I was wondering if it would be possibe for some one to make an adaptor that acts like P2 card that actually connects to a removable standard PC hard drive? Maybe the guys over at Firestore could look into this.

Or can this new pansonic work with the new HD Firestore (i know it was intended for HDV). A simple firewire cable to a harddrive is a nice solution

I was thinking the same thing. If the cards load in the back, just guessing here. Then I was wondering if someone could invent a hard drive that would also hold the hard drive and a battery in the back of the camera and it would just slide into the p2 slots or just one of the slots.

Jan saw that you were online. Too bad you can't say yeah or neah.

Actually 5 GB hard disks in the PC-card form factor already exist, and they can potentially be manufactured with much larger capacities using current technology. They should physically fit in the P2 slot, but it is not known yet if the HDX200's firmware will allow writing data to such a card.

Maybe these could be of use?


http://www.bixnet.com/5gbpcmcihard.html
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/...html?AMA-100101
http://store.yahoo.com/laptopsforless/pcmcilaphard.html
http://www.superwarehouse.com/ABSpl...US-100/p/467846

I think it should work, as it was said that when the P2 cards are placed into a PCMCIA slot it acts like a removeable hard disk, therefore i think the P2 cards are already complying to some kind of existing standard.


EDIT:

The "PCMCIA Laptop Hard Drive Adapter PN: PCM250AM"

is exactly what i was thinking of, hmm $30 thats amazing, just place this into the camera and add the hard drive of your choice example: 160GB drive for £60 (Source : Malplin UK)

Hold on there is one way that this can be checked:

Anyone have a AJ-SPX800 camcorder, go and buy one of these $30 adaptor and stick in a harddrive and test it out..

My hunch says it will work.

If it works can i be credited for mentioning it first ? (just kiddin, i know lots of people have probably been thinking on the same line)

My hunch says it will not. Most likely --even if it could work-- the camera checks to see if what is inserted is a Panasonic P2 card and not a standard PC-card... remember Panasonic say the P2 cards can act as hard drives in a PC-card slot, but sayhave nothing of things working the othe way around, and they don't market the camera as having PC-card slots, thus only specify P2, so they no obligation to be PC-card compatible.

I hear what your saying, and it makes sense, however unless someone can test it, both our points are just opinions.

If it did turn out that what you say is true, you could allways emulate the harddrive to act like a P2, after all P2 is nothing more than plain old RAM.

Hmm anyone live near a rental store who has a PC card? That would be the easiest means I would think. I'm up in good ol' Montana so I don't have access to this sort of camera.

One thing is the harddrive writespeeds.
I don't know, but are they fast enough for 100 Mbits/s sustained? Anyone know?

I sure would think they are, after all you can capture DVCPRO-HD on Final Cut Pro straight to disk right? And those Mac harddrives are usually just normal SATA drives.