Thursday, October 28, 2004

WiebeTech white papers -- firewire 800

WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - MEDIA

Some pretty good white papers from WiebeTech, including a 10/04 document outlining why FW 800 won't go anywhere. The author predicts FW 400 will continue for the next 2-3 years, but it will be replaced by SATA II connectors. FW 800 will fade away within a year.

He claims FW 800 is a much better spec than FW 400, but it failed to acheive critical mass -- in part because the original claims were overblown and in part because of disastrous problems with an OS X release.

He doesn't discuss my experiences -- many firewire peripherals are plagued by sleep/wake problems with some versions of OS X and some Apple hardware.

Interestingly he says FW 400 ports are very vulnerable to being shorted. It's apparently a basic design flaw. Seems related to power-up drains -- from now on I'll power-up my drive before I connect it to my iBook.

No comments: