-
PCMCIA SLOTS in YOUR MAC PRO / G5
Ive been working with P2 Professionally for two years and Ive come up with a workflow that crushes any other method with a desktop machine. Or laptop for that matter.
So Ive basically created a Custom Macintosh that lives in a pelican with a 22″ Samsung Monitor in the lid… and room for 6 750GB Hard Drives… Its Overclocked to a 3.0ghz 1333FSB / 4GB 667 RAM / Nvidia DDR3 7900GS 256mb… 2 P2 slots on the back… And If I run from set drop the cards in transfer them, then 10-100, and I’m carrying two 16GB cards back to Set. 7 minutes and between setups… Basically its a big laptop… I’m just missing the BlackMAgic, to shoot HDSDI…(not that I need to or can from HVX200 P2) But there is room!
Unfortunately Apple doesn’t include the IOPCCARDFamily.kext used as the driver for the PCMCIA slots. They’ve moved on to the express card and the driver doesn’t support PCMCIA anymore.
After hunting around on osx86project.org I found the old driver…!
I bought 2 PCMCIA card slots to PCI. I found a driver to get PCMCIA working on normal HP, DELL, and other PC’s running Mac OS X… (mostly to get wireless cards working through the PCMCIA slot) But it also enables my PCMCIA to PCI slots to work… The chipset on the PCI card is texas Instruments( same as apple has been using) instead of the ricoh chipset which doesn’t work on Macintoshs.So I have the driver, and I bought 2 P2 slots for my Mac Pro / Hackintosh for $55… they are at Fry’s $24.99 each… Each 16GB card takes 7 minutes to transfer even at the same time to the same drive. Only RAW files… FCP P2 import is futile when you are backing up for a commercial job. I open .MXF files in Quicktime to preview anyway… (another free driver from Panasonic)
You shoot cards constantly and never have to worry about 1 card at a time or an external drive to slow the works. I still have room for one more PCMCIA to PCI card I just dont need it. Then bring the P2box back to the Editing Room and plug it in Gigabit and transfer everything over to the machine that will be Editing… In this case… I’m in Morocco shooting a feature on two HVX-200 w/ only 4 16GB cards, so the footage stays inside my machine until I fill a SATA 750GB up and take it out, Static bag it and put it in a Mac Pro at the Facility… Thats sounds too easy… And much more practical than the USB or IDE w/ 5 P2 slots… and only $1500 cheaper
If anyone is interested I can give you the driver, worse case scenario you lose $24 bucks… Otherwise I’ll be back in LA in January! My gear is for rent or if anyone needs a savvy digitech!
“Homie don’t One click”
Professional Digitech / Assistant Camera