IEEE 1394a, also known as FireWire, i.LINK, or lynx, is a cable developed by Apple in the 1980s for high-speed data transfer. It has evolved over the years and is now a standard adapter for many forms of technology, including audio-visual equipment. Although it was intended to overtake USB, patent constraints kept its price high. However, it has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years and is used for transferring data from devices such as cameras and high-definition cable boxes.
IEEE 1394a is a type of adapter cable for computers and audio-visual equipment. It has uniquely shaped plugs that help in high-speed data transfer. After surviving many incarnations, this connector has become the standard adapter for many forms of technology. The cable may be known by different names, including FireWire, i.LINK, and lynx, but it has the same format and serves the same purpose, regardless of title.
The IEEE 1394a cable was developed by Apple Inc. in the 1980s as a replacement data transfer cable for the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) bus. Engineers from Sony Corp., Texas Instruments Inc., and other technology firms also contributed to the development of the cable. It has evolved into many variations over the years, but the 1394a is the most popular. In the 1990s and 2000s, manufacturers of the cable hoped it would overtake the Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable as the preferred method of data transfer, but patent constraints kept its price high and thus it was not widely implemented. It lowered this high patent fee and enjoyed a surge in popularity, but it still hasn’t overtaken USB.
The IEEE 1394a adapter looks a lot like ordinary USB cables, but with one big difference. One end of the cable has the familiar rectangular metal input look of USB plugs and is roughly the same size, but the two aren’t interchangeable and don’t fit into each other’s ports. The other end of the cord is where the two stop sharing similarities. A USB cable has two identical ends, but a FireWire cable has an opposite end smaller than the tip of a little finger. This particular part of IEEE 1394a was developed to take up as little space as possible on digital devices such as cameras.
Most computer operating systems support IEEE 1394a cables, but some people believe that Macintosh computers download data from these cables faster than personal computers (PCs). Regardless of the system, a variety of devices use these cables to transfer data to computers. The cables were developed with video cameras in mind, because their combination of audio and video data required streamlined transfer. More recently, cables have been adapted to digital cameras to download photos to a computer. Recently, high-definition cable boxes have started using the IEEE 1394a interface to transfer digital signal to televisions.
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