What Is FireWire (and How Best to Use It)
Pages: 1, 2, 3
Firewire Target Disk Mode
FireWire Target Disk Mode is a commonly used feature in troubleshooting. In a nutshell, Open Firmware and the FireWire components of your Mac work together to turn the machine into an external FireWire drive, making it available to other computers and devices in the chain, just as if it were a mass storage device.
Usually, Target Disk Mode is used to pull data in a hurry from a crashed computer, install Tiger on a nonofficially supported machine (not that you would want to do that, of course), or as a powerful way to hack data from a password protected machine—but luckily FileVault has come to the rescue over the past few years.
There are, however, more productive usages of Target Disk Mode that are often overlooked. For example, if you have a desktop Mac and a portable, keeping the two in sync can be a pain. With a simple cloning tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner , you can transfer everything from one Mac to the other in a matter of minutes.
Of course, doing so requires that both hard drives be more or less the same size (you obviously can't clone an 80GB hard drive into a 20GB one) and you might run into the occasional glitch as your desktop Mac probably isn't configured to manage the hardware your laptop will include, such as a battery or maybe an AirPort card. Light configuration will be required and the resulting clone might not be the most stable of setups.
For example, don't expect all your serial numbers to work on the cloned machine, and don't try to edit the next blockbuster in FinalCut pro on your blueberry iBook. Nevertheless, as a quick and dirty panic-relief situation, it does work perfectly well, and I have used it many times in the past when attending conferences where I just wanted to take notes, chat a bit, and check my mail periodically, while still keeping my articles and mail archives at hand.
Recycle Older Drives
After reading articles lately on the importance of scrubbing hard drives before selling them, maybe you no longer feel like including a drive in the PC (if you're a switcher) or PowerMac that you're letting go of. What should you do? Stick the old hard drive into your new Mac? Hmm, maybe you don't have enough space (if you replaced your PowerMac G4 with an iMac G5, for example) or the drive doesn't conform to the new specifications.
In many cases, older drives can be repurposed in external FireWire enclosures. While the resulting device might not be the fastest of your peripherals, the extra drive may come in handy for backups and other housekeeping duties.
If you decide to investigate that option, though, please do invest in a high-quality case, as you want to entrust your data only to the best chipsets and firmwares. The Apple Discussions, notably the forums concerning older machines, can be a good starting point for such a project, as you will be able to interact with users who have faced similar questions.
Use FireWire to Talk to Your TV
Many TVs and set-top boxes now ship with FireWire interfaces to stream data, receive information, and talk to other pieces of equipment in your home theater system. Since these devices comply to the FireWire standard, you can plug them into your Mac and they will start talking to each other.
Now, how does your TV make sense of what your Mac does? Simply by using an application on your Mac that sends signals to the TV that it understands: the same that would be sent over the same link by a camcorder or an entertainment unit. Some commercial solutions have begun popping up that do just that, but the open source community is already at hard work creating such applications that can turn your Mac into a full-featured remote control for your TV, recording device, and media center. Of course, some antipiracy (i.e. vendor lock-in) technologies that are now commonly embedded in TVs can interfere with that process but, in many cases, there is plenty left to do.
A good introduction to this use of FireWire is Build Your Own PVR (for free) with HackTV by Erica Sadun.
Get Familiar with Developer Tools
Like with many great technologies full of potential, there are many tools that take advantage of its cool features but that cannot be officially supported, because they're not stable enough, for example. This is why I encourage you to go to the Apple Developer Site and download the latest version of the development tools. You will find a wealth of FireWire-related utilities and applications that can be compiled in Xcode, ready for you to play with. One important word of caution: don't start playing at a hardware level unless you know what you are doing or are ready to face the consequences of a glitch; some of these utilities can cause issues if used improperly.
Final Thoughts
I've just scratched the surface of what makes FireWire great and why it's a promising, fundamentally useful technology. I hope these few pointers will encourage you to play more with this excellent technology. There's a lot to do with FireWire and, as more developers jump on board (Remember, this is the year of HD!), we should see some very interesting devices and ideas appearing over the next months.
