LEMO to (e)SATA Cable?

[Stuart English]

SATA cables

SATA cables

Why does it need to be that way? The LEMO connector is based on eSATA, the drives ship with power adapters... what's the issue? It's just another way to get data off of the drives. If the cables were up to snuff, couldn't you guys approve them?

How about we turn this conversation around?

RED supplies a perfectly good LEMO based SATA cable for camera to RED-DRIVE use.

In addition the RED-DRIVE offers a FW800 port that is faster than the RED-DRIVE.


What exactly is the issue?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Re: Mac Pro info stuff...

From here.

Interesting. I guess I've never actually connected two FW800 devices two the two Mac Pro ports simultaneously. I guess I'll take a closer look tomorrow. I could swear that on more than one occasion I've seen two distinct FW header locations inside, indicative of separate FW hosts. I was under the impression that the front ports shared one host bus and the rear shared another.

...Ah, fugnuts. I just looked in profiler and there's only one FW host being addressed. But I guess that's what happens when I depend on eSATA and my RAIDs. I've about worn out the FW800 connector on the front of this Mac Pro, but don't think I've used the one on the rear more than once or twice.

I just configure myself to a given job.

I think that's all we can ever really do.

It sure would be nice to have one more way to do it. No offense taken at all.

Yep, I'd be all for it if RED were to provide the eSATA to LEMO cable. But they obviously have their reasons not to do so. One real good reason I can think of not to, that has nothing to do with keeping people from using unapproved media, is the "quality" of many eSATA interfaces on the market. I've run across plenty of commonly available eSATA enclosures and HBAs that are not up to snuff for any serious work or use in demanding environments. Many of them from respected name-brands. Just because a drive has an eSATA connector doesn't mean I'll happily plug it into my systems.. I'm kinda picky that way.

While RED could offer an eSATA cable only for connecting a RED Drive for offloading, that doesn't mean people wouldn't try to connect off the shelf eSATA drives to the RED for recording. You know good and well that many will attempt to do just that.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

The SATA protocol only allows a single drive per port - meaning that to connect two drives via a single SATA connection there has to be a port-multiplier involved. This complicates matters and makes it quite likely that even if you were to figure out the pinout from the LEMO connector you'd still encounter difficulties in getting the RED drive to actually show up as a SATA device. You have to have a SATA controller that supports whatever port-multiplier lives within the RED Drive. And with the performance and reliability that RED expects it wouldn't surprise me if that multiplier were something other than a commodity chipset - it might actually be impossible to treat the RED Drive as a standard eSATA device without specific drivers or SATA chipset.

Most off-the-shelf eSATA RAID units use SiL-based hardware port-multipliers. They are of variable reliability and performance (they can conflict with SATA controllers and even OS-level configuration).

The FW800 and USB interfaces have bridging controllers that remove that complication and mean that as long as you have the right connectors on your computer, the drive will work.

 

[Paul Leeming]

And void warranties both on cameras and drives en masse.

Deanan, if the demand is there (which I'd say it is), then with the greatest of respect, why can't Red make the cable so there are no warranty issues to speak of? I'm sure you'd sell over a thousand easily!

I understand the concern about making it too easy to plug non-approved media into the camera, but to be honest, anyone who wants to do that today can do so via the CF port anyway if they chose to, given the connector there is a straight SATA power and data cable. But that doesn't work due to other blocks in the camera's firmware....

Other than the LEMO connector at one end and custom miniaturised board connector at the other I'm sure there's nothing special about the RedDrive's SATA port (and there's no need for it to be anyway) compared to the CF port.

So if you would build it, why would there be any warranty issues?

With thanks,

Paul

 

[Deanan]

Why does it need to be that way? The LEMO connector is based on eSATA, the drives ship with power adapters... what's the issue? It's just another way to get data off of the drives. If the cables were up to snuff, couldn't you guys approve them?

I love the way you trivialize everything. Up to snuff means alot more than just a cable soldered together especially when you're talking about thousands of cameras and even more raid drives. From tons of testing and prototype cables we know what can happen with marginal cables that "appear" to work just fine.

