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Yeah, FireWire was a necessity at the time for certain use cases. Even basic consumer digital camcorders required FW400 to pull onto a PC.

dylan604 3y ago
I maybe mis-remembering, but was it possible to add FireWire to an existing PC with an expansion card? I know Thunderbolt was not possible from 3rd party vendors and only the mobo manufacturers could offer a card. I bought one to make a Hackintosh, but then a mobo firmware disabled the card because they didn't want to support it. I seem to recall Firewire being the same way
- gsich 3y ago
  yes, still is.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Yes it was. Still is. I almost bought a FireWire card so I could use an iPod with Windows before the USB model came out. I also remember an old Dell laptop I had having a FW port. When FW400 came out we were on USB1 which was stuck at 12mbps. It wasn’t designed for hard drives and such. It was for floppies, keyboards, mice, printers, barcode scanners, etc. Low bandwidth. Not that that stopped manufacturers. FireWire just wasn’t popular on the PC side outside of video editing (and perhaps other specialized uses). USB got far more useful with USB2, which went to 480mbps, but IIRC you couldn’t achieve that and it had tons of CPU overhead. FW could max out its bandwidth and had low CPU overhead by design despite having a lower theoretical max. But it was over. USB2 was cheaper and FAR FAR more common. FW800 existed for those who needed more bandwidth. But for most people USB2 was plenty and they already had it. Thunderbolt took over for FW, and as of USB4 the two are basically the same (relative to FW vs USB’s differences).
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Yes, but with limited support. Macs were the only practical option for home video editing back then. iMac DV was released in 1999 with FW400, and iMovie was released at the same time. Media editing seemed like the central use case of Macs through the 2000s.
rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
FireWire has multiple rates available in the FW400 cable. Consumer digital video camcorders are at 25Mbps for video + 1.5Mb for the audio and use the S100 100Mbit link speed. Other HD formats like Panasonic DVCPro HD went up to 100Mb video running the same tapes faster.

dylan604 3y ago

I maybe mis-remembering, but was it possible to add FireWire to an existing PC with an expansion card? I know Thunderbolt was not possible from 3rd party vendors and only the mobo manufacturers could offer a card. I bought one to make a Hackintosh, but then a mobo firmware disabled the card because they didn't want to support it. I seem to recall Firewire being the same way

gsich 3y ago
yes, still is.
MBCook 3y ago
Yes it was. Still is. I almost bought a FireWire card so I could use an iPod with Windows before the USB model came out. I also remember an old Dell laptop I had having a FW port. When FW400 came out we were on USB1 which was stuck at 12mbps. It wasn’t designed for hard drives and such. It was for floppies, keyboards, mice, printers, barcode scanners, etc. Low bandwidth. Not that that stopped manufacturers. FireWire just wasn’t popular on the PC side outside of video editing (and perhaps other specialized uses). USB got far more useful with USB2, which went to 480mbps, but IIRC you couldn’t achieve that and it had tons of CPU overhead. FW could max out its bandwidth and had low CPU overhead by design despite having a lower theoretical max. But it was over. USB2 was cheaper and FAR FAR more common. FW800 existed for those who needed more bandwidth. But for most people USB2 was plenty and they already had it. Thunderbolt took over for FW, and as of USB4 the two are basically the same (relative to FW vs USB’s differences).
hot_gril 3y ago
Yes, but with limited support. Macs were the only practical option for home video editing back then. iMac DV was released in 1999 with FW400, and iMovie was released at the same time. Media editing seemed like the central use case of Macs through the 2000s.

rainbowzootsuit 3y ago

FireWire has multiple rates available in the FW400 cable. Consumer digital video camcorders are at 25Mbps for video + 1.5Mb for the audio and use the S100 100Mbit link speed. Other HD formats like Panasonic DVCPro HD went up to 100Mb video running the same tapes faster.