Seminar Report On Fire Wire

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Guided By Submitted By
For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 1

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
INTRODUCTION
The connection between an I/O module in a computer system and external devices
can be either point-to-point or multipoint. A point-to-point interface provides a dedicated
line between the I/O module and the external device. On small systems (PCs,
workstations), typical point-to-point links include those to the keyboard, printer, and
external modem.
Of increasing importance are multipoint external interfaces, used to support

external mass storage devices (disk and tape drives) and multimedia devices (CD-ROMs,
video, audio). These multipoint interfaces are in effect external buses.
With processor speed reaching GHz and storage devices holding multiple gigabits, the
I/O demands for personal computers, workstation and servers are formidable. Yet the
high-speed I/O technologies that have been developed for mainframe and supercomputers
systems are too expansive and bulky for use on these smaller systems. Accordingly there
has been great interest in developing a high-speed alternative to SCSI, USB and other
small-system I/O interfaces. The result is the IEEE standard 1394, for a high-speed
performance serial bus, commonly known as Fire wire.
Firewire has a number of advantages over older I/O interfaces. It is very speed, low cost
and easy to implement. In fact Firewire is finding favor not only for computer systems,
but also in consumer electronics products such as digital cameras, VCRs, television .In
these products Firewire is used to transport video images, which are increasingly coming
from digitized sources. One of the strengths of the Firewire interface is that it uses serial
transmission rather than parallel. Parallel interface such as SCSI required more wires,
which means wider more expensive cables and wider more expensive connectors with
more pins to bend or break. A cable with more wires requires shielding to prevent
electrical interference between wires. Also, with parallel interface synchronization
between the wires become a requirement a problem that gets worse with increased cable
length.
In addition computers are getting physically smaller even as they expand in computing
power and I/O needs. Handheld and pocketsize computers have little room for connectors
yet need high data rates to handle images and video.
The intent of Firewire is to provide a single I/O interface with a simple connectors that
can handle numerous device through a single port, so that the mouse, laser printer,
external disk drive, sound, and local area network hooks up can be rep laced with this
single connectors. The connectors is inspired by the one used in the Nintendo Game boy.
It is so convenient that the user can reach behind the machine and plug it in without
looking.
The Need for a High-Speed Data Transfer Medium

The demand for higher throughput on peripheral devices has become crucial with the

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Growing multimedia content in PCs such as real- time color video. Digital devices
generate Large volumes of data, especially when high resolution and high quality results
are desired—and video makes the heaviest demands on throughput. To handle the huge
amounts of data from digital video and audio data streams in real time, a high-
performance transport medium such as IEEE 1394 is needed.
Serial interfaces (few wires) typically have ad vantages over parallel interfaces (many
wires) in applications where the cost of supporting many wires is greater than the cost of
the serial interface’s more sophisticated electrical protocol. Issues such as die size, I/O
count, connector size and cable routing can be optimized to provide the serial interface
with a cost/performance advantage in some high volume applications. Serial interfaces
are generally preferred in applications where the distances between devices complicate
the use of parallel interfaces. The IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus hardware and
software standard describes a digital interface that enables the interconnection of
computers, peripherals, communications equipment and digital consumer electronics
devices in any combination. This technology features real-time data transfer at rates of
100 to 400 Mbps, with 1 Gbps and higher expected in future-generation implementations.
IEEE 1394 is designed for use in computer and consumer peripheral products such as
hard disk devices, printers, scanners, DVDs, camcorders, digital cameras, set-top boxes,
stereo systems, TVs and VCRs.
The IEEE 1394 serial bus interface offers scaleable high performance and bridges PC and
consumer electronics with one easy-to-use cable. In addition to handling high data rates,
1394 accommodates time-sensitive video and audio data through isochronous data
transfers. The 1394 bus needs no central controller or dedicated host computer for the
data transfers, but instead operates peer-to-peer to allow any device on the bus to initiate
transfers on its own—an important feature for consumer equipment not linked to PCs.
IEEE 1394 improves the performance of consumer video and audio equipment by
Replacing conventional analog connections and the need for costly, imperfect
conversions between analog and digital formats that inject loss and distortion. It is also
emerging as the key data channel for PCs.
Background/History
In 1986, the IEEE Microcomputer Standards Committee began unifying various serial
bus implementations to provide a standard for desktop computer applications. Since
1,393 standards had already been considered, their efforts were called IEEE 1394.
Initially the development was largely undertook by Apple Computer, who called it
FireWire, in an attempt to provide an inexpensive replacement for the SCSI bus.
In September 1994, the 1394 Trade Association was formed to promote and develop the
Interface. This effort resulted in the development of what became the IEEE 1394-1995
Standard in fall 1995. The 1394 Trade Association has members from both the computer
and consumer electronics industries, and is still actively developing the 1394 interface.
The IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus standard, informally referred to as 1394,
provides the same services as existing IEEE-standard parallel buses at a potentially lower
cost. Rather than transferring data via a parallel interface, such as EIDE and SCSI with

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
expensive cables and connectors with as many as 68 pins, 1394 requires only four signal
conductors in a low cost interconnecting cable. 1394 also requires considerably fewer I/O
pins on host and peripheral silicon.
The first commercial products implementing Firewire technology were Sony's DCR-
VX700 and DCR-VX1000 digital video camcorders, introduced in 1995. Nowadays,
growing variety of electronic products rely on the Firewire technology.
Key Features
Among the features contributing to the IEEE 1394’s ease of use is its hot plug- in
Capability. Equipment can be connected and disconnected without having to turn the
Power off. External peripherals may be hot-plugged. In contrast, conventional computer
ports—those for hard drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.—are not designed for hot
plug- in, and can fail or damage the port if connected while the power is on. The ultimate
objective is to make attaching a 1394 device as easy as plugging a cord into an electrical
outlet. In addition, unlike conventional buses, IEEE 1394 needs no special terminators
along the bus and no special settings to assign device addresses.
A summary of 1394 features includes:
• Fast data transfer rates: 100, 200, or 400Mbps
• Digital interface: No need to convert digital data into analog and tolerate a
loss of data integrity
• Physically s mall: The thin serial cable can replace larger, more expensive
interfaces
• Easy to use: No need for terminators, device IDs or elaborate setup
• Hot plug gable: Users can add or remove 1394 devices with the bus active, using
rugged connectors and cables
• Scaleable architecture: Able to mix 100, 200, and 400Mbps devices on a bus
• Self-configuring: No need for address switches
• Flexible topology: Up to 63 devices on up to 1023 buses with a maximum of 16
hops of up to 4.5 meters between each device
• Bus management: Is efficient for both large and small configurations
• Both asynchronous and isochronous data transfer: Guaranteed bandwidth with
low overhead for isochronous data transfer
• Three layer architecture: Consistent with IEEE 1212 Control and Status Register
Architecture Specification ensuring future architectural compatibility
• A fair arbitration system: Allows all nodes appropriate access to the bus
• Peer-to-peer communication: Supports daisy chaining and branching
• Reduced buffer costs: Guaranteed delivery of time-critical data reduces costly
buffer requirements
• Non-proprietary: Licensing is not required
• The 1394a extension to the standard improves the efficiency of the data
transfer and arbitration mechanisms while remaining backwards compatible to
the original standard

