jandeboevrie6d ago

Using FireWire on a Raspberry Pi

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/firewire-on-a-raspberry-pi/

Using FireWire on a Raspberry Pi

After learning Apple killed off FireWire (IEEE 1394) support in macOS 26 Tahoe, I started looking at alternatives for old FireWire equipment like hard drives, DV cameras, and A/V gear. I own an old Canon GL1 camera, with a 'DV' port. I could plug that into an old Mac (like the dual G4 MDD above) with FireWire—or even a modern Mac running macOS < 26, with some dongles—and transfer digital video footage between the camera and an application like Final Cut Pro.

Jeff Geerling
Show threadAurornis6d ago
Delightful that this still works. It would be interesting to go through the kernel tree and see how much maintenance goes into Firewire related code. Other than pulling data off of old devices, I wonder how many people are out there still using Firewire.
Show threadgeerlingguy

There's still a thriving (albeit small) community of skateboarders, retro enthusiasts, and even some AV pros who have FireWire equipment in active use.

In the kernel, the last commit in the IEEE 1394 area was a month or so ago—it's not 'active' maintenance, but its definitely being maintained, and is quite stable in my testing. (Thanks a ton to the current maintainer, who's going to go through the 3 year process of sunsetting full kernel support, and coordinating that with external projects!)

Mar 26 at 10:21pmWeb
Show threadargsnd6d ago
That’s actually pretty cool, I’m surprised there’s skateboarders that still use VX1000s or whatever instead of moving on to GoPros etc