The first time I ever used a firewire port, I thought it was black magic compared to usb. It was INSANELY faster and super consistent speed. It was the same level of wow as the first time I used an SSD vs HDD.
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watson@lemmy.world 4 days agoYou’re thinking of firewire, and that was not proprietary. Sony came up with that. I had a mini disc player with a firewire port. And thunderbolt, which is what they use now, is an evolution on firewire made by Apple, Sony, and Intel.
Gerudo@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
watson@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Compared to the top speed of USB 2.0, fire wire 400 wasn’t actually faster in that regard, but here’s where the true performance came in to play, and how thunderbolt also has this amazing feature:
When usb connections begin to data transfer, they started at 0 kg a bit, a second and then speed up to the maximum transfer rate. Then it slows down before completion. FireWire (and is successor, Thunderbolt) maintain a consistent data transfer speed. It begins at that transfer rate, and ends at that transfer rate. This is especially good if you’re moving around a large amount of small files.
Also, fire wire 400 already beat out USB 2.0 382 Mb per second transfer rate. Firework 800 more than doubled it, and thunderbolt one started at 1.5 GB a second. We’re at thunderbolt five now, and I stopped keeping track of the data rates because they were so blazingly fast.
One drawback, however, is that firewire cables, and subsequently thunderbolt cables, are both extremely expensive and not very durable. They contain a lot more twisted copper wires, and tend to wear out faster. USB cables are nearly indestructible.
Additionally, firewire (and thunderbolt) are also a networking protocol. You can create an ad-hoc LAN just with firewire or thunderbolt cable cables. This is natively built into macOS, but, on Linux, it requires some sorcery to make it work. With a Mac, and an emergency, you can boot your Mac with a damaged hard to drive remote remotely from another functional Mac just by using a thunderbolt cable (or a firewire cable). It’s a neat trick, and has saved my ass more times than I can count.
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 3 days ago
I was thinking of the 30 Pin Dock Connector, which was proprietary, but it looks like it used both FireWire and USB protocols.
Obviously Apple is known for propagating FireWire too.
watson@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Leave it to me to only consider the male end of the connector 😜
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
No, youngin’ they’re talking about USB. The original iMac was USB-only specifically to force the adoption of USB keyboards and mice.
watson@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Not their proprietary (what was the old iPod connector called?) or lightning BS.
This is what I was responding to.
And I’m in my 40s. I’m not a “youngin’”.
Asmodeus_Krang@infosec.pub 4 days ago
Got a Firewire port on my PS2. The only thing I’ve ever owned with Firewire and I never even used it.
watson@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I have an old iMac that I use as a Plex server, and it has a fire wire 800 port and a thunderbolt, one port, both of which I use for a couple of very old external drive enclosures. Sure as hell beats USB 2.0.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
I always wanted a way to use that jack, still have no clue what it was for
Asmodeus_Krang@infosec.pub 2 days ago
I believe it was only utilized by Gran Turismo 3 for connecting two systems to play against each other. Nobody else developed for it.