Jaycar Electronics Reference Data Sheet: FIREWIRE.

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IEEE 1394 (AKA ‘FireWire’ & ‘iLink’)

Around 1986, Apple Computer Inc developed a very can be used for peer-to-peer communication. A digital
fast but relatively low cost serial interface for camcorder can stream video and audio data to both a
distributing digital audio and other bulk data between digital VCR and a DVD-RAM recorder simultaneously via
personal computers, and between computers and their an IEEE 1394 network, for example, with no need for
peripherals. The new high speed serial interface was assistance from a PC or other network controller device
designed to replace the relatively expensive SCSI parallel (after it has been allocated an isochronous channel for
interface, and Apple dubbed it FireWire (which is still the transfer — see later).
an Apple trademark).
Firewire was so successful that other manufacturers Fast & powerful
soon began using it under licence. In 1995 Sony released IEEE 1394 can transmit data at three rates: 98.304,
its DCR-VX1000 digital video camcorder, which featured 196.608 and 393.216Mb/s (megabits per second), which
essentially the same interface for input and output of are usually rounded to 100Mb/s, 200Mb/s and 400Mb/s
digital video. Sony dubbed the interface iLink , and has — and officially labelled ‘S100’, ‘S200’ and ‘S400’
gradually provided the interfaces on all of its digital respectively. As you can see even the lowest rate is
camcorders and VCRs. ( iLink is a Sony trademark.) nearly 10 times that of USB.
It was soon realised that the FireWire/iLink interface Most consumer equipment like digital camcorders,
was ideal not just for conveying digital video and audio, VCRs and DVD-RAM recorders use the S100 rate,
but for fast transfer of large amounts of any kind of which is more than capable of handling a compressed
digital data. Because of this the IEEE (Institution of video-and-audio data stream. The majority of PCI/IEEE
Electrical and Electronics Engineers) established it in 1394 interface adaptor cards for PCs will also support
1995 as an industry standard data interface, known as S200, while some can also support S400.
IEEE 1394-1995 — or ‘IEEE 1394’ for short. Like USB, IEEE 1394 is designed to allow ‘hot
Nowadays IEEE 1394 interfaces are used on a very swapping’. Devices can be connected and/or
wide range of digital equipment, both in the computer disconnected without turning off the power or resetting,
and entertainment electronics industries. They’re etc. The device which is performing the bus manager
standard on the majority of digital camcorders and role constantly monitors bus status, and reconfigures it
VCRs, as well as on video editing workstations and dynamically whenever nodes are added or disconnected.
advanced computer graphics systems, and will probably Data is transferred on the IEEE 1394 bus in addressed
be standard on the new DVD-RW and DVD-RAM video packets, and is transaction-based. The transfers can be
recorders. They’re increasingly found even inside large asynchronous or isochronous . Asynchronous transfers
workstations and servers, to interface peripherals like are used mainly for bus configuration, setting up
large hard disk drives and arrays, CD-writers and transfers and handshaking, but are also used for bulk
scanners. data transfer to and from hard disk drives, etc.
In fact it looks very much as if IEEE 1394 could well Isochronous transfers are used for transporting time-
become the standard high speed interface for the sensitive data like digital video and audio.
coming era of digital convergence — the merging of IEEE 1394 data packets have a 64-bit address header,
computers, communications and entertainment which is divided into a 10-bit network address, a 6-bit
technology. node address and the remaining 48 bits for data (or
Note that although there are some similarities mode control) memory addresses at the receiving node.
between IEEE 1394 and the USB, there are quite a few This gives IEEE 1394 the ability to address 1023
differences. USB is slower and essentially designed for networks of 63 nodes, each with up to 281TB
networks with a single host (the PC), whereas IEEE 1394 (terabytes) of data addresses.
In practical terms this tends to mean up to 63 devices
can be hooked up via IEEE 1394 cables as a network,
with each device able to have tens or even hundreds of

Fig.2: How the DS coding works. The Strobe

Fig.1: A fairly typical IEEE 1394 network used in signal is produced at the transmitting port, by
a digital video editing studio. The PC would exclsuive-ORing the Data and Clock. Then at the
generally take the role of bus manager and receiving end the Clock is reconstructed by
isochronous resource manager. exclusive-ORing the Data and Strobe signals.
 Jaycar Electronics Reference Data Sheet: FIREWIRE.PDF (2)
and as you can see there’s only one change in the pair
every bit period.
At the receiving device, though, the Data and Strobe
signals are again fed to an exclusive-OR gate. The
output of this gate effectively reconstructs the Clock
signal again, with its timing still accurately locked to the
Data. The DS coding therefore avoids the need for IEEE
1394 receivers to have a PLL (phase-locked loop).

