What is Firewire
FireWire was developed by Apple to solve the lack of high-speed connections available to peripherals during the 1990s, it’s a technology that was at one time standard for computers made by Appl., but has since been replaced by Thunderbolt ports and later versions of the USB ports.
Firewire is based on the IEEE 1394 high-performance serial bus standard. Firewire is an interface used to connect multimedia peripherals to the computer, it is used to connect digital video cameras, external hard drives, modern printers and other devices that can benefit from high transfer speeds. Some memory card readers connect to your computer using this interface. These types of card readers are generally faster than those that connect via USB.
Among the features is that it provides a single plug-and-socket connection in which up to 63 devices can be connected with data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps (megabits per second), it can also transfer power to the device through the same cable as does the data transfer. The end of the cable that goes into the computer is a 6-pin cable, while the smaller connector that goes into the device is a 4-pin cable. In addition to connecting peripherals, Firewire can be used to connect two computers and transfer files between them.
Types of Firewire
There are two main versions of the FireWire interface: FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) and FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b). FireWire 400 uses a 6-pin connector and supports data transfer speeds of up to 400 Mbps. FireWire 800 uses a 9-pin connector and can transfer data at speeds of up to 800 Mbps. The FireWire 800 interface, which was introduced on computers Macintosh in 2003, supports FireWire 400 devices through an adapter. Both interfaces support daisy chaining of up to 63 devices and can provide up to 30 volts of power to connected devices.