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
• The 1394b extension of the standard now being developed will extend the
Signaling rate of the original standard allowing 800Mbps, 1600Mbps and
higher
1394 Architecture
The 1394 standard defines two bus categories: backplane and cable. The backplane bus is
designed to supplement parallel bus structures by providing an alternate serial
communication path between devices plugged into the backplane. The cable bus, which is
the subject of this paper, is a "non-cyclic network with finite branches‖, consisting of bus
bridges and nodes (cable devices). Non-cyclic means that you can't plug devices together
so as to create loops. 16-bit addressing provide for up to 64K nodes in a system. Up to 16
cable hops are allowed between nodes, thus the term finite branches. A bus bridge serves
to connect busses of similar or different types; a 1394-to-PCI interface within a PC
constitutes a bus bridge, which ordinarily serves as the root device and provides bus
master (controller) capability. A bus bridge also would be used to interconnect a 1394
cable and a 1394 backplane bus. Six-bit Node IDs allow up to 63 nodes to be connected
to a single bus bridge; 10 bit Bus IDs accommodate up to 1,023 bridges in a system. This
means, as an example, that the limit is 63 devices connected to a conventional 1394
adapter card in a PC. Each node usually has three connectors, although the standard
provides for 1 to 27 connector per a device's physical layer or PHY. Up to 16 nodes can
be daisy-chained through the connectors with standard cables up to 4.5 m in length for a
total standard cable length of 72 m. (Using higher-quality "fatter" cables permits longer
interconnections.) Additional devices can be connected in a leaf- node configuration, as
shown in figure 1. Physical addresses are assigned on bridge power up (bus reset) and
whenever a node is added or removed from the system, either by physical
connection/disconnection or power up/down. No device ID switches are required and hot
plugging of nodes is supported. Thus 1394 truly qualifies as a plug-and-play bus.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Topology
The 1394 protocol is a peer-to-peer network with a point-to-point signaling environment.
Nodes on the bus may have several ports on them. Each of these ports acts as a repeater,
retransmitting any packets received by other ports within the node. Figure 1 shows what a
typical consumer may have attached to their 1394 bus.
Because 1394 is a peer-to-peer protocol, a specific host isn’t required, such as the PC in
USB. In Figure 1 , the digital camera could easily stream data to both the digital VCR
and the DVD-RAM without any assistance from other devices on the bus.
Configuration of the bus occurs automatically whenever a new device is plugged in.
Configuration proceeds from leaf nodes (those with only one other device attached to
them) up through the branch nodes. A bus that has three or more devices attached will
typically, but not always, have a branch node become the root node. I’ll discuss
configuration in more detail later in this article.
A 1394 bus appears as a large memory- mapped space with each node occupying a certain
address range. The memory space is based to the IEEE 1212 Control and Status Register
(CSR) Architecture with some extensions specific to the 1394 standard. Each node
supports up to 48 bits of address space (256 Terabytes). In addition, each bus can support
up to 64 nodes, and the 1394 serial bus specification supports up to 1,024 buses. This
gives a grand total of 64 address bits, or support for a whopping total of 16 ExaBytes of
memory space—enough for the latest version of your favorite word processor and
perhaps even a file or two!

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Fig. 1. Topology of a typical PC-based 1394 bus system for DV applications.
Note: The topology shown in figure 1 assumes a common audio/video

data format for all DV devices. For transmission on a single isochronous
channel, devices must share the same data format. The Digital VCR
Consortium (DVC) has prepared a standard for DV data formats and
related control protocols for 1394, presently titled "General Specification
for Consumer-Use Digital Interface." This standard is pending approval as
International Electro technical Commission IEC1883, "Digital Interface
for Consumer Electronics A/V."

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Physical, Link, and Transaction Layers

The 1394 architecture is consistent with IEEE 1212 Control and Status Register
Architecture Specification, which defines bus functions, address space and registers. The
architecture consists of three layers—physical, link and transaction—that correspond to
the lowest three layers of ISO’s Open Syste ms Interconnection (OSI) model. The
physical layer connects to the 1394 connector and the other two layers connect to the
application. To implement a specific device, additional protocol and application layers
must be placed on top of these layers to provide the unique functionality of particular
devices that use 1394 as an interconnect medium.
The three-stacked layers shown in figure 2 implement the 1394 protocol. The three layers
perform the following functions:
Physical laye r
Physical layer of the 1394 protocol includes the electrical signaling, the mechanical
connectors and cabling, the arbitration mechanisms, and the serial coding and decoding
of the data being transferred or received. The cable media is defined as a three-pair
shielded cable. Two of the pairs are used to transfer data, while the third pair provides
power on the bus. The connectors are small six-pin devices, although the 1394a also
defines a four-pin connector for self- powered leaf nodes. The power signals aren’t
provided on the four-pin connector. The baseline cables are limited to 4.5m in length.
Thicker cables allow for longer distances.
Configuration
The physical layer plays a major role in the bus configuration and normal arbitration
phases of the protocol. Configuration consists of taking a relatively flat physical topology
and turning it into a logical tree structure with a root node at its focal point. A bus is reset
and reconfigured whenever a device is added or removed. A reset can also be initiated via
software. Configuration consists of bus reset and initialization, tree identification, and
self- identification.
Reset. A node driving both TPA and TPB to logic 1 signals reset. Because of the
―dominant 1s‖ electrical definition of the drivers, a logic 1 will always be detected by a
port, even if its bi-directional driver is in the transmit state. When a node detects a reset
condition on its drivers, it will propagate this signal to all of the other ports that this node
supports. The node then enters the idle state for a given period of time to allow the reset
indication to propagate to all other nodes on the bus. Reset clears any topology
information within the node, although isochronous resources are ―sticky‖ and will tend to
remain the same during resets.
Tree identification. The tree identification process defines the bus topology. After reset,
but before tree identification, the bus has a flat logical topology that maps directly to the

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
physical topology. After tree identification is complete, a single node has gained the
status of root node. The tree identification proceeds as follows.
After reset, all leaf nodes present a Parent Notify signaling state on their data and strobe
pairs. Note that this is a signaling state, not a transmitted packet. The whole tree
identification process occurs in a matter of microseconds. In our example, the digital
camera will signal the set-top box, the printer will signal the digital VCR, and the DVD-
RAM will signal the PC. When a branch node receives the Parent Notify signal on one of
its ports, it marks that port as containing a child, and outputs a Child Notify signaling
state on that port’s data and strobe pairs. Upon detecting this state, the leaf node marks its
port as a parent port and removes the signaling, thereby confirming that the leaf node has
accepted the child designation. The ports marked with a ―P‖ indicate that a device, which
is closer to the root node, is attached to that port, while a port marked with a ―C‖
indicates that a node farther away from the root node is attached. The port numbers are
arbitrarily assigned during design of the device and play an important part in the self-
identification process.
After the leaf nodes have identified themselves, the digital VCR still has two ports that
have not received a Parent Notify, while the set-top box and the PC branch node both
have only one port with an attached device that has not received a Parent_Notify.
Therefore, both the set-top box and the PC start to signal a Parent_Notify on the one port
that has not yet received one. In this case, the VCR receives the Parent_Notify on both of
its remaining ports, which it acknowledges with a Child_Notify condition. Because the
VCR has marked all of its ports as children, the VCR becomes the root node.
Note that two nodes can be in contention for root node status at the end of the process. In
this case, a random back-off timer is used to eventually settle on a root node. A node can
also force itself to become root node by delaying its participation in the tree identification
process for a while. See References 1 and 2 for more details.
Self-identification. Once the tree topology is defined, the self- identification phase
begins. Self identification consists of assigning physical IDs to each node on the bus,
having neighboring nodes exchange transmission speed capabilities, and making all of
the nodes on the bus aware of the topology that exists. The self- identification phase
begins with the root node sending an arbitration grant signal to its lowest numbered port.
In our example, the digital VCR is the root node and it signals the set-top box. Since the
set-top box is a branch node, it will propagate the Arbitration Grant signal to its lowest
numbered port with a child node attached. In our case, this port is the digital camera.
Because the digital camera is a leaf node, it cannot propagate the arbitration grant signal
downstream any farther, so it assigns itself physical ID 0 and transmits a self ID packet
upstream. The branch node (set-top box) repeats the self ID packet to all of its ports with
attached devices. Eventually the self ID packet makes its way back up to the root node,
which proceeds to transmit the self ID packet down to all devices on its higher-numbered
ports. In this manner, all attached devices receive the self ID packet that was transmitted
by the digital camera. Upon receiving this packet, all of the other devices increment their
self ID counter. The digital camera then signals a self ID done indication upstream to the

