What is 1394?

IEEE 1394
FireWire, or IEEE 1394, is a high-performance serial bus originally developed by Apple computer in the early 1990s. The baseline specification handles throughput rates of 100 Mbits/s, 200 Mbits/s, and 400 Mbits/s. The IEEE 1394 Trade Association is revising the specification to increase this transfer rate to 3.2 Gbits/s. While devices must be within 4.5 m of the bus socket to conform to the specification, you can easily daisy-chain up to 16 devices for a maximum run of 72 m. FireWire also features "hot pluggable" technology to connect and disconnect devices while your system is powered up. In addition, devices operating at different communication rates can exist on the same communications chain, though a slower device must not be placed between two higher speed devices.

The small size and light weight of the GPIB-1394 make it suitable for portable applications using a laptop computer or desktop applications where the computer has no I/O slots.