[geeks] digicam envy

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 09:06:16AM -0400, Kurt Huhn wrote:

> I seem to recall that, but for some reason it never took off.  It's a
> shame, firewire seems a good way to add cheap IDE drives to a system
> for big storage.  I have no idea how fast that would be though - and
> I suppose all Irix lacks is a set of drivers for hard drives.
> Probably not *too* difficult to write, except if you lack the
> programming skillz - as I do... 

Firewire, it seems, isn't see good if you have more than 1 device on
it.  Even though firewire seems like it should be more than fast
enough, you can't copy video from a firewire camera to a firewire
harddrive via a computer reliably.  There will be hicups, glitches,
etc.  To make it work, the devices need to be on seperate chanels.
But, if every firewire device needs to be on a seperate chanel, then
you are loosing out on the main benefits.

BTW, what has firewire been used for?  CD-Roms and harddrives via
Firewire<->IDE adapters (and supposedly firewire<->scsi adapters, but
I've never seen one myself).  Video cameras of various sorts.  And, I
saw one audio console that would connect via firewire to a PC.  What
else though?  USB2.0 seems to be getting better and wider support, and
is supposed to be about the same speed.  There is supposed to be a
faster firewire coming, but for how little I see it being used, I'm
not sure there will be demand for it.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd