FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394

Does anyone really use FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394. Or is that old
technology?

One of my computers had a card in it for this, and I never knew what it
was for. It just said IEEE 1394 on it. I finally looked it up. Yet, I
have never seen anything with those kind of plugs on it. Maybe this is
just something used for commercial applications, and not at home.

It seems that almost everything these days is USB, except for the old
style keyboard & mouse connectors (DIN).

If this Firewire has any uses, what plugs into it?

By the way, is Firewire approved by Fire Codes?

wrote:
Does anyone really use FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394. Or is that old
technology?

One of my computers had a card in it for this, and I never knew what it
was for. It just said IEEE 1394 on it. I finally looked it up. Yet, I
have never seen anything with those kind of plugs on it. Maybe this is
just something used for commercial applications, and not at home.

It seems that almost everything these days is USB, except for the old
style keyboard & mouse connectors (DIN).

If this Firewire has any uses, what plugs into it?

By the way, is Firewire approved by Fire Codes?


There is a six pin and a four pin plug.

The six pin has power on it.

The four pin does not.

A camcorder has a four pin. You can get six to four adapters
which just drop the unused power wires.

*******

Firewire can be used to capture content from a camcorder.
Most of the people who actively continue to use Firewire 400,
would probably use it for that.

*******

Firewire is now too slow to be competitive with more modern
enclosure interconnect. I have a couple 5.25" IDE enclosures
with six pin interfaces on them. You can daisy chain them.
The first enclosure in line, transfers at 30MB/sec. The
second enclosure that comes after the first, gets 20MB/sec,
and the chip inside the first enclosure re-clocks the data.

Any USB2 enclosure can do better than that. And there's
USB3, Thunderbolt, and ESATA for competition.

*******

Firewire also supports networking. On a motherboard with
Ethernet NIC as well as a Firewire chip. there are two MAC
addresses. In theory, you could connect two PCs with a single
Firewire cable, and use ICS to make the cable "live". Then
do file sharing over it, and os on. GbE Ethernet can do
112MB/sec, whereas Firewire will be a lot less.

Texas Instruments made some sort of Firewire hub, for
networking, like a router of some kind or a switch. I've
never run into anyone all that interested in networking
over Firewire.

Microsoft removed some level of Firewire shpport in the
latest OS, so do not expect all of the above to work.

*******

Firewire supports RDMA (remote direct memory access). This
makes it possible for a forensics person to "dump" the contents
of PC memory, even if you're using a screen lock. They can
dump the *entire* memory.

*******

Firewire provides bus power. Devices can be power providers
or power consumers. The max voltage on Firewire is pretty
high, in the hopes that, say, 25V * 1.5A is enough power
when fed to a DC SMPS, to make application power to run a
hard drive. There are some disk enclosures for Firewire,
that have a "power saver" inside, that saves up power in
a capacitor or similar, so that there is enough power
to spin up a hard drive motor at 3 amps for ten seconds.

Bus power is wired-OR. The highest voltage wins. Some Apple
computers might place 25V on the bus (as the 25V was also used
to run an Apple monitor that lacked its own power source).
IBM PC compatibles are more likely to use 12V supplies.
If you connect an Apple computer to a PC, the bus will
run at 25V. All Firewire peripherals are designed to withstand
max_voltage, so for a user, you don't really care what these
things are doing. You only slightly care, that Apple supports
a higher power bus load.

The only danger with Firewire, is the shell on the six pin
connector splitting apart along the seam. And somehow, the
wrong pins get connected together. People have had camcorders
blown, by such faults. If you use or keep Firewire cables,
always inspect them for damage, and don't use a cable
if the connector end is ruined!

And really, the only reason you'd want Firewire today,
is for your camcorder. Using the four pin connector.
The camcorders don't have the room to put a
six pin connector. And nobody really wants bus
power near the camcorder anyway.

There are some DC isolation rules. Basically, there are
TI cards with some sort of "proper" isolation (the data bus
passes through capacitors or something). You could
run a Firewire cable between the PC in your basement and
the PC in the attic, without worrying about grounding.
There are also Firewire cards with a cheaper (single chip)
implementation, which would work fine if two PCs share a
common power strip. If you plan an "exotic" application,
do the research first...

