the main idea here is to get away from outdated drivers and a card based system and connect from the many r-bus devices 

https://lycawatch.com/

The V-Fire allows the user to convert Roland's R-BUS digital audio format to FireWire 

https://freestyles.app/%EB%A3%B0%EB%A0%9B%EC%82%AC%EC%9D%B4%ED%8A%B8

i am aware that it does but..they are hard to find and i would require at least 4 of them. thx for the post

kamisabaru bergabung,ada yang bisa mengajarkan saya menjadi hacker,saya mohon

kami

thanks for the reply. I have 6 r-bus cards already.3 are rpc-1 which are 8 channels each  or tracks of digital audio and 3 are the m-audio delta r-bus which do 10 ch or tracks. unfortunately they will only function om my old modded apple G4 dual 1.25 Ghz cpu of which i use two synced with time code., what i was hoping for is to use my G5 dual cpu which are much more powerful than the G4's and have up to 12 GB of memory ( as opposed to 2 GB in the G4's). i use logic audio ( a program that will only run on macos. there is reason for this regarding the object orientated "environment " section of this program. my many G5's ( which i invested in back when they were a new computer) have faster usb 2.0 ports both 400 and 800. the main idea here is to get away from outdated drivers and a card based system and connect from the many r-bus devices i have.. direct to the firewire ports. i have managed to sync several of the G5's in anticipation of using the firewire, this would yeild me well over 100 digital tracks..allowing me to do orchestrations etc.  i tried to use a pcie to pci adapter ( no drivers required)  with no joy on the G5's. the computer saw the adapter but will not see the cards in it even with the correct drivers for the cards.  the adapters are voltage compensated for the audio cards. so..the idea (which i believe is a sound one) is to convert to an interface that translates the r-bus to firewire. there are 25 pin scsi to firewire devices that were made at one point and some are still available however the average price is about $500 usd.. given that i require at least 12 of them to cover my r-bus devices it becomes financially impossible for me to do that ( even if i could find that many scsi to firewire devices,. the 25 pin scsi can easily be rewired to the r-bus format..the hard part is then changing that to firewire. if it's a physical format change that would be relatively easy but i suspect there is more to it than that.. quite possibly an electronic value issue. that's where i need someone who see's this as a fun project and can possibly see the financial gains as well.. who is up for the challenge. (there are a lot of people out there who have these systems from roland and are stuck with old os's and hard to find drivers and hardware ( audio cards) . the cost to replace these with newer systems is usually cost prohibitive . i see this conversion to firewire as a two step issue. r-bus to scsi ( 25 pin) and scsi to firewire.  there is a story behind all of this that would be long and probably quite boring , it involves promises made and a war vet. i thank you for providing me with info in your reply and hope for success in your projects.

R-Bus is entirely proprietary and in no way related to SCSI.  You would have better luck plugging a Super Nintendo game into a Sega Genesis.  Honestly, your cheapest (non-technical) solution here is to replace the equipment that only uses R-Bus.  From there, you either pay out the nose or dig into a very technical field.

you are correct..after checking what i could r-bus is a completely different format. i had forgotten about word clock etc. so..it's a no go from my standpoint as i'm too invested in what i have so..it's back to the pci cards. thanks again for your research on my behalf

"i'm too invested in what i have"

Don't keep making the same mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.  Recoup much of your costs by selling off the equipment and then switch to something widely supported and standardized.

it's not about "I'm too invested in what i have" ( what i meant was too invested in terms of time)it's about making do with what i have. in my case there are a few mitigating circumstances involved...like i'm on an old age pension and simply can't afford to upgrade every couple of years.i've also managed to turn the "mixers" into very good midi controllers using the environment section in logic (apple) it gives me a vast motorized system that exceeds what is available on the market as of this writing . i've been doing that kind of stuff since the mid '80's. i also use my 1/2" tascam with dbx in sync (when necessary). i just thought that with all the smart folks on this site someone would have found a way to convert r-bus to firewire, but i CAN make do with the card based system until fortune smiles upon me (if and when). the r-bus is for input only in my studio, all the rest is done on my software sequencers (daw) eq fx etc. it would be nice if the situation arises where i can obtain newer computers to be able to simply transfer the cpu load over to them via firewire bypassing the need for card drivers and pci slots etc.anyway..thanks for the investment of time you have made on my behalf in going "down the rabbit hole" i've been there myself a number of times and on several occasions have actually caught the rabbit.

I went down the rabbit hole on this question.

Well, this is a long defunct connector but it's not all bad news.  This exceptionally extinct format's PCI card shouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer.  I say this because they don't rely on an obscure IC but rather a couple Xilinx Spartan XL (XCS30XL) chips.

I found a couple good close up shots of the board: https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/roland-rpc-1-279203.jpg https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/roland-rpc-1-2486509.jpg

And one shot clearly showing the FPGA markings: https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/s--OLCQC49E--/a_exif,c_limit,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_south,q_auto:eco,w_1280/v1478950396/cbbsnzkanbc4lienovxl.jpg

So, if you can scrounge up some cash to buy a Roland RPC-1 PCI card then you can dump the Xilinx two bitstream memory chips.  They are even socketed DIP, so that should be easy.  I doubt someone is going to document these old bitstream formats which makes your best option to use it as is.  While the XCS30XL is also extinct, you can make a new PCB with them by either transplanting them, buy a few off ebay, or pay an outrageous fee to chip stockpilers in China.

Now the PCI interface chip (ICE1712 aka Envy24) itself actually has a nice datasheet describing what it does: https://alsa-project.org/files/files/pub/datasheets/icensemble/envy24.pdf

Building your own interface is entirely possible.  However, if this is all above your head then you are best off getting the PCI card and getting a PCI to USB interface.  However, you will need drivers for the original board which probably aren't a thing in the modern Windows era.  This leaves you the option of using Linux (which supports the Envy24 chipset) or fighting with a VM to run an old version of Windows that supports the driver.