PowerMac 7500 video input

[paws]

I've got a Powermac 7500 with the video input and I'd like to use that in BeOS/ppc (which runs well on a 7500 upgraded with the 604e from my 7300, which sits in a corner, pining for the fjords).

I've been looking at the hardware manual and it makes no mention at all about how the inputs work. I assume that means it's undocumented and so completely impossible to write a driver for... anybody know different?

(not that I know the first thing about writing drivers, but it'd really be the icing on the cake of what is a very, very nice BeOS system).

 

[Barabino]

My 7600 was mostly the same as 7500 and was bundled with a software called Avid video workshop. I must still have the cd-rom, and I can send it via email if you want.

To just see the video input (such as a vhs player) you can use the apple tv player, or apple video player...

 

[Franklinstein]

BeOS? I've no idea, unfortunately. As for writing your own drivers, AFAIK Apple never released in-depth technical documentation for that subsystem to anybody but developers, if even them.

My suggestion would be to grab one of the PPC Linux distros that support video out (if any do, maybe mkLinux) and reverse-engineer them, as they were probably reverse-engineered from Mac OS drivers themselves.

 

[paws]

Not having ever used Linux on a Mac such as this one, I've no idea if the video input is supported but a quick google suggests it isn't - that is, I can find plenty of information that in older documents (contemporary with the hardware) that it isn't, but nothing newer that it is not. It's not listed on the hardware compatibility list of Yellow Dog, which I think is the most Mac-friendly of them all?

I did not assume that this was possible. Apple most likely never released any specs since they did not assume anyone would be interested in such information...

 

[defor]

BeOS (for certain), (and to my knowledge, all linux builds) never supported any onboard capture cards... your best bet is to nab a BT848 card (the TurboTV card for macs works, but many pc-only cards will as well), as linux/beos support for that chipset is plentiful.

 

[paws]

Yargh, on perpetual look out for one of those.

I wonder how loudly Apple would laugh if one were to ask them for the specs for their old video input hardware...

 

[lee4hmz]

There is indeed a Linux driver for the video-in on the [789][56]00, called "planb", but it has several unresolved issues (notably, from what I understand, no V4L2 support) and was recently dropped from the kernel due to neglect (2.6.26 is the last version to include it).

I used it in the past on my old 7600, and it worked well for what it was, but had a nasty tendency to lock up at times.

-lee

 

[z180]

Someone owning a AV should send a patch to Linus.