Paul

On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 22:36:23 -0400, Paul wrote:

wrote:
Does anyone really use FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394. Or is that old
technology?

One of my computers had a card in it for this, and I never knew what it
was for. It just said IEEE 1394 on it. I finally looked it up. Yet, I
have never seen anything with those kind of plugs on it. Maybe this is
just something used for commercial applications, and not at home.

It seems that almost everything these days is USB, except for the old
style keyboard & mouse connectors (DIN).

If this Firewire has any uses, what plugs into it?

By the way, is Firewire approved by Fire Codes?


There is a six pin and a four pin plug.

The six pin has power on it.

The four pin does not.

A camcorder has a four pin. You can get six to four adapters
which just drop the unused power wires.

*******

Firewire can be used to capture content from a camcorder.
Most of the people who actively continue to use Firewire 400,
would probably use it for that.

*******

Firewire is now too slow to be competitive with more modern
enclosure interconnect. I have a couple 5.25" IDE enclosures
with six pin interfaces on them. You can daisy chain them.
The first enclosure in line, transfers at 30MB/sec. The
second enclosure that comes after the first, gets 20MB/sec,
and the chip inside the first enclosure re-clocks the data.

Any USB2 enclosure can do better than that. And there's
USB3, Thunderbolt, and ESATA for competition.

*******

Firewire also supports networking. On a motherboard with
Ethernet NIC as well as a Firewire chip. there are two MAC
addresses. In theory, you could connect two PCs with a single
Firewire cable, and use ICS to make the cable "live". Then
do file sharing over it, and os on. GbE Ethernet can do
112MB/sec, whereas Firewire will be a lot less.

Texas Instruments made some sort of Firewire hub, for
networking, like a router of some kind or a switch. I've
never run into anyone all that interested in networking
over Firewire.

Microsoft removed some level of Firewire shpport in the
latest OS, so do not expect all of the above to work.

*******

Firewire supports RDMA (remote direct memory access). This
makes it possible for a forensics person to "dump" the contents
of PC memory, even if you're using a screen lock. They can
dump the *entire* memory.

*******

Firewire provides bus power. Devices can be power providers
or power consumers. The max voltage on Firewire is pretty
high, in the hopes that, say, 25V * 1.5A is enough power
when fed to a DC SMPS, to make application power to run a
hard drive. There are some disk enclosures for Firewire,
that have a "power saver" inside, that saves up power in
a capacitor or similar, so that there is enough power
to spin up a hard drive motor at 3 amps for ten seconds.

Bus power is wired-OR. The highest voltage wins. Some Apple
computers might place 25V on the bus (as the 25V was also used
to run an Apple monitor that lacked its own power source).
IBM PC compatibles are more likely to use 12V supplies.
If you connect an Apple computer to a PC, the bus will
run at 25V. All Firewire peripherals are designed to withstand
max_voltage, so for a user, you don't really care what these
things are doing. You only slightly care, that Apple supports
a higher power bus load.

The only danger with Firewire, is the shell on the six pin
connector splitting apart along the seam. And somehow, the
wrong pins get connected together. People have had camcorders
blown, by such faults. If you use or keep Firewire cables,
always inspect them for damage, and don't use a cable
if the connector end is ruined!

And really, the only reason you'd want Firewire today,
is for your camcorder. Using the four pin connector.
The camcorders don't have the room to put a
six pin connector. And nobody really wants bus
power near the camcorder anyway.

There are some DC isolation rules. Basically, there are
TI cards with some sort of "proper" isolation (the data bus
passes through capacitors or something). You could
run a Firewire cable between the PC in your basement and
the PC in the attic, without worrying about grounding.
There are also Firewire cards with a cheaper (single chip)
implementation, which would work fine if two PCs share a
common power strip. If you plan an "exotic" application,
do the research first...

