Apple Firedrill Prototype Card

The Apple TriMedia Card Prototype (code named FireDrill) is one of the most common prototype hardware items from Apple, although the exact number of these cards produced is unknown, they were quite common and where available from many retailers, ranging in price from $5 to over $100. Many people picked these cards up as one of the more affordable ways to own an Apple prototype device or simply out of curiosity.

The card itself was born in 1997 out of a partnership of Apple Inc. (then Apple Computer Inc.) and a company called TriMedia, which manufactured a series of multimedia processors designed to aid in handling of audio and video data. Apple was searching for a way to incorporate their new FireWire device interface on a PCI card, which also accelerated the video users with FireWire digital video cameras would be working with, thus the card includes two FireWire ports as well as video interfaces. Two 100 MHz TriMedia TM1000 processors and one Texas Instruments FireWire controller are the main components of the circuit board, along with supporting memory chips and bus controllers.

To the best of my knowledge no software was ever released for this card outside Apple and therefore the TriMedia processors and audio/video ports remain useless, however, the FireWire ports function normally under Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10.4.10. Other versions are most likely supported. These ports are limited to a speed of 200 megabits per second, whereas all FireWire equipped devices Apple released are rated for 400. Any FireWire device can be used with the card normally, albeit at a lower speed.

When tested in a Power Macintosh 7500 and a Power Macintosh G4/400 Sawtooth, the TriMedia processors run extremely hot. So hot in fact I was able to remove the glued-on heat sink from one of the chips - hence the photo of the chip.

During the card's development, Apple began to see the processing power of the current PowerPC processors scale much faster than that of the TriMedia chips and abandoned the project. FireWire, however, remains one of the most widely used interfaces for digital video, hard drives and other devices.

If you have any software for this card, please email me using the link at the bottom of the page.

Like most prototype boards made by Apple, this one is not your typical green colour and is a nice red. These days Apple produces many boards of different colours such as the blue G5 motherboards.	The back of the card contains the board's memory chips and other minor components.
Here you see the set of connectors on the board. The connectors are unlabeled, but they appear to be: (from left to right) S-video, BNC connector for video, two FireWire 200 connectors, and finally a second BNC video connector.	This is one of the dual TriMedia TM1000 processors running at 100 MHz with the heat sink removed.
Here you can see both chips with their heat sinks installed.	The board's text reads: APPLE COMPUTER INC. 820-0872 Copyright 1997 AP2819-06.
Here's a shot of the board showing various components.	The two 200 Mbit/second FireWire ports on the card. As you can see, the metal plate on my board is slightly rusted - most likely due to storage in a humid environment before my purchase on eBay.
This 60-pin connector seems to be a DAV (Digital Audio Video) connector similar to those on PowerPC Macintosh computers of the time, although its true function is unknown.	Here you see one of the two BNC connectors located on the card. Presumably these are video in and video out ports, however, this has not been confirmed by myself.
This Texas Instruments chip - labeled 74NIDNJ TSB12LV21APGF - appears to be the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) to PCI bridge chip.	Another view of the Texas Instruments FireWire to PCI bridge.
Four of these CY7C199-15VC SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) chips running at 15ns provide 128 KB of very fast memory - presumably a caching system.	Four SEC KM416S1120AT-G10 appear to be 16 MB, SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) chips, which combine to 64 MB.
This chip, manufactured by Digital - labeled as 21152-AA DC1040D 21-44048-01 - appears to be the PCI to PCI bridge chip for the board.	The final large item on the board is a Texas Instruments - labeled 343S1209 1997 Apple F642397A/P E 77AFOEW - is more difficult to track down. I am unsure as to its function.
Here is an Apple System Profiler report from Mac OS 9 showing four detected devices on the card. Digital Equipment PCI-bridge, Texas Instruments chip - most likely the FireWire controller, and finally, two Philips Semiconductor TriMedia TM1000/1100 chips.	This Mac OS X System Profiler report shows one of two detected devices on the card. A Digital Equipment DC21151/2 PCI-PCI bridge chip.
The second device detected on the card is identified as a Texas Instruments LYNX IEEE1394 FireWire Host Controller.	Under the FireWire tab a second bus is detected (the machine has on-board FireWire 400 ports) and rated at 200 Mbit/sec.
Here you can see a FireWire hard drive attached and functioning normally using one of the card's ports. Note the speed of 200 Mbit/second where the maximum is shown as being 400.

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