What is it Firewire?

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Fri Jun 27, 2003 5:43 pm

Just what is it?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 28, 2003 5:43 am

hi Nestor,

an excerpt from the link below:
...Since 1,393 standards had already been considered, their efforts were called IEEE 1394. Several of the elders from the house of Apple preferred a less numeric name and called their version of IEEE 1394, FireWire.

here the details: http://www.vxm.com/21R.49.html

cheers, Tom

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sat Jun 28, 2003 9:07 am

Much faster than USB, but nowhere near as popular. Maybe with USB 2 it is in danger of fading away ?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 28, 2003 1:20 pm

Spirit, you're kidding - it's built in every current camcorder and on all mobos

cheers, Tom

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sat Jun 28, 2003 7:41 pm

Thanks, that's clear now... My confusion was that FireWire and IEEE 1394 were the same thing, and I assumed they were different... Cheers

BTW, yes, they are everywere, despite this, I've never used it myself yet...

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 1:57 am

mostly video capturing.. I've seen some mac users use firewire harddisks, but video in/out is probably the number 1 use for firewire.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 2:06 am

Ok, this will be great for my video making in the future... What about music? How can we take advantage of this, are there options, special connexions? Anybody using it?

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 2:22 am

firewire audio devices (audio IO) are becoming more and more popular. Motu's got a few, believe the just released a new version of 828. Basically, what I think is cool about firewire is that notebooks have them. (atleast Mac Powerbooks do) and this means, you can have state of the art audio IO wherever you go. So, it's good for live performances, or on the spot recording (in the woods?) etc. I'm not sure what the true benefit would be on a desktop. The older 828 was good quality from my experience, and my video editing friend uses it on his desktop. So the quality is good. (don't have to worry too much)

Anyhow, the firewire audio IO trend shows that audio workstations are becoming more and more portable. That's a cool idea.

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 8:38 am

Yes, that is good. What would be realy good would be, if Magma got some competition, so we can go CW portable a bit less expensive.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 9:54 am

On 2003-06-28 14:20, astroman wrote:
Spirit, you're kidding - it's built in every current camcorder and on all mobos

cheers, Tom

No, I'm not kidding

Firewire has been around for a long time and only just taken off (outside the Apple world). USB2 has only arrived lately and is already an equal competitor and (I think) has much better "brand recognition".

We must wait and see whether Firewire camcorders continue or if some manufacturers switch to USB2. This could be a real deadly blow to Firewire.

Also I must correct myself - Firewire is in fact *slower* than USB2.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,844061,00.asp

Also this from PC Mag:

"USB 2.0 hard drives will continue to dominate the market, because FireWire is more expensive for PC manufacturers to implement. Most new desktop PC chipsets include integrated USB 2.0, making it essentially free. And soon all notebooks based on the Intel Centrino processor will have chipset support for USB 2.0. Meanwhile, many PCs still do not include FireWire ports, and FireWire is not fully integrated into any chipsets."

[ This Message was edited by: Spirit on 2003-06-29 11:10 ]

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 1:13 pm

true, firewire seems to be mainly an Apple thing.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 10:18 pm

On 2003-06-29 10:54, Spirit wrote:

Also I must correct myself - Firewire is in fact *slower* than USB2.

[ This Message was edited by: Spirit on 2003-06-29 11:10 ]

Not anymore. Check out 1394b.

Sam

kimgr · Post by **kimgr** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 12:32 am

On 2003-06-29 10:54, Spirit wrote:
Also I must correct myself - Firewire is in fact *slower* than USB2.

In theory yes, 480Mbit versus 400, but try and mount a Firewire/USB2 harddisk on the same system and benchmark it.
My results: Firewire = 34MB/sec, USB2 = 16MB/sec .....
USB2 controller chips might be cheaper, but they also seem to be a lot slower.

Kim.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 9:35 am

Remember when Apples all had SCSI? It seems Apple always picks the loser technology.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 9:40 am

Everything serves something in a given time... now, it seems it's the time for Firewire...

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 11:06 am

No Braincell, I won't pick up this ball

but I can assure you that without Apple's propagation there wouldn't be any USB on PC mobos at all. The standard was widely rejected in the PC press as 'too old fashioned', 'too slow', etc when it was introduced

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2003-06-30 12:09 ]

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 12:55 pm

On 2003-06-30 10:35, braincell wrote:
Remember when Apples all had SCSI? It seems Apple always picks the loser technology.

dude, that 'loser technology' got a hell of a lot of recordings made while PCs were still struggling with this realtime music stuff.

get a perspective.

(and I'm not a mac user incidentally)

peace

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 2:33 pm

uh.. let's get on and forget the number war yeah?
Despite the speed issue and all, I capture DV with firewire, in fact, the program I'm working on uses live DV input from firewire. And there are also some other interesting audio devices for firewire.

Firewire's here right now, there are many devices built for firewire and they mostly work with good stability, as far as I know. I think that's all there is to it.

Post by **garyb** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 12:27 am

why,you're right!

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 2:34 am

Damn right... I have a firewire hard drive and I really don't know how I could live without it.. it's got me out of some really tricky situations (for example weird networking scenarios), it rocks!

peace