Paul

Thanks Paul. This computer was built abouty 10 years ago, and apparently
Firewire was more popular back then. It appears the 2 plugs on this card
are 4 pin types. I was looking to free up a PCI slot, and this will be
the card to remove. I now know I will never use it. I dont even own a
camcorder, and if I did, it would likely be the kind that writes to an
internal SD card. Until I removed this card, I never had a clue what
this card was for. All I knew is that it had those funny looking plugs,
which I had never seen before. It looks like Firewire was shortlived
technology, which has vanished into the woodwork!

This computer also has a networking card. I was going to remove that
one, since I dont network my systems, but after what you posted, I know
I'd be more likely to use the network card, than I would this Firewire
card.

wrote:


Thanks Paul. This computer was built abouty 10 years ago, and apparently
Firewire was more popular back then. It appears the 2 plugs on this card
are 4 pin types. I was looking to free up a PCI slot, and this will be
the card to remove. I now know I will never use it. I dont even own a
camcorder, and if I did, it would likely be the kind that writes to an
internal SD card. Until I removed this card, I never had a clue what
this card was for. All I knew is that it had those funny looking plugs,
which I had never seen before. It looks like Firewire was shortlived
technology, which has vanished into the woodwork!

This computer also has a networking card. I was going to remove that
one, since I dont network my systems, but after what you posted, I know
I'd be more likely to use the network card, than I would this Firewire
card.

The Firewire has been turned off on my last couple computers.

I don't have a camcorder, so no Firewire there.

I have the Firewire IDE enclosures, except one shortcoming is they
have a 137GB limit. Which means a 120GB IDE is the largest drive the
enclosure will take. That's one of the reasons they're retired.
Later silicon revisions handled larger drives.

There is a company that makes Firewire silicon, and probably
with an assortment of more modern interfaces. It's just the level
of competition, means there isn't room for all the
tech to be successful. Thunderbolt nibbles away at the high
end (it's too expensive to be successful in the commodity market).
ESATA didn't seem to be all that successful - my "good" computer
store doesn't stock any cables for it, a sure sign of doom. USB3
is predictably popular, as it was aimed at the right market. Basically,
any tech which can use the speed of a modern hard drive, is going
to do well. USB3 on average, will do 200MB/sec with random
purchases at the computer store. It takes additional care
to get up to 450MB/sec level (I don't have the gear for it).

The fastest USB3 storage to date, is a USB3.1 (double speed) SSD
that transfers at 700MB/sec. My local computer store doesn't stock
those either.

Paul

On Sun, 22 Oct 2017 17:23:00 -0400, Paul wrote:

wrote:


Thanks Paul. This computer was built abouty 10 years ago, and apparently
Firewire was more popular back then. It appears the 2 plugs on this card
are 4 pin types. I was looking to free up a PCI slot, and this will be
the card to remove. I now know I will never use it. I dont even own a
camcorder, and if I did, it would likely be the kind that writes to an
internal SD card. Until I removed this card, I never had a clue what
this card was for. All I knew is that it had those funny looking plugs,
which I had never seen before. It looks like Firewire was shortlived
technology, which has vanished into the woodwork!

This computer also has a networking card. I was going to remove that
one, since I dont network my systems, but after what you posted, I know
I'd be more likely to use the network card, than I would this Firewire
card.

The Firewire has been turned off on my last couple computers.

I don't have a camcorder, so no Firewire there.

I have the Firewire IDE enclosures, except one shortcoming is they
have a 137GB limit. Which means a 120GB IDE is the largest drive the
enclosure will take. That's one of the reasons they're retired.
Later silicon revisions handled larger drives.

There is a company that makes Firewire silicon, and probably
with an assortment of more modern interfaces. It's just the level
of competition, means there isn't room for all the
tech to be successful. Thunderbolt nibbles away at the high
end (it's too expensive to be successful in the commodity market).
ESATA didn't seem to be all that successful - my "good" computer
store doesn't stock any cables for it, a sure sign of doom. USB3
is predictably popular, as it was aimed at the right market. Basically,
any tech which can use the speed of a modern hard drive, is going
to do well. USB3 on average, will do 200MB/sec with random
purchases at the computer store. It takes additional care
to get up to 450MB/sec level (I don't have the gear for it).

The fastest USB3 storage to date, is a USB3.1 (double speed) SSD
that transfers at 700MB/sec. My local computer store doesn't stock
those either.

