Abdelkader Boudih

2026-07-23 09:40:45

Now let me tell you about the 87th commit.

It was about FireWire.

github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src…

Most people think FireWire died when USB became famous. It didnt.

Its still used by professional audio interfaces, DV camcorders, industrial and scientific cameras, and plenty of legacy equipment that continues to do its job every day. Audio equipment don't need upgrades if they are still operating correctly. A firewire cable is superior to a new USB cable.

That where i tested it. The users just kept using old version of MacOS that don't even have updated SSH.

Together with Adrian Chadd, we dusted off the stack, rediscovered how it worked, cleaned it up, and refactored years of accumulated code.

And we didnt stop there.

We also added three new drivers:

• fwcam - Firewire webcams
• fwisound - Apple FireWire audio interfaces.
• fwdv - DV camcorders, including many classic Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC models.

That means #FreeBSD can now talk directly to equipment that many operating systems have quietly abandoned.

Someone in reddit used it to dump 50 tapes of childhood to digital format. I used it to have a zoom call with FreeBSD wifi group. :)

firewire: remove deprecation notice from manual page · freebsd/freebsd-src@e7efe2f

Reviewed by: ziaee, imp Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58267

^GitHub