Kramer Electronics VS-4FW, VS-8FW, VS-6FW user manual Overview, About the FireWire Repeater / HUB

Overview

3 Overview

Each Kramer TOOLS FireWire Repeater / HUB—the VS-4FW, the VS-6FW, and the VS-8FW—are based on FireWire which:

￿￿Is a serial bus standard1 that enables quick universal interfacing between video and computer hardware items2

￿￿Is simple to use and operates independently of the host system, letting you connect more items than you otherwise could (as a computer only has limited ports available), and for extended distances. Several can be cascaded to create up to a 63 port FireWire Repeater / HUB

￿￿Supports Plug and Play3, hot swapping4 and isochronous5 and asynchronous applications

3.1About the FireWire Repeater / HUB

Many computers today come with one or more FireWire ports on the rear panel. These ports let you attach many devices to your computer quickly and easily. The operating system also supports FireWire, so the installation of the device drivers is also quick and easy. Compared to other ways of connecting devices to your computer (including parallel ports, serial ports and special cards that you install inside the computer's case), FireWire devices are simple. Many peripheral devices (including: DV Camcorders, Digital still cameras, Webcams, Storage devices such as External Hard Drives and Arrays, and Network connections) now come in a FireWire version.

Connecting a FireWire device to a computer is easy – you just plug it into the port. If it is an uninstalled FireWire device, the operating system auto-detects it and installs software support for it automatically. If the device has already been installed, the computer activates it and starts talking to it.

With so many FireWire devices on the market today, you easily run out of ports very quickly. The simple solution to the problem is an inexpensive FireWire hub. The FireWire standard supports up to 63 devices, and FireWire hubs are a part of the standard. A hub typically has four/six/eight new ports, but may have many more. You plug the hub into your computer, and then plug your devices (or other hubs) into the hub. By chaining hubs together, you can build up dozens of available FireWire ports on a single computer.

1 Originally developed by Apple™ and published as IEEE 1394 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

2 Hardware items include digital cameras, computers, printers, VCRs, CD-ROMs, hard disks, scanners and graphic cards 3 Configures automatically. Whenever a device is added or removed the 1394 bus re-enumerates

4 You can connect and disconnect inputs and outputs dynamically, without having to restart the PC or cycle power

5 Video / audio applications require constant transfer rates, which the serial bus provides by supporting isochronous transfers

2 KRAMER: SIMPLE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY