Apple forgot about old video cameras so Missouri man fixes them with a Raspberry Pi and some DIY tech

A YouTuber revived a vintage Canon GL1 camera, which used the old Apple FireWire tech, with a much more modern Raspberry Pi. 

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Apple developed FireWire, also known by the less catchy moniker IEEE 1394, as a serial bus for real-time data transfer. 

Think of it as a bit like the USB, but unlike the USB, these days it’s virtually unheard of.

However, YouTuber Jeff Geerling was able to ‘bring back the spirit’ of older cameras that used FireWire with some modern-day tech, and a bit of DIY. 

He used a Raspberry Pi to solve a problem with his vintage camera

Unlike today, when almost everything is digitalized, a few decades back, cameras like the Canon GL1 recorded straight onto tape. 

And if you wanted to ditch the tapes in favor of a digital recording, you’d need to buy something called a Memory Recording Unit (MRU), which connected to the camera via an Apple FireWire connection. 

An MRU is a great way to save your footage to a compact flashcard, a bit like how modern cameras work, and meant that wannabe content creators could simply shoot their footage, upload it to a computer, and start editing, without having to mess around transferring the video over from tape. 

However, these MRUs didn’t come cheap, and even in 2026, MRUs can still sell for a high price, due to their vintage appeal, but tech expert and YouTuber Jeff discovered a more modern solution. 

Rather than fork out for an old MRU for his GL1, he got a Raspberry Pi, a FireWire HAT, and used some open-source software to build his own. 

The FireWire HAT gave the Pi some physical buttons and a simple user interface, which meant that it was basically a ‘plug and play’, but how well did it work on the vintage camera?

How well did it actually work?

Jeff was able to hook up the DIY MRU to the GL1 with no issues and began recording.

He then used an old Mac to access the footage to see how it turned out. 

The video itself had a pretty cool, retro feel to it and came with a healthy dose of nostalgia for those of us who are a certain age. 

As for the DIY MRU, it worked perfectly and appeared to be just as good as the real deal, although it was admittedly a little more fiddly than using a modern camera.

Recording with a FireHat and a camcorder isn’t as easy as a modern camera’s workflows, but it’s about as good as it gets with old DV cams. 

Which just goes to show that sometimes, old problems can be solved with modern solutions.

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