What was this? (Spike, the first RED)

[Zac C]

http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/9_1167523439.jpg

Where the CF card slot is now... what is the circular bulge?

I was just going through the archives of recon, and saw that

[B Newberry]

I think it was the optional fiber optic based RAW data interface.

[Zac C]

I think it was the optional fiber optic based RAW data interface.

interesting

Thanks!

[jbeale]

At one time, Red was going to do an optical data-out port for recording uncompressed to an external Raid. It was canceled due to lack of enough interest to support the presumably substantial development costs.

I'm not sure if that's relevant to this particular photo, but I think there was some early prototype that had uncompressed output; a working Redcode system came after the working sensor.

[Stuart English]

Yes, that was the originally proposed "RAW Port" This was fiber optic output of uncompressed (323 MB/s) data to a to be defined external DDR-type device.

Once REDCODE was demonstrated, the advantage of recording to CF card or RED-DRIVE became crystal clear, and RAW port was dropped as an available option.