HACK: P2 Store

Joseph Stunzi

Joseph Stunzi

Veteran
"P2, P2, P2, how I love you so."
What's one thing that everyone would like to have with their P2 work flow?
I'd have to say a way to capture P2 cards quickly and without need of a laptop in the "field." As has been discussed here on DVXUser in the past, the P2 Store has a definite limit to 60 GB. With 16 GB cards and soon 32 GB cards, the P2 Store will shortly have to be upgraded or discontinued. (You can only get 1 32 GB card on a 60 GB hard drive! No?)

One solution is the Firestore. However, P2 is advantageous in many ways. (I won't get into it here)

I wanted to see if there was an interest in being able to hack the P2 Store to fit a 750GB or a 1TB drive? I know there is internal software that restricts the device to 6 card pulls. However, I, along with some friends, have a specific interest in providing a "fix" so that you could mod your P2 Store to accommodate larger drives and more card captures.

Is anyone interested in such an effort? Before I start a project page, etc. etc., I wanted to see if anyone else in the HVX, HPX, DVX user community would have an interest in being involved with this project?
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You'll need to modify the P2 Store firmware, for which you do not have the source code.

Anyone who doesn't already own a P2 Store should probably buy a laptop or the P2 Gear instead -- the P2 Gear eliminates the restrictions of the P2 Store and can even power the drives you plug into it.
 
Yes, firmware. What's to say one couldn't hack the firmware? Laptops are bulky and burn batteries! You can't travel the Amazon with a slew of laptop batteries. I guess you could if you brought along a solar panel charger.

The P2 Gear is predicted at a price of $3k to #5k is it not? So if we hacked a P2 Store (which anyone could find used for a lot lower of a price), then with a larger drive and without a LCD screen you could get a pretty neat solution.

Worse comes to worse, couldn't you just make your own firmware for the device?
 
Note: this is an idea that a filmmaker and a few informatics graduate students have been discussing for a while. It's totally speculative at the current time until we see the support for such efforts.
 
jstunzi said:
Laptops are bulky and burn batteries! You can't travel the Amazon with a slew of laptop batteries. I guess you could if you brought along a solar panel charger.
Click to expand...

Ummmm since when are laptops THAT much of an inconvenience?

Seems like alot of time, blood, sweat and tears to fix a problem which isn't that much of a problem.

Ditch this old thing:
08.jpg


and get a new mac. They rock. It will save you alot of R&R.
 
Hey Jstunzi,

Thats a good idea. Some 16yrs old or something cracked the Iphone so why not the P2 store. Depending on the size of the HD you will have a limitation. if they only have a 2.5" HD inside then 250gb is as big as you can go.

Just know that the only customers will be the ones currently with the P2 Store. as I'm sure the sales of that unit are dwindeling fast. as the new cards are arriving and that thing can't currently store that many files.

I for one am making a mod for the FS-100. Will release this month.

Check out this thread. post #15

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=110597

Good luck with that.
 
Hm an FS mod? I like the sound of that! The FS is much smaller than the P2 store by far!

Yes I am 17, so a crack to the P2 Store wouldn't exactly compare to the iPhone crack, but hey a few thousand users versus millions. Ah who cares about number. I also loved your Heinz commercial. I watched it a while back, Siniarch.
 
Lack of support???? I'd love a hack for this thing....it'd make my investment last a little longer. But if you're looking to me for help on the project - you're barking up the wrong tree. I say "Go for it" - if you've got the time and money to do it - then please do.

TimR><>
 
please excuse my bad english.

i have a p2store and 8gb p2 cards and i would really like to expand the
hdd of the p2 store.
first i thought, it wouldnt go without a firmware hack.
but when i look at this:
p2storeb7d9e.jpg


i ask myself, what would happen the hdd would be bigger.
as you can see the limitation is not the number of partitions,
its the hdd size.

but i am unsure whats about the small linux boot partition on the
p2store hdd, i could see in another programm.

is it generated new at the formatting process of the p2store??
or is it fixed, so it would not possible to use a fresh hdd??

any thoughts would be very welcome.
 
There is a limit on the number of partitions, it's 15 maximum. Even so, with 8gb cards, that would be 120GB.

The drive is formatted at the lowest level by the P2 Store itself, and no partitions are created at all. Then, every time you tell it to offload a card, it creates a new partition at that time, for that card.
 
Luis, it'd be ironic if I was Nigerian. No, I've come to see the light in terms of how the P2Store actually works. I have cards, just not the newest ones. But with the 32 GB card coming out soon, a hacked firestore mod, and other solutions that the need for a modded P2Store is only limited to those who already own them. Which, I feel is a small number. While me and my constituents intentions was to mod the device, I suppose our attention could be focused elsewhere. So any suggestions for future mods?
 
jstunzi said:
but i mean if someone already hacked a firestore, then what's the use ya know?
Click to expand...

The point would be to be able to still shoot with Cards - which offer a much better way of shooting (in my opinion) than shooting with a FS100 hanging off your camera.

I shoot with both, cards and Firestore - but if it were up to me I'd shoot ONLY with the cards.

Ideally - I'd like to have both a modded P2store with higher capacity, and a modded FS100 with removable drives. then again, i'm greedy.
 
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