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
set-top box, which indicates that all nodes attached downstream on this port have gone
through the self ID process. Note that the set-top box does not propagate this signal
upstream toward the root node because it hasn’t completed the self ID process.
The root node will then continue to signal an Arbitra tion Grant signal to its lowest
numbered port, which in this case is still the set-top box. Because the set-top box has no
other attached devices, it assigns itself physical ID 1 and transmits a self ID packet back
upstream. This process continues until all ports on the root node have indicated a self ID
done condition. The root node then assigns itself the next physical ID. The root node will
always be the highest-numbered device on the bus. If we follow through with our
example, we come up with the following physical IDs: digital camera = 0; set-top box =
1; printer = 2; DVD-RAM = 3; PC = 4; and the digital VCR, which is the root node, 5.
Note that during the self ID process, parent and children nodes are also exchanging their
maximum speed capabilities. This process also exposes the Achilles heel of the 1394
protocol. Nodes can only transmit as fast as the slowest device between the transmitting
node and the receiving node. For example, if the digital camera and the digital VCR are
both capable of transmitting at 400Mbps, but the set-top box is only capable of
transmitting at 100Mbps, the high-speed devices cannot use the maximum rate to
communicate amongst themselves. The only way around this problem is for the end user
to reconfigure the cabling so the low-speed set-top box is not physically between the two
high-speed devices.
Also during the self ID process, all nodes wishing to become the isochronous resource
manager will indicate this fact in their self ID packet. The highest numbered node that
wishes to become resource manager will receive the honor.
Normal arbitration
Once the configuration process is complete, normal bus operations can begin. To fully
understand arbitration, knowledge of the cycle structure of 1394 is necessary.
A 1394 cycle is a time slice with a nominal 125 µs period. The cycle master keeps the
8kHz cycle clock, which is also the root node. To begin a cycle, the cycle master
broadcasts a cycle start packet, which all other devices on the bus use to synchronize their
time bases.
Immediately following the cycle start packet, devices that wish to broadcast their
isochronous data may arbitrate for the bus. Arbitration consists of signaling your parent
node that you wish to gain access to the bus. The parent nodes in turn signal their parents
and so on, until the request reaches the root node. In our previous example, suppose the
digital camera and the PC wish to stream data over the bus. They both signal their parents
that they wish to gain access to the bus. Since the PC’s parent is the root node, its request
is received first and it is granted the bus. From this scenario, it is evident that the closest
device to the root node wins the arbitration.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Because isochronous channels can only be used once per cycle, when the next
isochronous gap occurs, the PC will no longer participate in the arbitration. This
condition allows the digital camera to win the next arbitration. Note that the PC could
have more than one isochronous channel, in which case it would win the arbitration until
it had no more channels left. This points out the important role of the isochronous
resource manager: it will not allow the allotted isochronous channels to require more
bandwidth than available.
When the last isochronous channel has transmitted its data, the bus becomes idle waiting
for another isochronous channel to begin arbitration. Because there are no more
isochronous devices left waiting to transmit, the idle time extends longer than the
isochronous gap until it reaches the duration defined as the sub action (or asynchronous)
gap. At this time, asynchronous devices may begin to arbitrate for the bus. Arbitration
proceeds in the same manner, with the closest device to the root node winning arbitration.
This point brings up an interesting scenario: because asynchronous devices can send
more than one packet per cycle, the device closest to the root node (or the root node
itself) might be able to hog the bus by always winning the arbitration. This scenario is
dealt with using what is called the fairness interval and the arbitration rest gap. The
concept is simple—once a node wins the asynchronous arbitration and delivers its packet,
it clears its arbitration enable bit. When this bit is cleared, the physical layer no longer
participates in the arbitration process, giving devices farther away from the root node a
fair shot at gaining access to the bus. When all devices wishing to gain access to the bus
have had their fair shot, they all wind up having their arbitration enable bits cleared,
meaning no one is trying to gain access to the bus. This causes the idle time on the bus to
go longer than the 10 µs sub action gap until it finally reaches 20µs, which is called the
arbitration reset gap. When the idle time reaches this point, all devices may reset their
arbitration enable bits and arbitration can begin all over again.
Link laye r
The link layer is the interface between the physical layer and the transaction layer. The
link layer is responsible for checking received CRCs and calculating and appending the
CRC to transmitted packets. In addition, because isochronous transfers do not use the
transaction layer, the link layer is directly responsible for sending and receiving
isochronous data. The link layer also examines the packet header information and
determines the type of transaction that is in progress. This information is then passed up
to the transaction layer.
The interface between the link layer and the physical layer is listed as an informative (not
required) appendix in the IEEE 1394-1995 specification. In the 1394a addendum,
however, this interface becomes a required part of the specification. This change was
instituted to promote interoperability amongst the various 1394 chip vendors.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
The link layer to physical layer interface consists of a minimum of 17 signals that must
be either magnetically or capacitive isolated from the PHY.
A typical link layer implementation has the PHY interface, a CRC checking and
generation mechanism, transmit and receive FIFOs, interrupt registers, a host interface
and at least one DMA channel.
Transaction layer
The transaction layer is used for asynchronous transactions. The 1394 protocol uses a
request-response mechanism, with confirmations typically generated within each phase.
Several types of transactions are allowed. They are listed as follows:
 Simple quadlet (four-byte) read

 Simple quadlet write
 Variable- length read
 Variable- length write
 Lock transactions
Lock transactions allow for atomic swap and compare and swap operations to be
performed.
Asynchronous packets have a standard header format, along with an optional data block.
The packets are assembled and disassembled by the link layer controller.
Transactions can be split, concatenated, or unified. The split transaction occurs when a
device cannot respond fast enough to the transaction request. When a request is received,
the node responds with an acknowledge packet. An acknowledge packet is sent after
every asynchronous packet. In fact, the acknowledging device doesn’t even have to
arbitrate for the bus; control of the bus is automatic after receiving an incoming request
or response packet.
The responder node sends the acknowledge back and then prepares the data that was
requested. While this is going on, other devices may be using the bus. Once the responder
node has the data ready, it begins to arbitrate for the bus, to send out its response packet
containing the desired data. The requester node receives this data and returns an
acknowledge packet (also without needing to re-arbitrate for the bus).
If the responder node can prepare the requested data quickly enough, the entire
transaction can be concatenated. This removes the need for the responding node to
arbitrate for the bus after the acknowledge packet is sent.
For data writes, the acknowledgement can also be the response to the write, which is the
case in a unified transaction. If the responder can accept the data fast enough, its
acknowledge packet can have a transaction code of complete instead of pending. This

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
eliminates the need for a separate response transaction altogether. Note that unified read
and lock transactions aren’t possible, and the acknowledge packet can’t return data.
1394a arbitration enhancements
The 1394a addendum adds three new types of arbitration to be used with asynchronous
nodes: acknowledged accelerated arbitration, fly-by arbitration, and token-style
arbitration.
Acknowledge d accelerated arbitration. When a responding node also has a request

packet to transmit, the responding node can immediately transmit its request without
arbitrating for the bus. Normally the responding node would have to go through the
standard arbitration process.
Fly-by arbitration. A node that contains several ports must act as a repeater on its active
ports. A multiport node may use fly-by arbitration on packets that don’t require
acknowledgement (isochronous packets and acknowledge packets). When a node using
this technique is repeating a packet upstream toward the root node, it may concatenate an
identical speed packet to the end of the current packet. Note that asynchronous packets
may not be added to isochronous packets.
Token-style arbitration. Token-style arbitration requires a group of cooperating nodes.

