Hacking the P2Store

Skuzzle

Skuzzle

Active member
I have a P2Store and am thinking of cracking it open to put in a larger drive. (120 gig). Can anyone think of any reason my little plan will not work? Do you think the "p2store" software is on the drive, or is it hardwired somehow?

Ideas anyone?

Skuzzle
 
No ideas. Lots of enthsiasm. Hack away, Skuzzle! I will be most intrigued with your results. A documented workflow would be really helpful.
 
I seem to recall Jan mentioning that the P2 store uses a ruggedized notebook drive -- ie it is enclosed in some kind of shock housing. If that is the case, you may not be able to switch it out too easily. I also seem to remember Jan mentioning potential cooling issues associated with larger drives that spin faster. I'm not 100% however.

Personally, I say go for it. Pictures would be nice. :)
 
I think you are crazy of you try this. I would take a look but if the bigger drive is not ruggedized, it's not going to work. Once you crack the case open, you have already voided the warranty though so if you are going for it, you might as well go all of the way.

Dan
 
I love the way people are telling you to go for it. If you are willing to throw it away if it breaks, then more power to you and I'd love to hear about it.

I wonder if Neal Armstrong felt as you do when NASA said, "Go ahead, open the latch. In theory it shold work".

Personaly, I think there is a reason they only put the drive in that they did.
Keep us updated. Not only after you get it working, but also in 3 months if it's still working.
 
Do it!


I am also wondering if it will work.


There's no reason I can think of that it won't. (but there might be something I am unaware of).

I think the only reason it is 60 gig is because that's all there was back when it was introduced.

There are 2 worse case scenarios, one, you find it doesn't work, and you have to put it back together.

2. You take it apart, break it somehow, and then you just send it in for repair...how much could it be to fix?

On the otherhand, thinking about it, there may be some operating system on the drive. If that is the case, just clone it to the new drive. If not, it is hardware controlled and you just pop in the new formatted drive (most likely formatted fat 32)

If you take this giant step for mandkind, remember to take digital photographs of the process (so you know how to put it back together, and to show off).

If you you are sucsessful, you will be the first to do it.

Do you realize the fame you will have?

.....
offtopic
.....

I know a girl who speaks several languages, has modeled, and has won many beauty pageants. She is as close to a perfect 10 as anyone I know, or have seen in publication. She now has a top secret government job in D.C. and drives a sports car. All that, and she has not had her first time.....

She has only had 3 boyfriends, and with each one, friends wonder if he will be "that guy".

If you perform the P2 store hard drive upgrade, you would be on the level of "that guy".





DO IT!
 
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Skuzzle said:
I have a P2Store and am thinking of cracking it open to put in a larger drive. (120 gig). Can anyone think of any reason my little plan will not work? Do you think the "p2store" software is on the drive, or is it hardwired somehow?

Ideas anyone?

Skuzzle
Click to expand...


It's all up to you baby!


But, with that said you are going to need to put a bit of preparation into your project.


Before you even open the p2store you should take the following steps:

1. have a desktop computer that you can clone the drives on.

2. have a linux/freebsd OS.

If you are running Linux, great!

If not, even better!

It really doesn't matter.

You can download an Live Run version in ISO format.

Knoppix is pretty damn good and easy to use.

Plus there is a great deal of data available on the web to help you step by step.

3. You will need at least one, ideally two converters so you can connect the laptop hard drives to your desktop (the one in your p2store and the new higher capacity replacement).

I recommend two so you can directly clone from the original p2store drive to the new higher capacity drive.

4. You should try and find a service manual to open the p2store drive.

If you can't get access to a service manual, just be cautious and careful not to hamhand or force anything.

Slow and steady is the key.

5. Patience. Take your time and actually have a bit of fun exploring and taking control.



Once you have all of your material assembled you are ready to operate!

The short version of what you will do is:

1. open p2store and carefully extract drive. I would personally photograph and/or record the whole process.

Hey! you can even use your HVX

This way you can backtrack and double check your connection configuration


2. connect the p2store drive to your POWERED DOWN desktop. Make sure this drive is protected from your chassis. You don't want an electric short! You can keep the drive in an envelope if you like. the paper will be enough of a barrier so you don't short the board on the drive


3. connect the new higher capacity drive to the desktop as well.

I recommend putting each on it's own IDE channel. Be sure to check the p2store drive and note how its jumper is set. It most probably will be set to master but could be on cable select.

Set the jumpers on the new drive to match


4. Boot the system with the knoppix disk


5. explore the file systems of the drives so that you know for 100000% sure which one will be your source. This step allows you to double check that you are going to select the p2store drive as the source.

Next to not shorting out your drive this is the most important step because if you erase the p2store drive you wipe out the p2store's programming!

The p2store will still boot up but you will not have an operating system or application programs. You will just have an empty and bare system


6. Clone the p2store drive onto the new higher capacity drive


7. put the original p2store drive into the static bag that the new higher capacity drive came in and put it in a safe place for back up


8. install the newly cloned high capacity drive


9. enjoy!


The p2store drive is most probably a custom Linux installation.

The chipset and components of the p2store drive are most probably a mix of off the shelf and customized boards and connectors. The p2store is actually just a miniature computer.


The most important part of this whole upgrade is to be patient and gentle with the connectors.

It should actually be a lot of fun and is really not that big of a deal.


Let me know if you have any questions.

~Estebe
 
Green Hornet said:
...

I know a girl who speaks several languages, has modeled, and has won many beauty pageants. She is as close to a perfect 10 as anyone I know, or have seen in publication. She now has a top secret government job in D.C. and drives a sports car. All that, and she has not had her first time.....

She has only had 3 boyfriends, and with each one, friends wonder if he will be "that guy".

