Question about DVR/Video in cards I was recently given.

[cwatkin 0]

I was recently given a dead Dell OptiPlex GX 620 that had once served as a security system for a retail store. The person who gave this unit to me is a store manager but knows nothing technical about computers at all. It was diagnosed as dead and he wanted it disposed of properly. I looked into this again and the unit would power on very intermittently. All my troubleshooting suggests that the motherboard is just plain worn out.

 

Anyway, there is an interesting set of PCI cards inside this machine with 8x BNC ports and some odd strip type connector. One is obviously the main card. There is a chip with "PLX PCI6140-AA33PC G 0620 MMOS6 Singapore" written on it. This card has 4x BNC ports while there is another daughter card that has 4x more. There is an additional daughter card with a ribbon cable that has some odd green connector I have never seen before. This ribbon cable wasn't connected inside the PC so I assume this wasn't being used.

 

I am curious if this card has support for Windows Vista/7 or even 8/8.1. The system was running Windows XP its entire life and I have found some sites suggesting support for at least Windows 7 but then they want you to download some driver update utility of questionable character to update my drivers. I don't see any other brand names or identifying marks on any of these boards.

 

I have a basic two camera CCTV system setup to record to an old laptop I had laying around. It uses 2x cheap Chinese analog to digital USB adapters off eBay and some Chinese analog cameras from Harbor Freight. This setup has worked very well for me and the cameras are sturdy and well made for the money. The image quality is about like old style TV so it is nothing special but much better than nothing. I have seen some nice BNC cameras and was wondering if this card was worth installing in another PC for recording purposes.

 

Anyone else use this card? Do you like it?

 

Conor

[Horizon 0]

Hi Conor.

The PLX PCI6140 is a PCI to PCI bridge. It interfaces the video capture chips to the computer's PCI bus.

You will have other slightly smaller chips on the card, probably four of them. These are the ones that do the video capture. What are their numbers?

 

Yeah, TV quality (and low definition TV at that) is what you'll get from this composite video capture card. IP cameras are better, but composite is still adequate for many tasks.