FJ de Kermadec is an author, stylist and entrepreneur in Paris, France.
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Showing messages 1 through 8 of 8.
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FireWire networking
2005-07-29 16:55:12 sjk [Reply | View]
I've been curious how FireWire networking might be useful so I appreciate your explanation and examples. Thanks!
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FW vs USB
2005-07-28 01:08:35 Synchro [Reply | View]
I don't think there's much chance of Apple phasing out FW. It's a way superior technology than USB 2.0 for the kind of things it's used for. Despite USB 2.0's theoretically higher bit rate, it very rarely gets anywhere near as fast as FW400 in reality - you can expect a USB 2 HD to get about 12-18Mb/sec, whereas FW400 will usually have little trouble delivering 50Mb/sec (assuming the drive can keep up!). USB also requires a controlling host - it's not peer to peer like FW - for example a FW hard disk can be written to directly by a camera without having to go via your computer (support for this is heavily dependent on the device's FW implementation of course).
USB2 also provides very little power, so it's next to impossible to run big HDs off bus power. Apple's laptops are amongst the only ones that provide 6-pin FW connections for full power peripherals. USB2 certainly has its place as it's cheaper to implement and lower power, so keyboards, mice, card readers, monitors etc are all good candidates.
I think it's a shame that they changed the connector with FW800, though I understand there are short-circuit possibilities with FW400 connectors that needed to be addressed (and I've seen someone brute-force a plug in upside-down).
Yamaha's mLan music system is also based on FW, and stands a good chance of becoming a practical upgrade for MIDI and audio cabling.
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Apple Phasing Out Firewire
2005-07-27 20:04:54 cjunkie [Reply | View]
I have heard the that Apple was giving up on Firewire technology and moving to USB 2.0 instead. Can anyone verify this?
CJ -
Apple Phasing Out Firewire
2005-07-27 20:13:40 FJ de Kermadec |
[Reply | View]
Hi!
The recent rumors of Apple abandoning FireWire started because of the inclusion of USB 2 cables and chargers instead of FireWire ones with the latest iPod models.
As far as I know, this was done in order to ease compatibility with Windows machines that do not all feature FireWire ports. Apple's commitment with FireWire on other projects (including the Core OS and in the HD Video field) does not seem to indicate that the technology is being phased out in any way — on the contrary.
Of course, I am not aware of Apple's internal plans — that goes without saying — but all seems to indicate FireWire is alive and kicking!
FJ
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What's with all the warnings?
2005-07-27 11:19:28 network23 [Reply | View]
I was all set to try out the Firewire networking as I wanted to tie in my iBook to my work Mac to share an internet connection. When I tried to set up Internet Sharing on my work Mac, I started getting all these dialogs about how what I was about to do could cause settings to change on the ISP and affect other users on the network. I certainly don't want to affect maybe 2-300 other users on our network just to share a connection that is already set up on my work machine.
Ah well, I can still transfer stuff using my portable FW drive. -
What's with all the warnings?
2005-07-27 16:42:52 FJ de Kermadec |
[Reply | View]
Hi!
First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to write, I really do appreciate it!
The message you are seeing simply means that, when your Mac is set up to share your connection, it turns itself into a DHCP server and assigns IP addresses to devices it is connected to.
This is why it is important to insure that you share your connection with the LAN part of your network and do not turn on Sharing "in the wild", so to speak, which could disrupt your WAN by confusing devices that would then see two DHCP servers next to each other.
Should you want to experiment with the setup, you can do so while disconnected from the Internet and plug it back in once you feel confident your settings are in order.
FJ
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Migration using target disk mode
2005-07-27 01:14:51 tonywilliams [Reply | View]
I use target disk mode on an almost daily basis when installing Mac across a University campus - users love it when you boot after doing an install with transfer and not only do they have a new machine but their Dock has the same icons, all their applicaitons are installed and the Desktop looks the same.
With 10.4 and the Migration Tool broken out you can can even use an image, clone it on the new Mac and then do a transfer of the user and all their files and settings.
For support techs target disk mode is a godsend.
