Overview for IEEE 1394

This section summarizes the basic design requirements for the approved IEEE 1394 – 1995 standard. The IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus provides enhanced PC connectivity for a wide range of devices, from consumer audio/video (A/V) components to traditional PC storage devices including PCs and hand held devices.

IEEE 1394 has been widely adopted by the consumer electronics industry and provides a low cost, Plug and Play-compatible expansion interface for the PC. Although the 400 megabit per second (Mb/s) transfer rate for IEEE 1394 is well suited to multi-streaming I/O demands, a proposal for 800 Mb/s is in development.

The following summarizes the IEEE 1394 design issues related to Windows, as addressed in this chapter.

• Compliance with approved IEEE 1394 – 1995 standards.
• Plug and Play support for device configuration, device Command and Status Registers (CSRs), connectors and cabling, and connection fault handling.
• Cable power distribution, including requirements for source devices and sink devices, self-powered devices, plus configuration ROM entries and CSRs.
• Device power management, including CSRs and soft power protocols.
• Device command protocols for Audio, Imaging, and Storage device classes.
• Support for the Open Host Controller Interface (OpenHCI) for IEEE 1394. This provides a common device programming model with a script-based control interface and low interrupt count.