Paul

I can see that this Firewire card is just wasting space in my computer.

USB2 is fast enough for me. USB1.1 is horribly slow on my 17 year old
computer, but it works. But USB2 sure is a lot better on my newer
computer.

I dont know if I really even want USB3. I often wonder what the big rush
is, to move data that fast. Some people will probably say "faster is
better", but i question that. When data is transferred that fast, does
it transfer accurately? I'd rather wait 30 seconds to copy a 2gb file,
and know it's an accurate copy, than do it in 8 seconds and later find
the file is corrupt.

wrote:


I can see that this Firewire card is just wasting space in my computer.

USB2 is fast enough for me. USB1.1 is horribly slow on my 17 year old
computer, but it works. But USB2 sure is a lot better on my newer
computer.

I dont know if I really even want USB3. I often wonder what the big rush
is, to move data that fast. Some people will probably say "faster is
better", but i question that. When data is transferred that fast, does
it transfer accurately? I'd rather wait 30 seconds to copy a 2gb file,
and know it's an accurate copy, than do it in 8 seconds and later find
the file is corrupt.

When it transfers fast, you can afford to run
checksums on it, to verify it was transferred accurately :-)

When you install a modern version of 7ZIP, it adds some
checksum commands to the right-click menu. CRC32 runs
at around 1GB/sec if your disk is that fast. You can generate
a quick checksum for the source and the destination file
and compare them, if you're unsure.

On modern high-speed buses, each packet is protected by
its own CRC check. Which allows detecting and logging
"in-flight" errors. The media can still become corrupted,
such as "holding a magnet too close to the drive", if
you get my meaning. On an SSD, a cosmic ray could flip a
single bit. Both hard drives and SSDs have "error correcting codes",
which work out which bit is in error, and correct it. So even
that has some protections. When there are too many errors
in a sector, the codes cannot handle that case. The codes
are there to handle the cosmic rays and other "expected"
stuff.

There's lots of armoring on the new stuff. Cheap silicon
makes that more feasible to do. Just like CDs have the potential
for three dimensional Reed Solomon, making the CD "almost scratch
resistant". In practical situations, the laser loses lock, rather
than the CD feeding the user an errored sector.

Like you, I occasionally run verifications on my hardware.
After bad RAM on this PC, ruined a couple Macrium backups I
made of the disks on this machine, I still run checks. The RAM
(because it lacks ECC) is one of the weak spots in the PC. Server
machines have ECC. Intel decided it was a clever idea to not
have ECC on desktop - even if the desktop has 64GB of RAM.
Years ago, we would never have dreamed of running with that
much RAM, without ECC on it.

Paul

On Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:13:27 -0400, Paul wrote:

wrote:


I can see that this Firewire card is just wasting space in my computer.

USB2 is fast enough for me. USB1.1 is horribly slow on my 17 year old
computer, but it works. But USB2 sure is a lot better on my newer
computer.

I dont know if I really even want USB3. I often wonder what the big rush
is, to move data that fast. Some people will probably say "faster is
better", but i question that. When data is transferred that fast, does
it transfer accurately? I'd rather wait 30 seconds to copy a 2gb file,
and know it's an accurate copy, than do it in 8 seconds and later find
the file is corrupt.

When it transfers fast, you can afford to run
checksums on it, to verify it was transferred accurately :-)

When you install a modern version of 7ZIP, it adds some
checksum commands to the right-click menu. CRC32 runs
at around 1GB/sec if your disk is that fast. You can generate
a quick checksum for the source and the destination file
and compare them, if you're unsure.

On modern high-speed buses, each packet is protected by
its own CRC check. Which allows detecting and logging
"in-flight" errors. The media can still become corrupted,
such as "holding a magnet too close to the drive", if
you get my meaning. On an SSD, a cosmic ray could flip a
single bit. Both hard drives and SSDs have "error correcting codes",
which work out which bit is in error, and correct it. So even
that has some protections. When there are too many errors
in a sector, the codes cannot handle that case. The codes
are there to handle the cosmic rays and other "expected"
stuff.

