John R Pierce wrote: > On 3/16/2017 11:12 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> I'm still trying to find a video capture card that won't crash Dell >> servers, and ran across a Blackmagic BDLKDUO2 DeckLink Duo 2. It claims >> to support Linux. I'm also seeing, in the few non-Blabkmagic or sales >> pages I can find, that they like "binary blobs". I also haven't been >> able to find anything about o/s or library requirements. >> >> Has anyone run across these cards, or know anything at all about >> them? >> All we're doing with them is running a few video cameras in for >> surveillance of our secure rooms, no audio, nothing fancy, with the >> motion package reading the input. > > I would use tcp/ip network cameras, ideally with PoE to simplify running > power to them. plus cat-5 is a lot easier to run than coax or HDMI. > <snip> Thanks, but no. IP cameras are explicitly right out. I said "secure rooms" (no, no, these are not server rooms, "Server Room" requires serious paperwork, etc....) but they *are* secure. We want no one able to connect but us. And we've already got some perfectly good cameras that run BNC. The reason I'm back to looking is the BT878 cards we have work fine... on older, non-Dell servers. Firmware updates? What are those? A few years ago, I tried tracking down the manufacturer... who got sold, and sold again, and IIRC, sold again. I tried contacting the final owner, and got no answer whatever. So, we were looking for a newer capture card. These Blackmagic are PCIe; I think the BT878's are PCI, or maybe PCI-x, and personally, I think there's an issue in the chip Dell uses on their m/b to convert - it's a TI chip. Anyway, thanks for the thought. Oh, right... and we would not want a camera that we can't update the firmware, and might be sending info back to China, or maybe it's being used in a DDoS attack via the IoT.... mark