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1394 (Fire Wire) User's Manual
1.0 What is IEEE 1394
The 1394 standard was defined, and continues to be maintained, by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). The technology allows for
high-speed connections between computers and related devices and helps bridge the
divide between computers and consumer electronics. The technology is flexible, easy
to use and offers high bandwidth at a low cost.
With 1394-compatible products and systems, users can transfer video or still images
from a camera or camcorder to a printer, PC, or television quickly, with no image
degradation.
2.0 1394 Features
The 1394 standard is a high-speed serial bus designed to deliver high data transfer
speeds at a low cost, and with the low degree of latency required by a peripheral bus
or by a backup to a traditional parallel bus. Among its key features are:
High Speed. Speeds of 100, 200 and 400 megabits per second (Mbps) are
currently supported.
Isochronous Support. Deterministic bandwidth allocation guarantees bandwidth
for time-sensitive applications, such as real-time video feeds, that could
otherwise be disrupted by heavy bus traffic.
Flexible Topology. Devices can be daisy-chained and no central bus
supervision is required.
Hot-Plug Support. The bus is dynamically reconfigured whenever new nodes
are added, which means users don’t have to configure node IDs or unique
termination schemes.
Cable Power. Low-cost peripherals can be powered directly from the 1394 cable,
so no dedicated power supply is needed.
Open IEEE Standard. IEEE adoption has increased industry acceptance of the
standar
d.
Optimum Performance. Each cable connection can be up to 4.5 meters long,
yielding a total cable distance of 72 meters.
1394 End devices. IEEE 1394 interfaces have already been incorporated into a
variety of devices, including PC cameras, DV camcorders, DV recorders, digital
still cameras, high-speed hard disk drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives,
DVD-RAM drives, digital TVs, set-top boxes, scanners, and printers.
3.0 PC System Requirements
1. A Pentium based PC (recommended) with one free PCI/PCMCIA slot.
2. Windows 98/SE Windows ME Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
3. Any 1394 device that complies with either the 1394-1995 or 1394.a specification
and does not use more than 1.5 A.