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FireWire to Reach 3.2 Gigabit/s Speeds

Firewire 800 came out in 2003, now why doesn't my new MacBook have a FW800 port a good 4+ years later? Yes, yes.. I know... because only a niche group of people use it. But, only a niche group of people use it because it's not been made *available* to the larger group of users.

Apple needs to put this on *every* Mac, no matter how "consumer" or "Pro" it might be, and hopefully convince Intel to make it a standard on their boards. Kick out FW400 on the consumer models with less ports. Include an adapter cable for it. Don't get greedy with licensing fees... And the superior interface might well "win" this time around. ;-)
 
Yes, Apple messed up completely with 1394b-800

Gamoe said:
Firewire 800 came out in 2003, now why doesn't my new MacBook have a FW800 port a good 4+ years later? Yes, yes.. I know... because only a niche group of people use it. But, only a niche group of people use it because it's not been made *available* to the larger group of users.

Apple needs to put this on *every* Mac, no matter how "consumer" or "Pro" it might be...
Click to expand...

Yes, Apple doomed 1394b-800 to near irrelevance by making it an exclusive "pro" feature.
 
AidenShaw said:
Yes, Apple doomed 1394b-800 to near irrelevance by making it an exclusive "pro" feature.
Click to expand...

agreed. All these debates really annoy me cos even tho my ancient imac g5 only has fw400, i know that my next mac will have fw800, gig-E and probably e-sata so when I buy an external I have to have to factor all that in.

Anything better than FW800 only becomes much use once you start using a RAID anyways, and I've found out lately that that's its own can of worms. I need speed, space and stability, but Apple (and sony)'s stubbornness on some trivial licensing fee means the best standard apple has adopted isn't widely available after 4 years even on their own computers.

And you're right about e-sata being better than fw3200 too. FW has a ton of advantages over the other standards but sata is the default protocol of most drives, and who needs more than a foot-long cable length anyways.
 
Powers said:
My seagate drives will sustain 100MB/s on the outside sectors of the disc and will burst in excess of that.
Click to expand...

And on inside-sectors, it can not. So the benefit of being able to reach 100MB/sec is marginal at best.

With RAID, things might be different, though. And if I had FW3200, I would propably hook my drives to it, if not anything but sh*t and giggles :).
 
eSATA cables up to 2m long

nickane said:
And you're right about e-sata being better than fw3200 too. FW has a ton of advantages over the other standards but sata is the default protocol of most drives, and who needs more than a foot-long cable length anyways.
Click to expand...

eSATA cables can be up to 2 metres long (in 'murkin, that's just over 6½ feet).

By the way, http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp has some good info on eSATA.
 
well for external hard drives e-sata is looking like it will be the standard the coming years (at least on the non apple side where hardly anybody is using FW 800)

and most important.. it's already available and external devices are cheap

firewire's big advantage of having devices with built in controllers removes the problems with CPu being hit for file transfers but on the other side it has always been the biggest downside with it's higher prices
 
takao said:
well for external hard drives e-sata is looking like it will be the standard the coming years (at least on the non apple side where hardly anybody is using FW 800)

and most important.. it's already available and external devices are cheap
Click to expand...

For SATA external drives, it's nearly free - since the drive is already SATA you don't need a controller to translate the data commands.



takao said:
firewire's big advantage of having devices with built in controllers removes the problems with CPu being hit for file transfers but on the other side it has always been the biggest downside with it's higher prices
Click to expand...

Actually, 1394 has *more* overhead than eSATA.


USB and 1394 external drives are ATA drives with a bridge chip that translates from the ATA protocol to USB or 1394 protocol used for the connection. These interfaces require en-capsulation or conversion of the transmit data and then de-capsulation after the data is received. This protocol overhead reduces the efficiency of these host buses, increases the host CPU utilization or requires a special chip to off-load the host.
Click to expand...

eSATA is the same SATA protocol from the same controllers used for internal SATA drives.

The "e" just means that a cable with better shielding and more robust connectors is being used to transmit the SATA packets.
 
What I personally see the biggest benefit for FW is the daisychaining ability of devices,different kinds.

I presently have 3 HDDs and a video camera daisied,all into a one port.
And now I am thinking adding a Tascam controller to the bunch,if the latency permits.

On the other hand,I still have 2 FW slots free...
 
So, I am ignorant when it comes to this, so bear with me.

If the cables and standards remain unchanged, and the only problem between updating FW800 to this new standard is the "controller", and assuming these "controllers" works under a firmware that can be upgraded, can Apple simply issue a firmware update and upgrade all FW800 ports to this new standard?
 
FireWire advantages over USB:

* Peer to peer operation.

* Co-processing across the cables is possible with FW.

* FW is faster at bulk file transfers at 400 mbps than USB is at 480 mbps.

* FW better noise reduction of power wires than USB (higher voltage, better cable design & better CMRR) ... particularly important with audio ... and now with the higher speeds = better "eye pattern".

* Double duplex instead of single duplex = better handshaking scenario = better reliability.

:rolleyes:
 
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