Behind the Scenes: the story of the Rack Recorder that never was… – 2007

“If you feel like you know all of our products, but not this one, it is because the product that never saw the light of day. It was a rack-mount hard-disk / DVD-RAM recorder / telecine playback machine to try and supplant the Foster DV824. This aborted product was the first one on which Paul Isaacs (Product Design) and I collaborated – me in Wisconsin, and he in New Zealand at the time. I had become a hard-core digital designer by this point, however, I reached for the secret too soon on this one. This product was designed around the ill-fated Virtex-4 FPGA and my first attempt at using Linux for the core OS. Both Linux and FPGA-based architecture were the future (it is what is used in the A20-Nexus today) but it was too soon for either to be viable. Paul did a great product definition, and I ended up hiring him full-time. He ended up moving to Wisconsin and has lived happily ever after with Sound Devices.”