FDMS-3 Ripper is a Perl tool that can extract tracks from the FDMS-3 filesystem.
FDMS-3 Ripper is a Perl program that helps extract tracks from the FDMS-3 filesystem. As a music enthusiast, I recently acquired the Fostex FD-8 multitrack hard disk recorder to record music. Unfortunately, there was no way to extract the recorded tracks from the hard drive to my PC over the SCSI port. That meant my only options were to use the analog-out or buy a costly $500 ADAT card for my PC.
Instead of giving up, I decided to come up with a way to extract the music directly over the SCSI port. The Fostex FD-8 uses the FDMS-3 filesystem, which is proprietary. I connected the recorder to my PC and probed the drive to quickly understand the basic layout of the filesystem. The FDMS-3 Ripper is designed to extract tracks from hard disks formatted in the FDMS-3 "Mastering" mode that stores audio data in uncompressed format.
To use this program, you must have the hard disk with the FDMS-3 filesystem hooked up to your PC. Linux must be able to see the drive, but do not mount it. You may want to check out the SCSI-2.4-HOWTO to aid in the recognition of the drive. The hard disk may also end up located somewhere else on your PC.
You should have perl, sox, and fileutils (for the "dd" utility) installed on your system to run the program. However, be careful as this program has significant security issues. The script needs direct access to the hard disk, so you can either run it as root (unsafe) or change the permissions for the hard disk device.
Once you have everything set up, run the program with "./fdms3rip /dev/sda" (substituting the actual location of your hard disk). This will list all the programs on the hard disk. Follow by running the program again with the number of the program you wish to fetch off the hard disk, such as "./fdms3rip /dev/sda 5" to get all the recorded tracks for program number 5. After a brief wait, there should be a group of WAV files on your Linux machine.
It is important to note that this program will create and erase files named "dir" and "header" in the directory it is run from. It would be best practice to run this program from a clean directory to avoid issues.
Instead of giving up, I decided to come up with a way to extract the music directly over the SCSI port. The Fostex FD-8 uses the FDMS-3 filesystem, which is proprietary. I connected the recorder to my PC and probed the drive to quickly understand the basic layout of the filesystem. The FDMS-3 Ripper is designed to extract tracks from hard disks formatted in the FDMS-3 "Mastering" mode that stores audio data in uncompressed format.
To use this program, you must have the hard disk with the FDMS-3 filesystem hooked up to your PC. Linux must be able to see the drive, but do not mount it. You may want to check out the SCSI-2.4-HOWTO to aid in the recognition of the drive. The hard disk may also end up located somewhere else on your PC.
You should have perl, sox, and fileutils (for the "dd" utility) installed on your system to run the program. However, be careful as this program has significant security issues. The script needs direct access to the hard disk, so you can either run it as root (unsafe) or change the permissions for the hard disk device.
Once you have everything set up, run the program with "./fdms3rip /dev/sda" (substituting the actual location of your hard disk). This will list all the programs on the hard disk. Follow by running the program again with the number of the program you wish to fetch off the hard disk, such as "./fdms3rip /dev/sda 5" to get all the recorded tracks for program number 5. After a brief wait, there should be a group of WAV files on your Linux machine.
It is important to note that this program will create and erase files named "dir" and "header" in the directory it is run from. It would be best practice to run this program from a clean directory to avoid issues.
What's New
Version 3: N/A