R.I.P Firewire

[kiemchacsu]

I think Apple decided to replace Firewire with Thunderbolt.

Yes obviously.
However other companies also ditched FireWire in favor of USB.
That’s what I hate about the technology Revolution. It makes products become obsolete sooner than we expected.
Imagine that you want to use a CD in current pc or laptop, difficult isn’t it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Axel]

For me nothing is "obsolete" only because of new technology that appears.

If I decide to buy a new computer it´s only me to decide what technology it should have or not.
So I have kept the ones with unique connectors until a better solution came. That´s individual
different but the system works for everyone 😉

Current notebooks and PCs are way smaller than the ones with x devices for
changeable media years ago. I have a slim external drive for all these discs - from CD
to BD to connect easy everywhere I need. USB cable brings the power so no additional
cable is needed.

 

[willie_901]

Off topic a little bit, I am sorry.
But, anybody knows why FireWire was abandoned? Because of the USB or the Thunderbolt?
k

Both.

USB 3.0(same connectors as USB/USB2) is faster than Firewire 800.

USB-C (a.k.a. Thunderbolt 3, a.k.a. USB 3.1 and 3.2) is about ten times faster than USB 3.0.

Fire wire is much faster than USB 1.0 which was common when Firewire 400 was introduced. It is also faster than USB 2.0.

Ethernet maxes out at 10/100/1000 Mbps depending on the hardware in use. Since USB 3.1 and 3.2 max out at 10 0r 20 Gbps respectively, it is tempting to speculate USB 3.1/3.2 will be around for a long time. This is probably a silly prediction.

BTW, the maximum ethernet CAT6 cable run (100 meters) is about four times longer than USB-C.

Of course the real-life speed comparisons are highly dependent on driver hardware/firmware, OS software and file size.

 

[Godfrey]

Off topic a little bit, I am sorry.
But, anybody knows why FireWire was abandoned? Because of the USB or the Thunderbolt?

I think Apple decided to replace Firewire with Thunderbolt.

FireWire was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple, and later became a standard interface protocol defined by IEEE 1394. They developed and promoted it for a long time, but today's data volumes and vast capacity storage devices, never mind the speed, called for something new. In this class of data transfer, they decided to adopt USB, due to its broad use across the industry, and develop Thunderbolt for even higher speed/higher volume IO requirements.

Quick summary of speeds:

40Gb/s – Thunderbolt 3
20Gb/s – Thunderbolt 2
10Gb/s – USB 3.1 (USB-C)
5Gb/s – USB 3
800Mb/s – FireWire 800
400Mb/s – FireWire 400
280Mb/s – USB 2
1.5Mb/s-12Mb/s – USB 1 "low" and "high" speed
128Kb/s – RS232 serial (although 256 and even 512 Kb/s were possible in some cases)​

Nearly thirty years in today's fast paced hardware development is eons in Time.

The limitations of Thunderbolt to FireWire adapters is the amount of power (amperage) that the protocols are designed to supply, with FireWire being designed to handle more than double the amperage of Thunderbolt, and the number of peripherals on a single controller. (When storage devices were smaller, you needed to put more of them on line to build up to the capacity you needed. Nowadays you rarely see storage chains with more than two or three devices in them both because the devices are so much larger in capacity, and because there are timing and speed issues to optimize data transfer at play.)

Thunderbolt and USB-C (USB-3.1) are the current hardware protocol milieu to build against. Plenty of adaptations are already in the field for older devices, and the older device designs' production is long since aged out.


"Life is change. When change is eliminated, everything is dead."

 

[Axel]

And Apples precedessor to FireWire for fast peripherial devices was the SCSI bus.

 

[oftheherd]

Yes obviously.
However other companies also ditched FireWire in favor of USB.
That’s what I hate about the technology Revolution. It makes products become obsolete sooner than we expected.
Imagine that you want to use a CD in current pc or laptop, difficult isn’t it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

See below. Several years ago I bought a netbook that had no CD player, so I bought an external CD/DVD player/writer. Actually, I had to buy a second as the first was dropped by a co-worker of mine. They may need a 2nd USB connection for better power. Or you could get a powered USB hub. I also have to use it at work sometimes we all now have laptops without CD/DVD drives.

For me nothing is "obsolete" only because of new technology that appears.

If I decide to buy a new computer it´s only me to decide what technology it should have or not.
So I have kept the ones with unique connectors until a better solution came. That´s individual
different but the system works for everyone 😉

Current notebooks and PCs are way smaller than the ones with x devices for
changeable media years ago. I have a slim external drive for all these discs - from CD
to BD to connect easy everywhere I need. USB cable brings the power so no additional
cable is needed.

 

[Dwig]

...
Imagine that you want to use a CD in current pc or laptop, difficult isn’t it?
...

With Windows or macOS, and I assume most Linus distros, it is extremely easy. Simply acquire (beg, steal, borrow, or buy) an external USB DVD-r drive and plug it in. They're actually rather inexpensive these days. Anything reasonably recent will be recognized by the OS without you having to track down special drivers.

Personally, I'd rather use an external with any notebook as I use them only rarely and prefer not to have the notebook be larger and heavier due to having one built in. In my case, in addition to having an external on the shelf, my big desktop has one built in that is shared on my home network. This way, my Windows tablet has easy access as does my wife's two Windows notebooks.

 

[sreed2006]

Here are test results with a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 and a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 connected to an iMac at a USB-C port. Starting with a Firewire 400 to 800 cable plugged into a scanner, then an Apple Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, then an Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) adapter that is plugged into the computer, the connection works like a charm. This is while using VueScan to run the scanners.

That is four generations of connectors to get the two pieces of equipment to communicate. But, it works!