Reply by ●February 10, 20092009-02-10
On Feb 7, 11:37 am, "d...@nadler.com" <d...@nadler.com> wrote:

> On Feb 7, 5:38 am, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:
>
> > >Warning, FireWire is considered a moribund standard; eSATA and (soon)
> > >USB 3.0 have essentially killed it.
>
> > What about the MAC ? Apple have invested quite heavily in FireWire and
> > even though it's market share is much lower than USB, there is still a
> > significant number of devices out there.
>
> I believe some of the latest Macs do not have 1394 ?


The one really unique, compelling use for 1394 was importing video
from miniDV (and digital 8) consumer camcorders, and it got that way
because USB of the era when these came out did not have the bandwidth
for decent video.

A year ago, I was worried about netbooks not having 1394, but at this
point most of the camcorders I'd buy to pair with a netbook don't have
it either, as they are all going to modern compression schemes and
flash media, with USB 2.0 (or just moving the SD card) the new import
mechanism.

For implementing your own device, USB 2.0 via something like the
cypress family of parts (if you need to move a lot of data without
interpreting it) or one of the higher performance cores with USB on it
(if you need the device to think about the data) seems the best bet
today - well understood, likely to be supported for quite some time
yet.
Reply by larwe ●February 10, 20092009-02-10
On Feb 7, 5:38=A0am, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:


> >> What ICs do people use to implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found
>
> >Warning, FireWire is considered a moribund standard; eSATA and (soon)
> >USB 3.0 have essentially killed it.
>
> What about the MAC ? Apple have invested quite heavily in FireWire and


Apple's removal of FireWire from their latest-generation portables is
considered the final nail in the coffin.
Reply by ●February 7, 20092009-02-07
Anton Erasmus schrieb:


> What ICs do people use to implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found
> some devices from TI, but have been unable to find an MCU with
> IEEE-1394 built in. 
> Surely someone makes a 51 core with an IEEE-1394 interface ? I'd like
> to get a feel of how complex it is to get IEEE-1394 comms going
> between an MCU and a PC (Windows and Linux) compared to USB and
> Ethernet. Any pointers from people who have done this would be greatly
> appreciated.


Well, all 1394 chips I'm aware of need PCI. The easiest way to get an 
embedded system with 1394 would be a microcontroller with PCI bus, a 
Linux port and a 1394 controller as a Micro PCI card (like the WLAN 
cards found in notebooks).

-- 
Mit freundlichen Gr&#4294967295;&#4294967295;en

Dipl.-Ing. Frank-Christian Kr&#4294967295;gel
Reply by drn...@nadler.com ●February 7, 20092009-02-07
On Feb 7, 5:38=A0am, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:

> >Warning, FireWire is considered a moribund standard; eSATA and (soon)
> >USB 3.0 have essentially killed it.
>
> What about the MAC ? Apple have invested quite heavily in FireWire and
> even though it's market share is much lower than USB, there is still a
> significant number of devices out there.


I believe some of the latest Macs do not have 1394 ?
Reply by Anton Erasmus ●February 7, 20092009-02-07
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:34:35 -0800 (PST), larwe <zwsdotcom@gmail.com>
wrote:


>On Feb 5, 2:09&#4294967295;pm, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:
>
>> What ICs do people use to implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found
>
>Warning, FireWire is considered a moribund standard; eSATA and (soon)
>USB 3.0 have essentially killed it.


What about the MAC ? Apple have invested quite heavily in FireWire and
even though it's market share is much lower than USB, there is still a
significant number of devices out there. Also I have not seen the
latest generation PC chip sets dropping it. Only the very low priced
Motherboards do not have IEEE-1394 ports.
From my googling efforts it also looks as if the TV / Movie industry
level video cameras and support equipment uses IEEE-1394 extensively.

As long as I have a reasonable level of confidence that IEEE-1394
would be available on higher end laptops (Desktops one can add an
interface card), then it is another candidate for communicating
between a PC and an embedded device. With all the support available
foe USB and ethernet, it is not too difficult to get some comms going,
but a very different story if one has fairly tight timing for one's
own app and the data rate one requires starts being over 50% of the
USB or ethernet bandwidth. So I am looking for something where most of
the communications overhead and timing is handled by hardware on the
embedded side. 


Regards
  Anton Erasmus
Reply by Tim Wescott ●February 6, 20092009-02-06
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:31:55 -0600, Grant Edwards wrote:


> On 2009-02-06, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:
> 
>> IEEE-1394 is far more involved than a standard UART, and at a guess I'd
>> say it's at least as bad as a host-side USB.
>>
>> If you get the standard you'll save it all back in less work, so figure
>> how that reflects the amount of work you'll do.
>>
>> (and, by the way, I like 1394, I just don't harbor any illusions about
>> it).
> 
> From what little I've read, 1394 seems to be rather similar to SCSI
> (protocol-wise).  Unlike USB, 1394 is peer-to-peer and is
> "interrupt-driven" rather than being polled like USB.  That allows
> multiple transactions to be done in parallel (pretty much like SCSI).