When the cooperating node closest to the root node wins a normal arbitration, it can pass
the arbitration grant down to the node farthest from the root. This node sends a normal
packet, and all of the cooperating nodes can use fly-by arbitration to add their packets to
the original packet as it heads upstream.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Fig. 2. The 1394 Protocol Stack and Serial Bus Management Controller.
Note: The physical (PHY) layer is the bottleneck in 1394 systems.

Historically, commercial PHY chips operated at half the potential data rate
of link layer (LINK) chips (100 Mbps vs. 200 Mbps, later 200 Mbps vs.
400 Mbps.) Texas Instruments announced in fall 1998 a set of 400-Mbps
PHY chips, which conform to the updated 1394a tentative specification
and support the Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) in conjunction
with an OHCI-compliant LINK chip.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Cables and Connectors

Firewire serial interface uses a simple cable with two types of small and inexpensive
connectors: 4-pin and 6-pin connectors - to carry multiple channels of digital video and
video data and control information plus the power.
6-pin to 6-pin cable. This cable draws power from the FireWire bus and is most
commonly used for connecting to devices such as FireWire Hard Drives, FireWire CD-
RWs and other 1394 computer peripherals.
6-pin to 4-pin cable. This cable does NOT draw power from the FireWire bus it is
connected to and is usually used to connect to DV Cameras or other self powered
devices.
15-pin to 6-pin adapter. Used to connect to a PCMCIA Cardbus card. The other end of
the cable is a standard 6-pin (male) connector for connecting to typical FireWire devices
including hard drives and other storage peripherals. Cardbus cards DO NOT provide
power to FireWire devices.
15-pin to 4-pin adapter. Used to connect to a PCMCIA Cardbus card. The other end of
the cable is a standard 4-pin (male) connector, most often used to connect to a video
camera. Cardbus cards DO NOT provide power to FireWire devices.
FireWire cables are available at many electronics stores and may be called IEEE 1394
cables. Cables come in many lengths. Popular lengths are 0.7 meters (m) (2 ft.), 2 m (6.5
ft.), and 4.5 m (15 ft.).
Avoid using cables longer than 4.5 m unless you are using it for a DV camera. Your
computer and the FireWire device may not perform reliably with longer cables.
There are two types of FireWire connectors, 4-pin and 6-pin. Cables with 6-pin
connectors carry power and data from one device to another. Four-pin cables carry data
only and are typically used with self-powered camcorders or other devices.
Before connecting a 4-pin connector to a FireWire port on a device, align the connector
and port carefully. Do not force a connector into a port. Make sure you use the right
connector with the right port. The same is true with 6 pin connectors. Make certain the
orientation of the cable connector is the same as the FireWire port. Never force a cable
into an port or your will damage the computer and the FireWire device.
Connecting and disconnecting FireWire devices

You can connect as many as 63 FireWire devices (including computers) together. There
are multiple ways to connect FireWire devices to your computer:
 For up to 16 devices, use a chain to connect devices together in a single chain

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
 For 17 or more devices, set up the devices in a hierarchy, or tree arrangement.
Note: You can also use a FireWire hub to connect multiple FireWire devices to your
computer.
To connect a FireWire device to your computer:

1. If the device came with software, install this software on your
computer.
For more information, see the documentation that came with the
device or contact the device manufacturer.
2. If necessary, connect the FireWire device to a power source.
3. If your FireWire device does not have an attached FireWire cable,
connect one end of a FireWire cable to the FireWire port on the
device.
4. Connect the other end of the cable to the FireWire port on your
computer.6-pin FireWire port and connector
Note: Some FireWire cables use latching connectors you must pinch
when unplugging the connector. If a latching connector does not fit
into a port, replace that cable with one that doesn't have a latching
connector.
5. Turn on the device.
For more information, see the documentation that came with the device. You will now be
able to use the FireWire device with your computer.
Note: Many devices have a power-on indicator light which lights up to show that the
device is properly connected and receiving power. Disconnecting a FireWire device
Note: Don't disconnect a FireWire device while the device is being used by an
application or you may damage the files on that and other FireWire devices.
To disconnect FireWire devices from your computer and from each

other:
1. If you're using files and applications on a FireWire device, save and
close the files, then quit all open applications.
If you don't do this before you disconnect the device, you may damage
the files on that device.
2. Drag the device's icon to the Trash.
If you don't do this before you disconnect the device, you may damage
the files on that device.
3. Unplug the connector from the FireWire port. Pull the connector, not
the cable.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Connecting multiple FireWire devices to your computer

To connect up to 16 FireWire devices to your computer, arrange the devices in a chain.
The computer can be anywhere in the chain. For best performance, put the slower devices
at the end of the chain.
Note: You can use both FireWire ports to connect devices in a chain. However, if you
connect all 16 devices to one FireWire port on your computer, you can't attach anything
to the other FireWire port.
If you want to connect a digital video (DV) camera to your computer, connect it directly
to a FireWire port on your computer, and not as part of a chain. DV cameras only have
one FireWire port.
If you want to connect a fast FireWire device such as a video camera, you can avoid data
bottlenecks by simply attaching the device to the other FireWire port on your computer.
If you want to connect 17 or more devices to your computer, you can create a hierarchy,
or tree arrangement.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
During data transfer over the shielded double twisted pair cable, a clock signal is
automatically generate from the data signal and the strobe signal. This eliminates the
need for the high-speed phase lock loop (PLL) circuits used by other interfaces at both
ends of the communication channel. As a result, IEEE 1394 is much less expensive.
The 1394 cable standard defines three signaling rates: 98.304, 196.608, and 393.216
Mbps (megabits per second; MBps in this paper refers to megabytes per second.) These
rates are rounded to 100, 200, and 400 Mbps, respectively, in this paper and are referred
to in the 1394 standard as S100, S200 and S400. Consumer DV gear uses S100 speeds,
but most 1394 PC adapter cards support the S200 rate. The slowest active node ordinarily
governs the signaling rate for the entire bus; however, if a bus master (controller)
implements a Topology Map and a Speed Map for specific node pairs, the bus can
support multiple signaling speeds between individual pairs. The 1394 Trade Association's
1394.1 working group presently are refining and clarifying the setup requirements for
handling interconnected devices with multiple signaling speeds.
Bus management