There's lots of armoring on the new stuff. Cheap silicon
makes that more feasible to do. Just like CDs have the potential
for three dimensional Reed Solomon, making the CD "almost scratch
resistant". In practical situations, the laser loses lock, rather
than the CD feeding the user an errored sector.

Like you, I occasionally run verifications on my hardware.
After bad RAM on this PC, ruined a couple Macrium backups I
made of the disks on this machine, I still run checks. The RAM
(because it lacks ECC) is one of the weak spots in the PC. Server
machines have ECC. Intel decided it was a clever idea to not
have ECC on desktop - even if the desktop has 64GB of RAM.
Years ago, we would never have dreamed of running with that
much RAM, without ECC on it.

Paul

While I'm sure you know what you are talking about, I have to question
the practicality of this? So you do a super fast transfer using USB3,
which saves one minute or 20 minutes, depending on the size of the
transferred data (versus using USB2). But then you spend an hour or two
creating and running checksums. In the end, you spent a lot more time
than just using a slower process.

I must admit that using USB2 on my XP machine is very fast compared to
USB1.1 on my 17 year old Win98 machine. I have one partition on my Win98
machine that consists of 63gb of photos and music. Doing a direct copy
of that partition, to an external USB drive, literally takes about 20
hours using USB1.1. That's damn slow, but I do feel confident that the
data is copied correctly at that slow speed. I start that backup before
going ot bed, when I know I have somewhere to go the next day, so I wont
need the computer. So, it happens on it;'s own and dont bother me.

Fortunately, I store all photos in a folder named after the year, such
as "2016" "2017". That saves a lot of time, because all photos in
folders prior to the current year do not need to be copied again. I also
put all newly added music in a folder called "New Music". That way I
dont have to backup the older music again, until I decide to combine the
newer stuff with the older folders, which are all named by the name of
the band or performer.

My other partitions are smaller and dont take near as long to backup.

I have however learned a new trick. I can take the drives from that slow
machine, connect a USB connector and power supply to them, and copy them
using my faster XP machine. I do however wonder if using USB2 is as
accurate, and since I have to physically change cables and all of that,
I usually just use the USB1.1 and let it run slow.

wrote:


While I'm sure you know what you are talking about, I have to question
the practicality of this? So you do a super fast transfer using USB3,
which saves one minute or 20 minutes, depending on the size of the
transferred data (versus using USB2). But then you spend an hour or two
creating and running checksums. In the end, you spent a lot more time
than just using a slower process.

I must admit that using USB2 on my XP machine is very fast compared to
USB1.1 on my 17 year old Win98 machine. I have one partition on my Win98
machine that consists of 63gb of photos and music. Doing a direct copy
of that partition, to an external USB drive, literally takes about 20
hours using USB1.1. That's damn slow, but I do feel confident that the
data is copied correctly at that slow speed. I start that backup before
going ot bed, when I know I have somewhere to go the next day, so I wont
need the computer. So, it happens on it;'s own and dont bother me.

Fortunately, I store all photos in a folder named after the year, such
as "2016" "2017". That saves a lot of time, because all photos in
folders prior to the current year do not need to be copied again. I also
put all newly added music in a folder called "New Music". That way I
dont have to backup the older music again, until I decide to combine the
newer stuff with the older folders, which are all named by the name of
the band or performer.

My other partitions are smaller and dont take near as long to backup.

I have however learned a new trick. I can take the drives from that slow
machine, connect a USB connector and power supply to them, and copy them
using my faster XP machine. I do however wonder if using USB2 is as
accurate, and since I have to physically change cables and all of that,
I usually just use the USB1.1 and let it run slow.

Something you don't realize - the noise floor on computer buses
and communications channels, has gradually been improving over
the years. The higher speed interconnect can be *more*
reliable - looking at the ugly waveforms on the slow
buses would show you why this is.

One of the reasons the 40 wire IDE cable was limited to 33MHz,
is the signaling was "close to broken". If they'd pushed it
much higher, it would have been unusable. If you looked at the
waveforms with a scope, you'd be going "THATs my data ?!?".
It looks really bad. You would be asking, how can the
computer chip look at that horrible waveform, and decide
what level is a 1 and what level is a 0.