Yes.  It's a nice protocol, in its way.  It's complex to deal with, but 
then it's very powerful.  I was part of a group that used it very 
successfully (:-) to transmit video inside of a system; of all of the 
candidates that we looked at it was the first one to go obsolete :-(.

-- 
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply by Grant Edwards ●February 6, 20092009-02-06
On 2009-02-06, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote:


> IEEE-1394 is far more involved than a standard UART, and at a
> guess I'd say it's at least as bad as a host-side USB.
>
> If you get the standard you'll save it all back in less work,
> so figure how that reflects the amount of work you'll do.
>
> (and, by the way, I like 1394, I just don't harbor any
> illusions about it).


From what little I've read, 1394 seems to be rather similar to
SCSI (protocol-wise).  Unlike USB, 1394 is peer-to-peer and is
"interrupt-driven" rather than being polled like USB.  That
allows multiple transactions to be done in parallel (pretty
much like SCSI).

-- 
Grant
Reply by Tim Wescott ●February 5, 20092009-02-05
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:09:37 +0200, Anton Erasmus wrote:


> Hi,
> 
> I have been looking at various options for communicating between a PC
> and an MCU. The typical peripherals on a PC today is of course USB,
> Ethernet and one that seems to be mostly forgotten in the embedded word
> - IEEE-1394. The actual specifications for IEEE-1394 is too expensive
> for me, so I have been reading what I could find regarding this
> interface. From a software point of view it looks to be even more
> trivial than communicating over a standard UART. Orders of magnitude
> less complex that USB host or ethernet stack with the ability to talk to
> multiple devices connected to the bus. What ICs do people use to
> implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found some devices from TI, but
> have been unable to find an MCU with IEEE-1394 built in.
> Surely someone makes a 51 core with an IEEE-1394 interface ? I'd like to
> get a feel of how complex it is to get IEEE-1394 comms going between an
> MCU and a PC (Windows and Linux) compared to USB and Ethernet. Any
> pointers from people who have done this would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Regards
>   Anton Erasmus


IEEE-1394 is far more involved than a standard UART, and at a guess I'd 
say it's at least as bad as a host-side USB.

If you get the standard you'll save it all back in less work, so figure 
how that reflects the amount of work you'll do.

(and, by the way, I like 1394, I just don't harbor any illusions about 
it).

-- 
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply by joepierson ●February 5, 20092009-02-05
On Feb 5, 2:09=A0pm, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been looking at various options for communicating between a PC
> and an MCU. The typical peripherals on a PC today is of course USB,
> Ethernet and one that seems to be mostly forgotten in the embedded
> word - IEEE-1394. The actual specifications for IEEE-1394 is too
> expensive for me, so I have been reading what I could find regarding
> this interface. From a software point of view it looks to be even more
> trivial than communicating over a standard UART. Orders of magnitude
> less complex that USB host or ethernet stack with the ability to talk
> to multiple devices connected to the bus.
> What ICs do people use to implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found
> some devices from TI, but have been unable to find an MCU with
> IEEE-1394 built in.
> Surely someone makes a 51 core with an IEEE-1394 interface ? I'd like
> to get a feel of how complex it is to get IEEE-1394 comms going
> between an MCU and a PC (Windows and Linux) compared to USB and
> Ethernet. Any pointers from people who have done this would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Regards
> =A0 Anton Erasmus



we have used the TSB41BA3 PHY and TSB12LV26 for the LLC, 1394 is a
horrific convoluted expensive piece of crap


>From a software point of view it looks to be even more
> trivial than communicating over a standard UART.


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Reply by Anton Erasmus ●February 5, 20092009-02-05
Hi,

I have been looking at various options for communicating between a PC
and an MCU. The typical peripherals on a PC today is of course USB,
Ethernet and one that seems to be mostly forgotten in the embedded
word - IEEE-1394. The actual specifications for IEEE-1394 is too
expensive for me, so I have been reading what I could find regarding
this interface. From a software point of view it looks to be even more
trivial than communicating over a standard UART. Orders of magnitude
less complex that USB host or ethernet stack with the ability to talk
to multiple devices connected to the bus. 
What ICs do people use to implement IEEE-1394 with MCUs ? I have found
some devices from TI, but have been unable to find an MCU with
IEEE-1394 built in. 
Surely someone makes a 51 core with an IEEE-1394 interface ? I'd like
to get a feel of how complex it is to get IEEE-1394 comms going
between an MCU and a PC (Windows and Linux) compared to USB and
Ethernet. Any pointers from people who have done this would be greatly
appreciated.

Regards
  Anton Erasmus