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Bus management on a 1394 bus involves several different responsibilities that may be
distributed among more than one node. Nodes on the bus must assume the roles of cycle
master, isochronous resource manager, and bus manager.
Cycle master. The cycle master initiates the 125 µs cycles. The root node must be the
cycle master; if a node that is not cycle master capable becomes root node, the bus is
reset and a node that is cycle master capable is forced to be the root. The cycle master
broadcasts a cycle start packet every 125µs. Note that a cycle start can be delayed while
an asynchronous packet is being transmitted or acknowledged. The cycle master deals
with this by including the amount of time that the cycle was delayed in the cycle start
packet.
Isochronous resource manager. The isochronous resource manager must be

isochronous transaction capable. The isochronous resource manager must also implement
several additional registers. These registers include the Bus Manager ID Register, the Bus
Bandwidth Allocation Register, and the Channel Allocation Register. A node that wishes
to transmit isochronous packets performs isochronous channel allocation. These nodes
must allocate a channel from the Channel Allocation Register by reading the bits in the
64-bit register. Each channel has one bit associated with it. A channel is available if its bit
is set to logic 1. The requesting node sets the first available channel bit to a logic 0 and
uses this bit number as the channel ID.
In addition, the requesting node must examine the Bandwidth Available Register to
determine how much bandwidth it can consume. The total amount of bandwidth available
is 6,144 allocation units. One allocation unit is the time required to transfer one quadlet at
1,600Mbps. A total of 4,915 allocation units are available for isochronous transfers if any
asynchronous transfers are used. Nodes wishing to use isochronous bandwidth must
subtract the amount of bandwidth needed from the Bandwidth Available Register.
Bus manager. A bus manager has several functions, including publishing the topology
and speed maps, managing power, and optimizing bus traffic. Nodes with a sophisticated
user interface that could instruct the end user on the optimum connection topology to
enable the highest throughput between nodes may use the topology map. Nodes to
determine what speed it can use to communicate with other nodes use the speed map.
The bus manager is also responsible for determining whether the node that has become
root node is cycle master capable. If it isn’t, the bus manager searches for a node that is
cycle master capable and forces a bus reset that will select that node as root node. The
bus manager might not always find a capable node; in this case, at least the isochronous
resource manager performs some of the bus management functions.
Hardware and software support

Hardware. Several manufacturers offer components for engineers designing systems to
support IEEE 1394. Integrated circuit providers typically provide a chipset that includes a

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
link layer controller and a physical layer controller. One of the goals of the 1394a
addendum is to provide interoperability between the various link layer and physical layer
controllers.
Complete PCI-based cards that plug into a PC back plane are available from companies
such as Adaptec, Sony, and Texas Instruments.
Hard Drive Specifications

Most hard drive-specific work has been invested in the development of the additional
Protocol and application layers required supporting mass storage functions. The IEEE
Sanctioned working group responsible for 1394 support for mass storage devices
Developed three specifications that enable mass storage to use the 1394 serial bus:
The Serial Bus Protocol-2 (SBP-2) specification defines the protocol for
command and data transfer of mass storage devices using the 1394 bus. It
describes the basic transport protocol for mass storage devices, and specifies the
data structures and operations above the transaction layer that provide efficient
mechanisms for this class of devices. Western Digital was a key co ntributor to this
standard.
The Reduced Block Command (RBC) specification defines the actual commands that
hard drives must support. Hard drives use a subset of this specification, which includes
commands for removable storage and other forms of storage such as optical disks.
The 1394 to EIDE Bridge Controller (Tailgate) specification defines the

requirements for a low-cost bridge device that allows existing legacy EIDE/ATAPI
devices to be connected to the 1394 bus using EIDE protocol.
Software. IEEE 1394 is directly supported in the new Windows Driver Model
(WDM), which is used in Windows 98 and will be available in Windows NT 5.0. For
chipsets and devices to support the drivers provided in the new versions of Windows,
several members of the 1394 Trade Association have banded together to create the 1394
Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) Specification. The OHCI provides a link layer
controller, as well as bus management functionality. In addition, the OHCI defines
several DMA controllers for asynchronous and isochronous transact ions. These
controllers provide registers that a standard 1394 driver, provided by Microsoft, can use
to configure the controller and schedule transactions.
Microsoft provides WDM streaming drivers to support audio and video devices such as
DVD players, MPEG decoders, tuners, and audio codes. These streaming drivers permit
low- latency support for isochronous channels. The drivers minimize the transitions
between user mode and kernel mode, which significantly reduces the overhead for driver
calls and data movement.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
For storage devices, printers, and scanners, Windows NT 5.0 supports the Serial Block
Protocol (SBP-2). Microsoft recommends that devices be written to support the SCSI
command set so the device can use the existing SCSI class driver that sits on top of the
SBP-2 driver. If the vendor doesn’t support the SCSI protocol, they will need to write
their own class driver to support their own command set.
In addition to the SBP-2 specification for storage devices, other standard data formats
that ride on top of 1394 are in various stages of completion. These include the Tailgate
specification, which defines a method for adapting ATA/ATAPI controllers to 1394, a
digital video (DV) standard, and a printer protocol. The Digital Still Image Working
Group and an industrial control and instrumentation group are also working on related
standards.
Embedded systems designers have also seen some RTOS vendors add support for 1394,
including Integrated Systems and Wind River. These vendors typically support a third-
party protocol stack that has been ported to their RTOS. Zayante, Award Software, and
Technology Rendevous each have a 1394 stack that they claim is OS-independent.
Windows CE doesn’t currently have native support for 1394, but it will undoubtedly
support it in the near future. Third-party support fills the existing gap.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
FIREWIRE Vs USB
What's so good about USB?
Several things. First, it's "hot swappable," eliminating the need to reboot or restart your
Mac when attaching a device. You attach peripherals through interconnected external
hubs. When your Mac's ports fill up, just attach a "hub" that provides additional ports
(usually four or seven), and keep on plugging in more peripherals and hubs as needed.
With USB, there's no need for terminators, memory addresses or ID numbers with USB
devices. There's only one kind of cable (USB A-B), which has different connectors at
each end, so you can't connect an USB device incorrectly. Various sorts of devices can
plug into a USB port: digital cameras, printers, Zip drives, Super Disk drives, floppy
drives, mice, keyboards and lots of other peripherals.
Which brings us to USB 2.0. In February of 1999, Intel announced that they were
creating a consortium of companies to bring USB to faster speeds, and allow it to
compete with IEEE-1394 FireWire. This USB 2.0 spec, is supposed to allow USB to
utilize the full range of devices including cameras, drives and other things that USB was
never intended to work with. This is quite a shift from the origina l goal of USB, which
was to provide connectivity for low to medium speed devices. Intel and its USB 2.0
consortium buddies plan to ramp up USB speeds 40 fold or more, going from 12 Mbps to
480 Mbps.
Despite the fact that there are still technical hurdles to leap, USB 2.0 won't be supported
by motherboard chipsets -- in other words, appearing on a computer near you -- for
probably another year, at least. Then it will be longer still until peripheral manufacturers
jump aboard.
FireWire: WHAT’S THAT?

FireWire is a high-performance connection standard for personal computers and
consumer electronics that makes USB look sluggish. FireWire can move large amounts
of data between computers and peripheral devices at transfer rates of 100, 200 and 400
Mbps (12.5, 25 and 50 megabytes per second, respectively). In simpler terms, it's a heck
of a lot faster than USB.
At such speeds, you could, for instance, plug in a digital camcorder and transfer video
data into your Mac as a pure digital signal without going through the usual digital-to-
analog and analog-to-digital conversion process. FireWire also supports device-to-device
transfers for which you'd not even need your computer. Want to transfer digital video
data from your digital camera or camcorder to a digital VCR? No problem -- if the
manufacturers of such devices build them to take advantages of FireWire's capabilities.
Like USB, FireWire is hot pluggable; up to 63 devices (using cable lengths up to 14 feet)
can be attached to a single bus and connected and disconnected as needed. FireWire

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
cables are easy to connect because there's no need for device IDs, jumpers, DIPswitches,
screws, latches, or terminators.
FireWire speeds up the movement of multimedia data and large files and enables the
connection of digital consumer products -- including digital camcorders, digital
videotapes, digital videodisks, set-top boxes and music systems -- directly to your
computer. The technology allows for video capture directly from both new DV
camcorders with built- in FireWire ports, and from older analog-only equipment using
A/V to FireWire converters.
FireWire was developed with streaming digital me dia in mind. The technology
allows for isynchronous transport, meaning that any two devices on the bus can
have guaranteed bandwidth through which to pass data.
Besides the aforementioned products, you can also get FireWire-savvy scanners, storage
devices, printer interface cards, A/V converters, digital audio mixers and printers. Of
course, you may not have the time, desire, or, most importantly, money to indulge in such
extravagances, but, hey, it's possible.
FireWire versus USB