We've already seen some fried drives and cameras from people trying to make their own. It's far easier to fry things over sata than over fw800.

When unqualified cables fail in the field, the camera or the raid drive will take the fall first. Remember the hacked red drives that caused problems on a Heli shoot and everyone immediately blamed the camera for?

 

[Deanan]

Deanan, if the demand is there (which I'd say it is), then with the greatest of respect, why can't Red make the cable so there are no warranty issues to speak of? I'm sure you'd sell over a thousand easily!

I understand the concern about making it too easy to plug non-approved media into the camera, but to be honest, anyone who wants to do that today can do so via the CF port anyway if they chose to, given the connector there is a straight SATA power and data cable. But that doesn't work due to other blocks in the camera's firmware....

Other than the LEMO connector at one end and custom miniaturised board connector at the other I'm sure there's nothing special about the RedDrive's SATA port (and there's no need for it to be anyway) compared to the CF port.

So if you would build it, why would there be any warranty issues?

We understand the demand and have been looking at a solution. However, we'll only sell one until we've got a robust and reliable solution. It's too easy to cause all sorts of problems if it's not done right.

 

[Jason Osterday]

What is a common FW800 card PC users are using?

 

[Stuart English]

SATA cables

SATA cables

How about we turn this conversation around?

RED supplies a perfectly good LEMO based SATA cable for camera to RED-DRIVE use.

In addition the RED-DRIVE offers a FW800 port that is faster than the RED-DRIVE.


What exactly is the issue?

Bump...


Is the issue powering multiple FW800 drives?

 

[JanneJansson]

We understand the demand and have been looking at a solution. However, we'll only sell one until we've got a robust and reliable solution. It's too easy to cause all sorts of problems if it's not done right.

ESata have been arround for a while and I have used it in the field, from the buring heat and humidity from Africa, to the coold of northern Russia, and no problem.

All electronics are sensitive to statics and em-field. If you protect your gear from that in the same way you protect your stuff from mechanical shock and dust, then no problem.

I have spoken to some people that are using hacked cables, and no issues, works like charm if you keep the lenth to 20-30 cm (under 1 foot) and properly grounded drive and computer.

I have not done that, because I really like RED to make a approved cable, and I'm sure many pepole feel like me.

The issue of recording on non approved media, is another. If some people like to gamble, and possibly lose all data just because they are to cheep, then let em. I'm just for the option that you can, if you really need to.

So please-please RED make us some cool cables

Cheers

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

What to get your Red DIT for the holidays...

What to get your Red DIT for the holidays...

Why the lust for eSATA when FW800 is already faster than the drive reads?

1) When using the FW800 port, the drive sometimes won't show up - even when using the outboard AC power supply to the RedDrive. USB2 is more reliable but much slower (note - sometimes hooking up the USB tap will "wake up" the RedDrive for FW800, YMMV).

2) Clients often wish to use FireWire drives to store the data and loading up the FW bus with both the source (RedDrive) and as many as 3 "write to" drives can really slow things down (I am sure Jeff Kilgroe or some other propellerhead can explain the finer points of bi-directional packet arbitration or whatever else is going on).

If Deanan says that the issues surrounding eSATA implementation in the real world are deal killers then I, for one, am satisfied that with all its issues I will just have to keep nursing my FW800 daisy chain.

Does anyone know of a PCI based card that would provide a multi-lane FW800 solution with a robust power solution? It would be a Red DIT's christmas miracle

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

1) When using the FW800 port, the drive sometimes won't show up - even when using the outboard AC power supply to the RedDrive.

I've had this happen to me here and there. Sometimes the drive just disappears from the desktop or volumes list for no reason. I have to manually tell the system to mount the drive. Only happens on my Macbook Pro, haven't ever had it happen with the Mac Pro systems.... Yet. Seems to be more frequent if I'm bus-powering the drive from the MBP.

2) Clients often wish to use FireWire drives to store the data and loading up the FW bus with both the source (RedDrive) and as many as 3 "write to" drives can really slow things down (I am sure Jeff Kilgroe or some other propellerhead can explain the finer points of bi-directional packet arbitration or whatever else is going on).

