I have no problem joining a public FireWire / 1394 forum. Count me in ...
Here is my usual rant:
I do hope you won't get too wrapped around the "1394" axle. IMOP this naming convention is one of the reasons that FireWire has never taken off in the consumer arena = lack of name recognition for what it really is: Apple's original and at the time, unique packet switching, double duplex, peer to peer data transport for external devices and systems. Sony adopted the iLink scenario shortly after Apple's introduction in order to get digital images out of their cameras and into desktop systems ... The combination of Apple's FireWire and Sony's iLink is the adopted IEEE 1394a subset.
Yes folks, there is a very healthy FireWire /1394 universe, composed mostly of professional audio (analog to digital mixing, recording & playback), professional CGI movie graphics (high resolution graphics rendering), industrial machine vision (robot eyes, process monitor & control, home land security) and secure high performance peer to peer networking. FireWire 400 (1394a) is faster and has more bandwidth than either USB2.0 or GigaBit Ethernet for streaming audio or video, FireWire 800 (1394b) is more than twice as fast as GigaBit Ethernet. FireWire audio has better latency and much, much less jitter problems than USB1.1 or USB 2.0. ... Optically transported FireWire 400 DV video can stream four feeds at a time out to a quarter of a mile, USB 2.0 can nominally handle one stream to a maximum of about 150 feet.
My link is: FireWireStuff ... online with FireWire / iLink / IEEE 1394a/b parts and accessories since 1997.