While FireWire sounds like USB on steroids, the technologies serve different purposes.
FireWire -- a much cleaner and more advanced spec than USB -- is for peripherals that
need maximum bandwidth. USB is a medium bandwidth connection for peripherals such
as digital still cameras, monitors, keyboards and mice.
But with USB 2.0 looming on the horizon, will FireWire wilt and fade? Possibly, but not
likely. The prediction (that is, the prognosis of Yours Truly) is that, even if version 2.0
does what's being promised -- and that's probably not going to happen anytime soon -- it
and FireWire will coexist peacefully. It seems doubtful that USB 2.0 will encroach too
much on digital video and audio territory that FireWire has slowly but surely conquered.
Why? FireWire can transfer data point-to-point (one device to another) while USB
requires the computer to server as a go-between. In other words, moving data with USB
means you have to move it from one doohickey to your computer, then transfer it from
the computer to the other doohickey. FireWire can move data directly from one device to
another. Plus, as we mentioned, FireWire will soon hit speeds of 800 Mbps, late this year
or early in 2001. And there's speculation of speeds of up to 1.6 Gbps a year or two down
the road. So expect USB and FireWire to live together, if not in harmony, at least in some
sort of truce.
Topology
The topology of 1394, known as a tree topology, is shown in figure 1 below. Any device
can be connected to any other device, so long as there are no loops. A 1394 network can
support up to 63 devices. The devices can be hot swapped. If a device is added or

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
removed, the bus will reset, reconfigure, and continue operation. If the bus is broken, the
two pieces will reset, reconfigure, and resume operation as two independent busses. 1394
also offers peer-to-peer connectivity, so peripherals can talk to one another without
intervention from the PC. The PC acts as the host. Each device is connected to a hub,
which provides sockets and power and acts as a repeater. Hubs can be either self-powered
or bus powered. They can also be cascaded. The USB topology supports up to 127
devices.
Speed
USB offers speeds ranging from 1 Mbits per second to 12 Mbits per second. In contrast,
the current IEEE specification 1394-1995 offers speeds starting at 100 Mbits per second
and going up to 400 Mbits per second. P1394b will start at 800 Mbits per second and is
defining speeds of up to 3200 Mbits per second. P1394b is expected to be fully backward
compatible with the 100-400 Mbits per second specification, - connector cable and
software.
Application
As mentioned previously, 1394 and USB are complimentary technologies. USB is a

medium bandwidth connection for telephony products, digital still cameras, monitors,
keyboards, mice, and other similar I/O devices. In contrast, 1394 is a high-speed bus
designed for digital video cameras, DVD players, mass storage devices, and ot her
peripherals that require greater bandwidth.
Cost
USB is a very low-cost interconnects technology. Low-speed USB implementations for

devices such as mice and keyboards typically cost less than $1 in OEM quantities, and
even the medium-speed implementations for devices like scanners and modems are in the
$1-2 range in OEM quantities. Due to relatively lower volumes and higher complexity,
1394 implementations are currently in the $15 range. This cost is expected to decrease as
volume builds over the next few years.
Meeting the Needs of Tomorrow's PC
Figure 3 below summarizes the differences between USB and 1394. Tomorrow's PC will
have a need for low-cost, low-bandwidth devices like mice, keyboards, and modems.
USB provides a good fit for these devices. Tomorrow's PC will also need a high-speed
interface for connecting to high-speed printers, hard drives, and camcorders. 1394 is the
technology that will allow these devices to interoperate with the PC. Both USB and 1394
will coexist on future PC platforms to meet a wide range of growing peripheral
interconnectivity needs.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
FIREWIRE 400 & FIREWIRE 800

With more than 30 times the bandwidth of the popular USB 1.1 peripheral standard,
FireWire 400 has been the gold standard for high-speed data transfer. Apple was the first
computer manufacturer to include FireWire across its entire product line. And now Apple
has upped the ante yet again, effectively doubling data throughput with its
implementation of the IEEE 1394b standard, FireWire 800, available on the 17 -inch
PowerBook G4 and the Power Mac G4.
Twice as fast
With its high data-transfer speed, FireWire is the interface of choice for today’s digital
audio and video devices, as well as external hard drives and other high-speed peripherals.
Now transferring data at up to 800 Mbps, FireWire 800 delivers more than double the
effective bandwidth of the USB 2.0 peripheral standard. That means you can send more
than a CD’s worth of data every ten seconds.
Twenty times as far
FireWire 400 delivers data over cables of up to 4.5 meters in length. Using professional-
grade glass optical fiber, FireWire 800 can burst data across 100-meter cables. So you
could toss that CD more than the length of a football field — every ten seconds. What’s
more, you don’t even have to have a new computer or device to gain the length. As long
as both devices are connected to a FireWire 800 hub, you can connect them via super-
efficient glass optical cable. That means you could put a camera on the field — connected
directly to a Mac in the press box. Or set up a killer digital audio studio with Macs in one
room and recording interfaces in another with no latency loss from the extra cable length.
The short — about 5 meters — cable distance and the lack of peer-to-peer connectivity of
USB 2.0 limits its usefulness in deployments that require long haul cabling, such as
sound stages and studios.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Differences between FireWire 400 and FireWire 800

With the development of FireWire 800, the question on everyone’s mind is, what is going
to happen to your legacy devices? Existing peripherals and devices are going to continue
to operate. The performance will remain the same for your legacy FireWire devices
operating at the original FireWire 400 speed.
Essentially, the main difference between FireWire 800 and FireWire 400 can be summed
up in one word – speed. FireWire 800 offers impressive results, with speeds up to
100MB/s, though current drive technology limits this to 55MB/s (maximum sustained
throughput) for a single drive, and up to 100MB/s (maximum sustained throughput) per
bus in RAID 0 configurations.
Other key advancements include the support of increased cabling distances and newly
enhanced arbitration architecture. Utilizing cables constructed of professional-grade glass
optical fiber, when both devices are connected via a FireWire 800 hub, FireWire 800 can
burst data across 100 meters of cable.
The new arbitration scheme greatly improves on the existing architecture by

incorporating advanced 8B10B data encoding (based on codes used by Gigabit Ethernet
and Fiber Channel), which reduces signal distortion, and also improves the arbitration
time by prepping while the current data is being sent, allowing the data to be sent as soon
as the current transmission is completed.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Legacy and Beta Devices Working Together

The new standard was designed to be backwards compatible, meaning that FireWire 800
devices will still operate via the original FireWire 400 port. To connect a FireWire 800
device to a FireWire 400 port, a specific adapter cable must be used. There are two types
of FireWire 400 ports: 6-pin and 4-pin. For FireWire 800 devices to work, placing the 9-
pin end of the FireWire cable into the FireWire 800 port of the device, and the opposite
6-pin or 4-pin end into the FireWire 400 port must connect them.
The same holds true for FireWire 400 devices being connected to a FireWire 800 host
Port. The 4-pin or 6-pin end of the FireWire cable must be connected to the FireWire 400
port of the device, and the 9-pin end must be connected to the FireWire 800 port.
When FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 devices are mixed, all transfer rates revert to
the original FireWire 400 speed.
Optimum use for FireWire 800
FireWire 800 is not ideal for every device, but due to its high bandwidth and support of
both isochronous and asynchronous data delivery, FireWire has found a very successful
place in both the computer and consumer electronic industries. In the past year, we have
seen disk drive performance bump into the limits of 400 Mbps FireW ire, with most
implementations in the range of 35-40 Mbytes/sec. Users should see better than 40
Mbytes per second for single drives and up to 80-90 Mbytes per second for striped drives.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
FireWire 800 is ideal for hard drives, video, digital audio and digital cameras to name a
few, but is overkill for tape drives and CD/DVD burners.
ADVANTAGES OF FIREWIRE
FireWire 800 verses SCSI
The SCSI based system has a number of disadvantages to FireWire 800. SCSI based
systems have a parallel interface, which cases it to have very limited connect ability,
unlike FireWire that can connect to almost all computer peripherals. SCSI is still a very
expense route for computer speed and has a maximum capacity per drive of 146GB
compared to 500GB for LaCie’s Big Disk. FireWire devices are truly plug and play,
unlike SCSI devices which require a device ID, FireWire devices can be plugged or
unplugged without the need to restart your computer.
FireWire 800 verses USB 2.0

