Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Note that bilingual sockets and cables have a narrower notch than beta sockets and cables. This
prevents cables designed for 1394a devices from being connected to the beta socket.
Figure 14.17
compares a beta-to-beta 1394b cable to bilingual-to-1394a cables.
Figure 14.17. A beta-to-beta cable (top) compared to bilingual-to-4-pin (middle) and bilingual-
to-6-pin 1394a devices (bottom).
1394b S3200 (FireWire 3200)
In December 2007, the 1394 Trade Association announced the 1394b S3200 (FireWire 3200)
specification, which quadruples the speed of FireWire to 3.2Gbps (320MBps using 8b/10b
encoding). The new speed uses existing FireWire 800 cables and connectors and is backward
compatible with both FireWire 800 and the original FireWire 400 specification. Because the 1394
arbitration, data, and service protocols are the same for S3200 mode as for the previous S800 mode,
hardware and software vendors can easily take advantage of the new mode without significant
