MB Posts: 44
Reply #14 on: November 14, 2007, 21:02
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I was just wondering if there was any progress on the firewire under 7.6 thing...sounds exciting!! Douglas
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