USB 2.0 has a maximum throughput of 480 Mbps, so in theory it is faster than the 400
Mbps performance of FireWire 400. Due to transfer protocol differences, this isn’t
necessarily true depending on the peripheral. However, FireWire 800 clearly doubles the
theoretical speed and immediately delivers better performance with modern drive
technology. Additionally, FireWire is more suitable for time-critical isochronous data
transfers that will be necessary for high definition video.
What to expect from FireWire 800 devices
FireWire 800 is ideal for anyone dealing with bandwidth-intensive projects, such as
high-speed data storage or professional video capture and editing. For high-speed data
storage, users will see double the transfer rate that they did with original FireWire and
two times the usable bandwidth of USB 2.0. Users will also enjoy true plug and play
connectivity, real-time data delivery and the ability to power external devices through the
bus.
For those working with digital video, the new standard will enable new bandwidth-
intensive applications, such as multiple-stream content. FireWire 800 will provide the
speed that digital users require to quickly download digital video and digital images from
your digital camera. It will also allow for additional flexibility for users because of its
long-distance capability of up to 100 meters.
DRAWBACKS OF FIREWIRE
FIREWIRE FAILURE SCENARIO

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
A typical failure scenario is as follows: The user attaches a FireWire storage device to
the computer. The user expects the device to mount on the desktop, but this does not
occur. Repeated attempts to mount the storage device (usually by connecting and
disconnecting the FireWire cable) produce the same results. Ultimately, the user attempts
to mount other FireWire devices on the same port without success, and consequent ly
verifies that the port is no longer functional. Various attempts to resolve the situation
may be attempted, all without success. This may include machine rebooting, Parameter
RAM resetting, power disconnection for extended periods of time, etc.
It’s worth noting that the host FireWire port may be on the motherboard (as is the case
for most Apple computers) or it may be on a PCI FireWire host adapter card. The result
is the same; the particular port no longer works. The port may still be capable of
supplying power to the attached FireWire device, but the device is no longer seen on the
desktop or in the various disk management utilities.
The failure of the host’s FireWire port can produce a very bad day for the user. The
knowledge of possible damage (and consequential repair cost / hassle) to the computer is
compounded by the frustrating inability to mount and use external storage devices.
FAILURE CAUSES
LOSS OF POWER FROM THE PORT
What went wrong to cause the failure of the FireWire port?
In order to answer the question, let’s consider the two main functional components of the
FireWire interface: the Data lines and the Power lines. A failure mode is the loss of
Power through the FireWire port. A second failure mode (which the author believes to be
far more likely) is a failure of the port’s ability to supply Data to the FireWire device.
These failure modes cause us to consider: why would a port lose the ability to supply
either Power or Data?
In the testing and development of FireWire storage devices, manufacturers accidentally

shorted the FireWire Power / ground lines together many times. This can cause a variety
of results: the immediate shutdown of the entire computer system; the shutdown of an
individual port; etc.
LOSS OF DATA TRANSMISSION FROM THE PORT
The second failure mode is the failure of the port’s ability to supply Data to the FireWire
device. As previously stated, it believes this to be the most common failure mode when
FireWire ports fail.
FireWire ports within most peripherals are composed of two devices: the FireWire
bridge, which connects to the drive and to the FireWire ―PHY‖, and the ―PHY‖, which

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
connects from the FireWire cable to the FireWire bridge. The PHY receives nearly no
mention in most discussion of FireWire devices, but it is actually responsible for the
electrical connection to the FireWire cable, and ultimately, the host device. The host
devices’ FireWire connection is very similar, using a PHY to connect the motherboard
electronics to the FireWire port.
The manufacturers have direct experience observing the failure of FireWire ports in
peripheral devices under developmental test conditions. This experience shows that most
port failures occur within the PHY, not in the FireWire Bridge, a nd not in the power
supply portion of the port.
Post mortem examination of the decapped (plastic removed) failed PHY shows gross
failure of the circuitry, which attaches the Data lines. After removing the plastic package
from the integrated circuit, an examination of the integrated circuit under a microscope
shows clear evidence of electrical damage to the part.
In other words, something zapped the PHY. How is this possible?
It really wasn’t supposed to be possible for the PHY to fail. However, there are at many
different events, which can cause the PHY to fail. Some of these are very easy to
understand, while others are a bit more difficult to understand.
FAILURE BY ELECTROSTATIC DISCHARGE (ESD)
The failure scenario is as follows: The user inserts a FireWire cable into the host. The
user then picks up the other end to attach to the FireWire device, and inadvertently
discharges ESD through one of the Data lines to the host port. Part destruction occurs.
In the real world, this does not (or at least should not) happen frequently. The user is far
more likely to discharge through the Shield of the FireWire cable, which will dissipate
the discharge directly to a ground within the host computer, without damaging internal
circuitry.
PORT FAILURE BY BAD CABLE OR BAD INSERTION

This failure scenario actually has three sub-scenarios, each of which will be described in
turn.
PORT FAILURE BY REVERSE INSERTION
In this scenario, the user inserts the cable with the connector twisted 180 degrees. An
examination of the FireWire six pin ports suggests that this is not possible, but it has
actually been done many times. It is more likely to happen when the port is worn, or
when the port easily ―spreads‖ when reverse inserted. Some FireWire ports are built with
the metal seam at the narrow end of the port, making it much easier to reverse insert the

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
cable. The resulting (errant) electrical connections cause Power lines to be directly
connected to Data lines. This invariably fries the PHY attached to that port.
PORT FAILURE BY BAD CABLE
Any internal failure of a FireWire cable which results in Power being shorted to a Data
line within the cable usually will result in the failure of the port to which it is attached.
The author was directly told of a typical experience at a major computer company. An
employee observed that his FireWire drive would not mount. Suspecting trouble and
wanting to verify it, the employee tested the device on three more computers. The device
wouldn’t mount on any of the four computers. The ultimate cause of the problem was a
bad cable which fried four host ports on the four computers. The FireWire drive was not
at fault. The author assumes that each of the four PHYs was destroyed.
PORT FAILURE BY FIREWIRE CABLE TWISTING
In this scenario, the user correctly attaches the FireWire cable to the computer and the
storage device. A rotational twisting force is applied to either connector at either end of
the cable, in relationship to the port in which it is inserted. As the connectors are pushed
out of position by the rotational torque, a short occurs between the Data lines and a
Power line, resulting in port failure.
PORT FAILURE BY INDUCED UNDER/OVER VOLTAGE CONDITION
This is the scenario which is most difficult to understand. Essentially, the PHY creates or
experiences a damaging voltage on one of the Data lines. This error condition is very
transient in nature and is caused at startup time of bus powered FireWire devices by a
bump or droop on a power supply within the FireWire device. The bump or droop is
understood through a detailed analysis of the actual circuit of the FireWire device, cable,
and host port as current starts to flow through the Power lines at startup time. Equivalent
circuitry must be considered: IE, inductance within power lines, etc. (The engineering
analysis is far beyond the scope of this paper.)
As a result, the external FireWire device may briefly experience or transmit a damaging
voltage to the host computer’s FireWire port, resulting in the destruction of the port.
This failure mode is the one most likely to have created the impression that bus powered
devices cause FireWire host port failures.
PREVENTING FIREWIRE PORT FAILURE

OBVIOUS PREVENTATIVES
Certain preventive measures seem obvious:

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
 Always use high quality FireWire cables.

