About USB and Fire-Wire

About USB

Universal Serial Bus is a standard connection type for many peripherals such as keyboards,mice ,printers, digital cameras, and scanners. It refers to the types of connectors and cables used to connect various external devices to a computer . You can easily identify a USB port or USB cables from the basic trident logo of the USB. The USB has now replaced many earlier technologies such as serial and parallel ports. In fact, now many portable device, such as smartphones, e-book readers, and small tablets, support USB charging.

The USB was designed to use the Plug and Play technology unless the supporting software was      installed. some devices have drivers that are automatically downloaded during the installation and some complex devices need driver to be installed before the device is plugged

One of the most interesting feature of the USB is that addition USB ports a USB hub. The maximum number of 127 devices including hubs can only be connected back to a single USB host controller in the computer.                                                                                                                                       

USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0

                

USB 1.1; The first version of the USB was defined in 1996. It supported transmission rates up to 12 Mbqs .

USB 2.0 : In 2000 , another version of the USB. High-speed, came which supported transmission rates up to 480 Mbps. It is backward compatible, which mean it can also support USB 1.0 and 1.1 devices and cables.

USB 3.0 : In 2009, Buffalo Technology introduced Super-Speed USB. It improves the speed, performance, power management and bandwidth capabilities. It support data transmission in full duplex mode. Then, in 2013, USB 3.1 was made available. It is also know as Super-Speed+ and can 

support data transmission rates up to 10Gbps.

  Connector types - Micro,Mini

USB Micro 

In 2007, micro USB connectors were specified. A Micro-A connector can be found on mobile phone, GPS units and digital cameras. It is smaller in size than USB Mini-B and it supports high speed transfer rate of 480 Mbps. It can be identified by its white-coloured receptacle and 5-pin design. A Micro-B plug is very small and rectangular in shape having bevelled two corners.

USB Mini

The standard type A and B connectors have a disadvantage: They are bulky which makes them unsuitable for them unsuitable for compact devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs),

digital cameras, and mobile phones.Therefore, micro connectors were introduced. They came in two 

designs: 4-pins and 5-pins. They are now deprecated.

                                                           

About Fire-Wire

The IEEE 1394 port, which is commonly know as Fire-wire, was originally developer by Apple. Then, in 1995, it was standardized by the IEEE. It is popular because it is easy to use, has synchronized clock and high transmission rates

A fire-Wire can connect to 63 peripherals in tree topology. It does use any system memory or the CPU to provide peer-to-peer device communication It also supports multiple hosts per bus, plug and play, and hot swapping A Fire-Wire port can be identified on a computer or laptop using its symbol

Fire-Wire 400 vs Fire-Wire

The IEEE 1394 a interface known as Fire-Wire 400 or i.LINK has a maximum data length of 4.5 meters with a maximum 63 connected devices .

There are two kinds of Fire-Wire connectors: a 4-pin connector, used in video equipments such as camcorder, and a 6-pin connector used in computers

   

The next generation, Fire-Wire 800, is specified in IEEE 1394b. It provides the maximum transfer speed of 800Mbps in full duplex mode. It uses fibre-optic cabling and beta connectors to extend up to 100 meters. But, with copper cabling, it can be extended to only 4.5 metres. In IEEE 1394c, the fire-wire user RJ-45 connectors with Category 5e cabling. There are standard 9-pin-to-9-pin Fire-Wire 800 cables. To connect older devices to a Fire-Wire 800 port, the 9-pin-to-4-pin and 9-pin-to-6-pin Fire-Wire 400 to Fire-Wire 800 cables are available.