Twisted pairs
The IEEE 1394 Data and Strobe signals are sent on
Fig.3: The Strobe and Data signals are sent along cables with two separately shielded twisted-wire pairs,
the IEEE 1394 bus via two shielded twisted-wire called TPA (twisted pair A) and TPB (twisted pair B).
pairs, TPA and TPB. Transfers in one direction have the Strobe signal on TPA
and the Data signal on TPB, while those in the opposite
gigabytes of memory — and plenty of room for more! direction have the Data signal on TPA and the Strobe
signal on TPB. Fig.3 shows the idea.
Typically devices have three IEEE 1394 ports, but they
can have up to 27. This allows networks to be as simple There are two different kinds of IEEE 1394 cable, with
as a DV camcorder connected to a digital VCR, or more matching connectors. The primary type of cable has not
complicated like the setup shown in Fig.1. As you can only the two separately shielded wire pairs TPA and
see this shows a ‘tree’ topology, taking advantage of the TPB, but also two DC power conductors — the negative
ability of each device to act as a bus repeater or ‘mini being grounded. A cross-section of this type of cable is
hub’. shown in Fig.4, and as you can see there’s also an outer
shield and sleeve.
One device on the bus acts as bus manager , and can
also act as isochronous resource manager . The latter The IEEE 1394 standard allows nodes to be supplied
allocates bus bandwidth for isochronous data transfers with DC power via the two power conductors. The
when devices request them. When there’s a PC in the power can be supplied at a voltage between 8V and 33V,
network, it usually performs the roles of bus manager and the current can be up to 1.5 amps.
and isochronous resource manager.
As the IEEE 1394 bus uses time-domain multiplexing
(TDM), the isochronous resource manager allocates
each isochronous transfer a ‘channel’ consisting of so
many ‘bandwidth allocation units’ (i.e., a guaranteed
proportion of the total time slots). A bandwidth
allocation unit is 20.3ns, so there are 6144 of them in a
IEEE 1394 ‘basic cycle’ of 125us. However 25us of every
cycle is always reserved for asynchronous control data
transfers, so a maximum of 4195 units is available for
isochronous transfers. Typically a stream from a DV
camcorder to a PC or digital VCR might need to be
allocated a channel of say 1800 bandwidth units, for
about 30Mb/s.
Only one data packet can occur every basic cycle for a
particular isochronous transfer channel, using that
channel’s allocated bandwidth units. However multiple
isochronous transfers can take place at the same time, Fig.4: The primary type of IEEE 1394 cable has
providing there’s enough bandwidth available. The a pair of power conductors as well as the two
transfers can even be at different rates — say one at shielded signal pairs TPA and TPB.
S100 and another at S200. If there isn’t enough
bandwidth available when a device requests it, it waits The type of cable shown in Fig.4 is used for most
until the bandwidth does become available. ‘mainstream’ IEEE 1394 applications, such as interfacing
Asynchronous transfers can have multiple data packets large hard disk arrays to DV editing workstations.
per basic cycle, within the 25us reserved for this type of The second type of cable used for IEEE 1394 has only
signalling. the two shielded twisted pairs TPA and TPB, and can
therefore only be used for signal transfer. This is the
Data-Strobe coding type of cable first used in Sony’s iLink, and is now
All data is sent along the IEEE 1394 bus in serial four commonly used for digital video applications. Most DV
byte (32-bit) words, called quadlets . And the quadlets camcorders and VCRs use this type of cable.
are encoded together with their clock signal onto two Due to the high speed at which IEEE 1394 works,
NRZ (non return to zero) bus signals, using a technique cables between device nodes should be no longer than
known as Data-Strobe (DS) coding. This improves 5m long to limit signal attenuation. There should also be
transmission reliability by ensuring that only one of the no more than 16 cable ‘hops’ separating any two nodes
two signals changes in each data bit period. in an IEEE 1394 network.
Fig.2 shows how DS coding works. The top waveform
shows the Data bits being sent, while the bottom Connectors
waveform shows the Clock signal. At the transmitting Just as there are two types of cable, there are two
node these two are fed to an exclusive-OR gate to types of IEEE 1394 connector to match. Not surprisingly
generate the Strobe signal, shown in the centre. It’s this one type provides six connections and the other only
signal and the Data signal which are sent along the bus, four. Both of the plugs are shown in Fig.5, together with
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their pinouts. The corresponding sockets and their
pinouts are complementary, of course.
As you can see both plugs are polarised and fairly
compact. But the inserting section of the primary
6-pin plug is much larger (11.3 x 6.2mm) than that
of the 4-pin plug, which is very small indeed (6.45 x
3.5mm). The larger plug is polarised by a pair of
chamfers at one narrow end, while the smaller one
has an indent in the centre of one side.
Normally all devices with IEEE 1394 ports are
fitted with sockets, and the cables have plugs at
each end. Adapter cables are available to allow data
transfer between devices with 6-pin and 4-pin
sockets, with appropriate plugs at each end. (There
are also short adaptor cables with a plug and a
socket, to mate with a standard like-to-like cable.)
NOTE that in all standard IEEE 1394 cables,
the connections to the two signal ‘twisted pairs’
are transposed between the two ends. That is, in
a 6-pin to 6-pin cable pins 4 and 3 at each end
connect to pins 6 and 5 at the other,
respectively. Similarly in a 4-pin to 4-pin cable
pins 2 and 1 at each end connect to pins 4 and 3
at the other, respectively. Fig.5: The two different types of IEEE 1394 plug,
Because of their complex construction and the and their basic pin connections. But note that
small size and precision of their connectors, IEEE the TPA and TPB connections are transposed in
1394 cables can be quite expensive. Because of this all standard IEEE 1394 cables.
and the tiny size of the 4-pin connectors in
particular, they should be treated with care to
ensure that they provide reliable communication at (Copyright © Jaycar Electronics, 2002)
the fast data rates involved.

IEEE 1394/FireWire Cables stocked by Jaycar

A range of standard IEEE 1394/Firewire/i.Link cables are now stocked by Jaycar Electronics stores and
authorised dealers. Here’s a quick rundown on the cables available and their catalogue numbers:
4-pin to 4-pin Cables
2m long Cat No. WC-7640
5m long Cat No. WC-7641

6-pin to 6-pin Cables

2m long Cat No. WC-7644
5m long Cat No. WC-7645

6-pin to 4-pin Cables

2m long Cat No. WC-7647
5m long Cat No. WC-7648

For more information, please refer to the latest Jaycar Engineering Catalogue or visit www.jaycar.com.au