 If a cable is worn out, replace it immediately. (Cables used at WiebeTech are
used heavily throughout every business day; they are generally replaced every
month, if not more frequently.)
 Never insert a cable backwards into a port. If this happens before the cable is also
attached to the host (or to the peripheral device), get the port repaired prior to
further use of the device (or host). Discard the cable and use a new one.
 If a device does not mount, attempt mounting it with a new cable on the same
port. Always suspect the cable before suspecting a failure of the device. Try
powering the host down; rebooting; etc. Port failures on machines tend to follow
the cable.
OTHER METHODS OF RESOLVING HOST PORT FAILURES

REPAIR THE MACHINE
If the user has a computer under warranty, it is likely that the manufacturer will repair the
damaged port without charge of any kind. It may be worthwhile checking with the
manufacturer, even if the computer is out of warranty.
ADD AN INEXPENSIVE FIREWIRE HOST CARD
If the machine is out of warranty and has available PCI slots, the simplest way to repair
the computer is to add a FireWire PCI card. They are inexpensive and very easy to
install. Most operating systems do not require the installation of any additional software
drives to support FireWire usage through a PCI card.
CONCLUSIONS
Most of the failure modes of FireWire ports are believed to be caused by low quality or
worn out FireWire cables, operator error during device and cable insertion, inadequate
PHY port protection, and improper design of external FireWire devices which causes
voltage surges to the host port.
CABLE PREVENTATIVES
 Users are encouraged to use high quality FireWire cables.

 Users are encouraged to replace worn out FireWire cables.
 Never plug a FireWire cable in backwards (although it seems impossible; it’s
been done many times.)
 Don’t apply twisting torque to cables that are inserted into sockets.
 If a device doesn’t mount, do not test the cable on another machine.
HOST PORTS

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
 Older computers may not have FireWire port protection built into them. This
appears to place them at higher risk of failure.
 Recently manufactured computers are likely to have enhanced port protection.
 If your port fails while the computer is within warranty, you won’t have any
problems getting it repaired.
 If your port fails while the computer is out of warranty, an inexpensive solution is
to use a low cost PCI FireWire host card. (assuming you have open slots).
FIREWIRE PERIPHERALS
 FireWire Peripherals should have a transient limiting circuitry on the Data lines at
power up time, in order to prevent transients from causing damage to the host’s
PHY.
 An alternative method is to use FireWire devices that are turned on via switch
after attachment to the FireWire cable.
 Another method is to use FireWire peripherals with built in inrush current limiting
on the Power lines.
 Always follow the attachment and power up recommendations of your host and
peripheral manufacturer!
Looking to the Future

There is currently an effort underway in IEEE working groups to extend the capabilities
of the original 1394-1995 standard. The effort, known as 1394b, will extend the s tandard
by improving the signaling protocol to allow for more efficient transfer of data. The
second, known as 1394b, will extend the standard further by permitting operating speeds
of 800 Mbps and beyond. These rates will exceed the transfer rates of the EIDE and SCSI
parallel interfaces.
Because the pending 1394b standard provides data transfer rates higher than existing low
cost interfaces, it is currently in the running to become the successor to EIDE for storage
peripherals. As such, 1394 is receiving strong backing from technology leaders such
asMicrosoft, Intel, and Apple. Storage companies such as Western Digital, Seagate,
Quantum, Maxtor and others have invested time and resources towards creating the
necessary standards to enable attachment of storage peripherals via the 1394 interface.
The hard drive companies have taken a leadership role in these efforts since the
interfacecould become the standard for hard drive attachment in the PC industry.
The move from analog to digital functionality in co nsumer electronics will spur the move
to IEEE 1394 in the near future. Confirming the industry consensus, 1999 has been
theyear that 1394 became established in consumer applications. Based on the initial
success of the Sony camcorders, other audio/visual products have been introduced. These
introductions include: DVD for television using the MPEG-2 format, DVD as a CDROM,
desktop cameras and color printers.

FIREWIRE INTERFACE
Ultimately ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and IEEE 1394 will drive each other's
markets. ATM will become the worldwide voice/video/data public switched
networks.However; ATM is too expensive for devices such as hard disk drives, cameras
and desktop computers. Therefore IEEE 1394 is a complementary device interface for
ATM.
Built on a base of inexpensive implementations, IEEE 1394 will become a high volume
consumer electronics interface. Consumer electronics interfaces tend to be long lived—
plain old telephone service (POTS) is over 100 years old, and audio/video coaxial
interfaces date from World War II. Therefore, with ability to span media and maintain
software compatibility, IEEE 1394 should enjoy a very long life. If ATM, the next
telephone system, lasts at least 100 years, then IEEE 1394 could be there as well.
Such a high volume interface will enable many new applications. Not only will
audio/visual data be available for computers to manipulate, but a user-friendly command-
and-control interface will span home, vehicle, office and factory products. Existing
barriers will gradually be shattered by the expected growth of IEEE 1394.

Seminar Report On Fire Wire

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Seminar Report On Fire Wire

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

FIREWIRE INTERFACE

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 1

Of increasing importance are multipoint external interfaces, used to support

The Need for a High-Speed Data Transfer Medium

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 2

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 3

A summary of 1394 features includes:

• Fast data transfer rates: 100, 200, or 400Mbps

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 4

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 5

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 6

Fig. 1. Topology of a typical PC-based 1394 bus system for DV applications.

Note: The topology shown in figure 1 assumes a common audio/video

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 7

Physical, Link, and Transaction Layers

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 8

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 9

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 10

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 11

 Simple quadlet (four-byte) read

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 12

1394a arbitration enhancements

Acknowledge d accelerated arbitration. When a responding node also has a request

Token-style arbitration. Token-style arbitration requires a group of cooperating nodes.

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 13

Note: The physical (PHY) layer is the bottleneck in 1394 systems.

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 14

Cables and Connectors

Connecting and disconnecting FireWire devices

 For up to 16 devices, use a chain to connect devices together in a single chain

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 15

 For 17 or more devices, set up the devices in a hierarchy, or tree arrangement.

To connect a FireWire device to your computer:

To disconnect FireWire devices from your computer and from each

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 16

Connecting multiple FireWire devices to your computer

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 17

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 18

Isochronous resource manager. The isochronous resource manager must be

Hardware and software support

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 19

Hard Drive Specifications

The 1394 to EIDE Bridge Controller (Tailgate) specification defines the

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 20

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 21

FireWire: WHAT’S THAT?

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 22

FireWire versus USB

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 23

As mentioned previously, 1394 and USB are complimentary technologies. USB is a

USB is a very low-cost interconnects technology. Low-speed USB implementations for

Meeting the Needs of Tomorrow's PC

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 24

FIREWIRE 400 & FIREWIRE 800

Twenty times as far

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 25

Differences between FireWire 400 and FireWire 800

The new arbitration scheme greatly improves on the existing architecture by

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 26

Legacy and Beta Devices Working Together

Optimum use for FireWire 800

For Download Visit http://www.nectarkunj.byethost14.com/ 27

FireWire 800 verses USB 2.0

What to expect from FireWire 800 devices