With Firewire, each connected device is addressed individually. So even if you attach 3 FW drives and make two of them a mirror of your primary via software, you're still transferring 3X the amount of data. It's not as elegant as an actual RAID controller that can take incoming data and mirror it out to individual drive channels. I could probably give a much better and detailed answer if I dig out my beanie cap with the propeller.

Does anyone know of a PCI based card that would provide a multi-lane FW800 solution with a robust power solution? It would be a Red DIT's christmas miracle

Unfortunately, I don't know of any multi-host FW800 cards. One of the better FW800 cards out there is the StarTech card. It gives two 800 ports and one 400 port externally, but all share the same host controller. It is also one of the very few cards using the Agere 64x Firewire chipset, which is one of the only 2 or 3 PCIe to Firewire host controller sets on the market and the one Apple uses in its notebooks and the iMac. It also means that this card will work under OSX with no additional drivers. On Windows, there are no integrated drivers for FW800, it's up to third parties to provide drivers. Most FW800 cards have really flakey driver support and I don't know of any that currently have drivers for Vista64.

So in reality, FW800 support for PC users is a real problem right now. The Agere chipset does have decent Linux support and many Linux distros include drivers already rolled in. So the StarTech card is a good choice for Linux users too. I would probably add this card to a Mac Pro DIT station if I regularly had the need to offload to FW800 drives from a RED Drive.

For me, I always offload to eSATA. Well 99.5% of the time, anyway. I supply all the media. If the client wants to use their own drives, I guess they can, but I don't guaranty anything on media I don't supply, once I've copied the files and disconnect their drive. Any drives I supply are usually in Bytecc or Rosewill external enclosures that have both eSATA and FW800 ports. Clients always seem pleased, I only put a 15% or so mark-up on the drives and they're still cheaper than the equivalent Western Digital or similar unit from Best Buy or Fry's. I also let the client pay a media deposit that is mostly refundable when drives are returned if they want to do it that way instead of buying drives from me.

 

[Deanan]

Clients always seem pleased, I only put a 15% or so mark-up on the drives and they're still cheaper than the equivalent Western Digital or similar unit from Best Buy or Fry's.

I'd recommend staying away from Fry's. I know distributors/manufacturers who've said that they don't always mark refurbs properly or return gear that should be returned to the manufacturer.

The safest solution is to by buy the drives directly or if you're buying raw drives, buy them in the bulk or single packaging that comes sealed from the manufacturers. Even distributors can mistreat drives once it's out the original bulk packaging.

 

[Brook Willard]

I love the way you trivialize everything. Up to snuff means alot more than just a cable soldered together especially when you're talking about thousands of cameras and even more raid drives. From tons of testing and prototype cables we know what can happen with marginal cables that "appear" to work just fine.

We've already seen some fried drives and cameras from people trying to make their own. It's far easier to fry things over sata than over fw800.

When unqualified cables fail in the field, the camera or the raid drive will take the fall first.

You do make great points here. Ultimately I don't know what's involved in making something like this. But to my end-user perspective, I just see the same connection standard that is only blocked by a cabling issue. I don't mean to trivialize it because there are obviously larger things at play there [the testing, the production, etc]. So when it seems like I'm trivializing something like that... I don't mean to. It's just that I only have access to certain parts of a larger equation. It never looks like 2+2=5 when you don't know there's an "x" in there.

I'm working on phrasing things in a less inflammatory way... my apologies for the way that came across.

Remember the hacked red drives that caused problems on a Heli shoot and everyone immediately blamed the camera for?

To be honest with you... I don't. Every helicopter shoot I've been involved in has gone 100% according to plan and we've never lost footage or had problems of any kind. I mean this with the upmost respect, but I honestly think you're mixing a hacking story up with somebody else.

How about we turn this conversation around?

RED supplies a perfectly good LEMO based SATA cable for camera to RED-DRIVE use.