If you perform the P2 store hard drive upgrade, you would be on the level of "that guy".

...
Click to expand...


NICE!!!


Green Hornet said:
Do it!


I am also wondering if it will work.


There's no reason I can think of that it won't. (but there might be something I am unaware of).

I think the only reason it is 60 gig is because that's all there was back when it was introduced.

...
Click to expand...


The 60 gig drive was the highest capacity "rugged" drive that was available at design time.

Panasonic has a line of expensive but very rugged and capable portable computers know as the Toughbooks.

The drive in the p2store is the same type of drive that they use in the Toughbooks.

It is shock mounted and there is motion detection employed so that if you drop the p2store the heads don't crash. The heads of a hard disk drive are insanely close to the platters!

If you are excessively rough you will crash these head into the platters and ruin your drive.


There very well might be a rugged laptop drive out there with more than 60 gigs.


If you are treat your p2store as you would an iPod or other hard drive driven device you should be O.K. even without the ruggedized drive.


In truth, the camera is more fragile than a hard drive.



I have decided to go with the HVX for our next project and am considering building a custom capture array.

If there is interest, we can start a dedicated thread and list our dream items.

Once we get a good idea of what would be a solid, useful, and convenient system.

I can try and build it.

We are planning to begin principle photography in late August mid October.

Let me know.

~Estebe
 
I think there's a fair chance that the os of the firestore is on a rom chip that is separate from the drive. I would not be surprised if the chip will only address up to 60 gigs.
Worth a try but I wouldn't expect too much. If you're right and it works it certianly would create extra value for the P2 store. I would be more interested in one if I could simply upgrade the drive. I would stay away from really fast drives becuase they run hotter.
Good luck,
Sam
 
It would be possible to write the entire "OS" on an embedded chip (EPROM) but I would be surprised if they went to that much trouble.

They will not ship that many units and they most probably used off the shelf components.


Do you have one?

If so, have you popped the hood on it yet?
 
I think that Panny mentioned that this would be possible.. to put a larger drive in.. or replace the drive later if it goes faulty.. which is nice.

However, remember that you can only do 15 backups of p2 cards. That's why they went with the 60 gigs.. as the 4 gig cards were the only ones out and a larger drive wouldn't have any advantages...

So, unless you had the 8 gig cards or larger.. there wouldn't be an advantage to having a bigger drive as you are still limited to 15 offloads...


But what the hell.. crack it open...
 
Who knows?!?!


We might very well be able to rewrite the code to take more offloads to take advantage of the larger capacity.



I have a question for all the P2 users in the hiz-ouse.


Would you rather copy to a P2 Store or to a device approximately twice the size that has a monitor?
 
Este, twice the size and with a monitor? Heck yeh. That's why I'm trusting my laptop for now. But I gotta get a better one so I can get better playback.
 
Start making a dream list and we can see what we can come up with!

It shouldn't be that big of a deal to make a small appliance for capturing P2 info that has a monitor.

Maybe even a touchscreen!


I was thinking of something with a 2-4 Gig buffer and dual drives for redundancy.

Perhaps 2 x 120 Gig?!?!?
 
I like the size of my P2 store. If it fills up I use the other one.

The only thing I would like would be to be able to view clips. Not an onboard monitor, but an S-video out. Or hell Hd component out. Or SDI What the hell?

That would be cool. Oh yes, and internaly managed backups, so I could hook it up to my G5 and it would burn DVDs of the P2s more or less on it's own. Oh yes and lastly, partition names are probably the single most important thing lacking from P2 stores.

All that having been said I think the device isn't bad. I like to put it in a Military amo case and hang it off my belt. The case has a pocket that is just the right size for P2 cards and an extra battery.
 
Agreed with the firewire 800 and 400. We need fast transfers! I would most definetly love a P2store with a built in monitor, where we could see the clips we just uploaded to it. It just feels a lot safer than having a simple light saying everything is ok...

But I wouldn't want it to be that much bigger. It fits very well on a small backpack, and somethimes I just put a P2 card in there and dump the footage while still shooting actively. The error 4 light is ocasionally showing up due to heavy motion, but it still gets the job done with no dropped frames. I would like a similar portable solution...

Also, I would like something a bit more acessible. the current price is just simply ridiculous, even with the so called bulletproof casing. I believe that, if the drive had a monitor, 160 gigs of capacity, a portable size, worked with the Panny batteries like the P2 store and had a motion sensor or something as fail safe as the P2store, I would most certainly pay $1000 for it.
 
Justyn said:
I think that Panny mentioned that this would be possible.. to put a larger drive in.. or replace the drive later if it goes faulty.. which is nice.

However, remember that you can only do 15 backups of p2 cards. That's why they went with the 60 gigs.. as the 4 gig cards were the only ones out and a larger drive wouldn't have any advantages...

So, unless you had the 8 gig cards or larger.. there wouldn't be an advantage to having a bigger drive as you are still limited to 15 offloads...


But what the hell.. crack it open...
Click to expand...


Is the 15 offloads derived from the drive being 60 gigs?
15x 4 gig cards = 60 gigs.

Or is it a hardware thing?

Would 15x 8 gig cards give you the ability to use a 120 gig hard drive?

With the 60 gig drive, and 8 gig cards, you only get 7 downloads.... that really sucks.

I remember somone saying this, but was uncertain if it was a limitation of the device, or the fact that the P2 store only had a 60 gig drive.
 
The os will only make 7 partitions even if you are not using the whole 8 gigs. So if you offload a parcial full card you will make a full 8 gig partition. So it all has to do with the OS. So you have to crack that befor you put a bigger drive in. But go for it and good luck. I was thinking about cracking into mine but I wouldn't know how to crack the OS
 
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