Newbie....what is fire wire?

[brewerbob]

I keep hearing little tidbits about someone having fire wire or omething supporting fire wire but what is it?

 

[dcdomain]

Do you know what USB (universal serial bus) is? Well, FIREWIRE (IEEE1394) is basically it's competitor. Firewire was created by Apple, and USB by Intel's gang. Firewire is a lot faster than USB, about 30 times faster, I think Firewire has a max throughput of 400mbps and USB is around 12mbps. Both standards are hot pluggable and you can daisy chain devices. USB 2 is almost out, and Firewire 2 will be out shortly afterwards. I think USB 2 will increase to around 400mbps and Firewire 2 will double that. But I'm not sure, just trying to remember stuff at the PC Expo in NY this past summer.

In the end, most devices use USB, while digital camcorders and the like uses Firewire...

 

[Radboy]

Firewire is basically a high-speed serial x-fer protocol, designed by Apple, that x-fers up to 400Mbit/s (I think, not sure). You can buy Firewire hard drives today, but the most common application is for DV camcorders. Whereas SCSI has a wide bit footprint (16 bits wide), Firewire is narrower (tho I don't know how narrrow). PCI is 32 bits wide, with some mobos sporting 64-bit (wide) PCI busses. Same kinda thing with DRAM vs Rambus. DRAM is wide, Rambus is narrow.

I like to think of it as a freeway vs a train. The freeway moves slower than the train, but is much wider. Whereas the train is narrow, it moves at a faster speed (clock rate). Both can x-fer a large number of people (data) from point A to point B .. using diff methods.

I could be wrong.

 

[Soccerman]

I do not know the bit width of firewire (16 bits etc), but I do know some other things.

Firewire is similar to a Parallel port, or SCSI, in that it doesn't use nearly as much CPU time as it's competitor, in this case USB.

USB was designed with computer peripherals in mind, and does not (currently) reach high speeds needed for hard drives, CDROMs, or anything that is bandwidth intensive like Camcorders.

even WHEN USB 2.0 does reach the bandwidth of Firewire currently, it still has CPU usage problems, so performance wise, Hard drives, and the like will still perform better on Firewire.

Firewire currently runs at up to 400mbps, USB 1.0 has a maximum transfer rate of 12 mbps (that's megaBITS per second).

USB 2.0 (not available yet) runs at a slightly FASTER rate then Firewire, at I think about 480 mbps, however Firewire will be released in faster variants afterwards.

Firewire is also being adopted in the home audio sector, as one of the main ways to connect peripherals together (CD players, Recievers, DVD players, etc).

firewire also has the ability to connect many many devices together (I think about 64 per port), and I think uses CSMA/CD for multiplexing the devices that want to use the same wire at the same time.

and firewire does not need drivers installed every time you plug a device into your computer, so if you plug a HD in, it will just appear in My computer, without drivers needed.

 

[Hanpan]

Just wanted to mention csma/cd stands for

Carier Sense Multiple Acess with Colision Detection.

Guess all that schooling finaly came in handy.

 

[brewerbob]

Is firewire Apple only? Or can it be used on PC's as well? I have a camcorder that I want to download vids from. It's not digital, should I look more into firewire or will a good video card cover me?

I'm planning on getting either the geforce ultra or the annilator ultra.

 

[Hanpan]

It can be used in pc's

Asus makes a motherbaord with firewire called the p3b-1394.

Check it out here.

 

[Mday]

Is firewire Apple only? Or can it be used on PC's as well?

No, it's not apple only, though apple owns the patent. it can be used on a PC as long as you have a firewire controller. the standalone PCI card costs $50 and up. some video editting suites come with a firewire controller to transfer digital videos from a digital camera.

I have a camcorder that I want to download vids from. It's not digital, should I look more into firewire or will a good video card cover me?

firewire is a digital connection. i believe only digital cameras have firewire. anyway, if your camera does not have firewire on it, having the controller does not help you.

if you do want to have those vids on your computer, you should look into an analog video capture device that uses svideo, or composite video input, and rca for audio.

a good video card means nothing with respect to capturing video. since it is not exactly up to the video card. you need a capture card. tomshardware.com wrote a memorable article on capturing devices for the PC. here is one with all-in-one cards and here is one involving tv cards which is more for tv than pure video capturing

I'm planning on getting either the geforce ultra or the annilator ultra.

those are gaming cards really. they can't capture video from a source.. asus makes geforce based video cards with video capturing capabilities.

and there are standalone capturing devices.

 

[Mday]

and look up video capturing at those print magazine sites. they usually have descriptions of products. and if you do find yourself wanting a capture device, start a new thread in the video forum, or do a search there.