In addition the RED-DRIVE offers a FW800 port that is faster than the RED-DRIVE.


What exactly is the issue?

Bump...


Is the issue powering multiple FW800 drives?

Nah, it's unrelated to powering multiple drives... at least not in my case. It's not really an issue as much as it is a request.

I'll give an on set example. I work with two directors who like to shoot between 25,000 - 40,000 feet worth of footage a day across two cameras [the post house likes footage numbers in this case, but that's 11 minutes per 1,000 feet]. So lets say we're talking 200 minutes of footage per camera per day.

Just to make numbers easy, let's say we're doing 300GB per day per camera. On a given reload, I'll have two RED DRIVEs in my hands with roughly 20-40GB of material on them.

Let's pretend that on this job I'm lacking a second FW800 card. So I have a Mac Pro tower with the single internal FW800 bus and one additional FW800 bus provided by a FW800 card.

The drives we download to are G-Tech minis that only have a FW800 port.

That means that I have to transfer from two FW800 drives to two FW800 target drives using only 2 FW800 busses. I go to my RAID for additional backup as well, but I'll leave that out of this discussion.

Stacking multiple drives on the same FW800 bus [2 drives per bus] means that my transfer time is more than doubled. It's completely doable - I'll still wrap 5 minutes after camera - but it could be better.

If there were an eSATA to RED DRIVE cable, I could put the RED DRIVEs on an eSATA bus [or two] and take the burden off of the two FW800 busses. Now I can have the target drives on a FW800 bus each and transfer data at full speed from two RED DRIVEs via eSATA to two target drives via FW800 simultaneously without ever stacking busses.

It speeds thing up on a 600-900GB day.

It also gives backup plans. Let's say I'm on set and I lose a FW800 port on a RED DRIVE [or - as there are multiple points of failure on this chain - I lose a FW800 card or the internal bus]. Now I have to default to USB from the RED DRIVEs to FW800 for the target drives [using the single remaining bus]. For me, I'd pull out a second or third computer. It's why I carry multiple systems [had a logic board fail on set once... still made wrap! ]. But not everybody carries multiple systems and this might leave somebody on set for a while after wrap.

So having an RED DRIVE to eSATA cable would not only speed things up under certain circumstances on set, it would also give another layer of redundancy when things go wrong.

Thanks guys.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

FW800 is rare on PCs and my notebook does not have one. It does, however, have eSATA, and this is why eSATA is so desirable. Not essential, but it would be so bloody nice to have, it would make Santa's job trivial

 

[Stuart English]

SATA cables

SATA cables

Let's pretend that on this job I'm lacking a second FW800 card.....

.....it would also give another layer of redundancy when things go wrong.

Thanks for the explanation.

If such a cable were available from RED,

a) how long would you want it to be?

b) how would you power the RED-DRIVE? (SATA does not carry power)

 

[Brook Willard]

I'd say maybe an 18" and 5' [6'?] model would be great. The 18" model would be good for the laptop guys and the 5' model would be good for those with desktops on the bottom of their cart. If there's only room for one, I'd say make the longer one. Long cables can always be coiled... but short cables can never be extended safely.

My instinct says that I would power the drive with the DC power supply that it ships with. Knowing that the LEMO has provisions for DC power built in, there could be a female DC socket on the cable... but that seems like overkill.

It should work fine if the drive is powered up by the DC power supply, yeah?

Thanks for taking a look at this for me [and others], guys. It's December 24th, go take a day off. :wink:

 

[Stuart English]

SATA cables

SATA cables

Just want to capture your specific request Brook. No promises here.

 

[Paul Leeming]

I'm with Brook on this. The existing DC wall wart should work just fine for power. All we need is the data interface portion. Since SATA standard is maximum length of 2m (or 6') I'd go for a 5' option as first preference for flexibility.

Thanks for listening guys! Merry Christmas from Japan!!

Paul

 

[Brook Willard]

Just want to capture your specific request Brook. No promises here.

No worries, I appreciate that you're hearing me out either way. Thanks Stuart.

 

[JanneJansson]

Thank you Stuart and merry christmas