Some of the replacement point to point interconnect (like SATA
or PCI Express or USB3), the waveforms look really nice. The
interconnect is "ideal". You inject a trapezoidal signal into
one end of the line, and it comes out the other end exactly
as it should. It's no longer "wavey gravy" like the old
buses. IDE was wavey. PCI was wavey. And USB 1.1 would
have been pretty bad too. But because the rate on USB 1.1
is turned down on purpose (it doesn't run that fast),
it has time to settle.

Paul

On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 04:33:35 -0400, Paul wrote:

wrote:


While I'm sure you know what you are talking about, I have to question
the practicality of this? So you do a super fast transfer using USB3,
which saves one minute or 20 minutes, depending on the size of the
transferred data (versus using USB2). But then you spend an hour or two
creating and running checksums. In the end, you spent a lot more time
than just using a slower process.

I must admit that using USB2 on my XP machine is very fast compared to
USB1.1 on my 17 year old Win98 machine. I have one partition on my Win98
machine that consists of 63gb of photos and music. Doing a direct copy
of that partition, to an external USB drive, literally takes about 20
hours using USB1.1. That's damn slow, but I do feel confident that the
data is copied correctly at that slow speed. I start that backup before
going ot bed, when I know I have somewhere to go the next day, so I wont
need the computer. So, it happens on it;'s own and dont bother me.

Fortunately, I store all photos in a folder named after the year, such
as "2016" "2017". That saves a lot of time, because all photos in
folders prior to the current year do not need to be copied again. I also
put all newly added music in a folder called "New Music". That way I
dont have to backup the older music again, until I decide to combine the
newer stuff with the older folders, which are all named by the name of
the band or performer.

My other partitions are smaller and dont take near as long to backup.

I have however learned a new trick. I can take the drives from that slow
machine, connect a USB connector and power supply to them, and copy them
using my faster XP machine. I do however wonder if using USB2 is as
accurate, and since I have to physically change cables and all of that,
I usually just use the USB1.1 and let it run slow.

Something you don't realize - the noise floor on computer buses
and communications channels, has gradually been improving over
the years. The higher speed interconnect can be *more*
reliable - looking at the ugly waveforms on the slow
buses would show you why this is.

One of the reasons the 40 wire IDE cable was limited to 33MHz,
is the signaling was "close to broken". If they'd pushed it
much higher, it would have been unusable. If you looked at the
waveforms with a scope, you'd be going "THATs my data ?!?".
It looks really bad. You would be asking, how can the
computer chip look at that horrible waveform, and decide
what level is a 1 and what level is a 0.

Some of the replacement point to point interconnect (like SATA
or PCI Express or USB3), the waveforms look really nice. The
interconnect is "ideal". You inject a trapezoidal signal into
one end of the line, and it comes out the other end exactly
as it should. It's no longer "wavey gravy" like the old
buses. IDE was wavey. PCI was wavey. And USB 1.1 would
have been pretty bad too. But because the rate on USB 1.1
is turned down on purpose (it doesn't run that fast),
it has time to settle.

Paul

Ok, in that case, I guess I'm doing well on my old hardware. But you
brought up a question. I still have a 40 wire cable to my hard drives.
It came with the computer. If I change that to an 80 wire, will anything
improve? Or dont it matter for a 17 year old computer?

I know all the extra wires are nothing but ground wires. I can only
assume they prevent signal crossover by capacitance between the wires
(is that correct, or is there some other reason for them)? I cant see
any other reason for 40 ground wires.....

wrote:


Ok, in that case, I guess I'm doing well on my old hardware. But you
brought up a question. I still have a 40 wire cable to my hard drives.
It came with the computer. If I change that to an 80 wire, will anything
improve? Or dont it matter for a 17 year old computer?

I know all the extra wires are nothing but ground wires. I can only
assume they prevent signal crossover by capacitance between the wires
(is that correct, or is there some other reason for them)? I cant see
any other reason for 40 ground wires.....

Exactly. Crosstalk reduction. And the cable has a
more-defined impedance (less influenced by waving
your hand near the cable).

On some of the old PCs here, they still have a
40 wire for the CD drive. The hard drive pairs tend
to be on 80 wire.

Paul