Breathing New Life into Unsupported Hardware Marc Brevoort

My first hard disk audio recorder! 48 kHz, 16 bits, 8 track digital audio MIDI, SCSI, max. 2GB per drive ADAT lightpipe (12 Mbps; 8 tracks, 24 bits) Catchy slogan!

My second HD audio recorder! 48 kHz, 24 bits, 24 track digital audio (96 kHz, 24 bits, 12 track with upgrade) 3x ADAT lightpipe (12 Mbps; 8 tracks, 24 bits) Ethernet (FTP), MIDI Up to 2TB per drive, proprietary FST file system Further specs on Wikipedia [original research?]

OH NO!! 10 Mbps Ethernet is about 1/3 realtime FTP server unreliable, very limited No affordable lightpipe hardware for Linux Software for ”Fireport” hardware not available for Linux

OH NO!! 10 Mbps Ethernet is about 1/3 realtime FTP server unreliable, very limited No affordable lightpipe hardware for Linux Software for ”Fireport” hardware not available for Linux

OH NO!! Why not run Windows then?

OH NO!!

So I did what anyone would do.

Reverse engineering Where do you start? ● Start with what you know and what you can trivially guess ● Everything you can find on the device from forums, marketing, manual, etc. ● 3 minute undo 48 kHz=.... ● Make educated guesses ● Poke it and see what happens ● Fill in the bits that haven't been accounted for

Reverse engineering Where do you start? ● Start with what you know and what you can trivially guess ● Everything you can find on the device from forums, marketing, manual, etc. ● 3 minute undo 48 kHz=.... ● Make educated guesses ● Poke it and see what happens ● Fill in the bits that haven't been accounted for

Reverse engineering Where do you start? ● Start with what you know and what you can trivially guess ● Everything you can find on the device from forums, marketing, manual, etc. ● 3 minute undo 48 kHz=.... ● Make educated guesses ● Poke it and see what happens ● Fill in the bits that haven't been accounted for

Reverse engineering Where do you start? ● Start with what you know and what you can trivially guess ● Everything you can find on the device from forums, marketing, manual, etc. ● 3 minute undo 48 kHz=.... ● Make educated guesses ● Poke it and see what happens ● Fill in the bits that haven't been accounted for

Reverse engineering Where do you start? ● Start with what you know and what you can trivially guess ● Everything you can find on the device from forums, marketing, manual, etc. ● 3 minute undo 48 kHz=.... ● Make educated guesses ● Poke it and see what happens ● Fill in the bits that haven't been accounted for

Unintended consequences Audio data recovery features Windows/Mac port Permit studios to just deliver a drive to their clients

Unintended consequences Audio data recovery features Windows/Mac port Permit studios to just deliver a drive to their clients

Unintended consequences HD24tools: approx users, 72 countries Paypal: Recorder and upgrade paid for Recommended by Alesis over their own SW Hardware documented Overcame limitations of manufacturer's SW

Unintended consequences (-) Write support took much longer than anticipated

Where we are now No known cases of drive corruption by my software (phew!) Power failure data-recovery is a no-brainer file=>recovery=>recover song from power failure; set length of song (round up if unsure); click OK Still a good few years of life left in the device thanks to SATA support Any known patents are about to expire. One could just about develop a compatible recorder based on off-the-shelf components (cheap Android tablet, raspberry pi, available open source software for file system support) – no longer dependent on original manufacturer I can now collect free beer anywhere in the world

Lessons Learned A strong community can keep a product alive. Contributing makes for stronger communities. Ultimately, you may even sway the manufacturer into supporting you (to a degree!) Freeware can offer things that commercial software cannot If I were in it for the money, this was the wrong way Some manufacturers are sneaky, deliberately mismatching patent descriptions and actual standard implementation...or by writing crippled software so you're compelled to buy their overpriced hardware ”Patent Pending”, after 6 years, usually means ”Patent was not granted”

Thank you Questions?