HP Pavilion 7938, Pavilion 7949, Pavilion 7952, Pavilion 7962, Pavilion 7959 User Manual

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1394U User's Manual

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Card Features

This chapter lists what you should find in the box, introduces the card’s features and

indicates the position of components you may need to know about. Please review this

chapter to familiarize yourself with the basic information about your 1394U card.

The 1394U card is for use with IBM-compatible personal computers.

Package Contents

Your card package should include the items listed here. If anything is missing or

damaged, please contact the vendor you bought the card from to resolve the problem.

You should find:

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The 1394U card

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This User's Manual

Main Features

This section has some general information about 1394 or “FireWire” technology and

features specific to the two models of the card.

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What is IEEE 1394

The 1394 standard was defined, and continues to be maintained, by the Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). The technology allows for high-speed

connections between computers and related devices and helps bridge the divide between

computers and consumer electronics. The technology is flexible, easy to use and offers

high bandwidth at a low cost.

With 1394-compatible products and systems, users can transfer video or still images from

a camera or camcorder to a printer, PC, or television quickly, with no image degradation.

1394 Features

The 1394 standard is a high-speed serial bus designed to deliver high data transfer speeds

at a low cost, and with the low degree of latency required by a peripheral bus or by a

backup to a traditional parallel bus. Among its key features are:

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High Speed.

Speeds of 100, 200 and 400 megabits per second (Mbps) are currently

supported.

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Isochronous Support.

Deterministic bandwidth allocation guarantees bandwidth for

time-sensitive applications, such as real-time video feeds, that could otherwise be

disrupted by heavy bus traffic.

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Flexible Topology.

Devices can be daisy-chained and no central bus supervision is

required.

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Hot-Plug Support.

The bus is dynamically reconfigured whenever new nodes are

added, which means users don’t have to configure node IDs or unique termination

schemes.

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Cable Power.

Low-cost peripherals can be powered directly from the 1394 cable, so

no dedicated power supply is needed.

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Open IEEE Standard.

IEEE adoption has increased industry acceptance of the

standard

.

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Optimum Performance

. Each cable connection can be up to 4.5 meters long,

yielding a total cable distance of 72 meters.

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1394 End devices.

IEEE 1394 interfaces have already been incorporated into a

variety of devices, including PC cameras, DV camcorders, DV recorders, digital still

cameras, high-speed hard disk drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives, DVD-

RAM drives, digital TVs, set-top boxes, scanners, and printers.

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The 1394U and the PC System

The I394U is a host controller card with a PCI interface. It comes with three independent

IEEE1394 bus ports, each of which can transfer data at 400Mbps. When you plug an

IEEE 1394/FireWire device into one of the card’s three ports, Windows 98 will

automatically install the new device and the appropriate driver. With its hot-plug support,

you can easily connect or disconnect devices without having to first shut down your

computer. This enables true Plug-and-Play functionality.

Pri nt e r

Scan n er

Cam er a

DVD/CD

ROM

Cam c or d er

Set -t op b o x

Stereo

DVD

I394 b

PC System Requirements

1.

A Pentium based PC (recommended) with one free PCI slot.

2.

Windows 98 SE or above.

3.

Any 1394 device that complies with either the 1394-1995 or 1394.a specification and

does not use more than 1.5 A.