With XP a firewire port is automatically added as a network device when you install it.

FWIW, std 10/100 networking is cheap enough with cards going for $5, switches at $15 and up, not much is said about firewire. You can get a special cable to do the same thing between two PCs using either usb, ethernet, or heaven forbid anyone still useing it, serial ports as well.

Firewire networking delivers almost as much bandwidth as gigabit ethernet (on a 32bit bus). However FireWire networking is provided only in Me and XP as a direct encapsulation option on the M$ installation discs.

3rd party drivers that use an ethernet emulation (and are generally accepted as being faster than M$ implementation) are available from unibrain.com. A 20 minute demo is available.

Bewarned that even if you connect two computers before they are powered up, you might lose one of the cards, particularly if they are different makes and perhaps more likely if one PC is on a UPS. 100Mb Ethernet and GigEthernet takes the extra slot, but is more worthwhile if you can afford the cards.

Unibrain seem to have stopped development. They were going to have a version for 2k that was compatible with the native XP firewire networking. I get 22Mbytes/sec sustained between two PCs on firewire, I'd not expect much more than 25Mbytes/sec on gig-eth, perhaps slightly more with jumbo-eth frames enabled.

For a multimedia LAN, firewire is a good choice. Firewire2 is supposed to be even better, but you need 64bit slots, ideally that don't contend for chipset time with the 32bit slots.

Lastly, 3 licenses cost in quite nicely from unibrain, should the demo satisfy your requirements. I only had two PCs, but I supposed that one day I might have a laptop or a guest with a firewire PC, so this seemed to be a wise option to take.

XP supports firewire network. Not sure about Win2000. One way to check is to see if you have a 1394 adapter listed in the Network adapters on Device Manager. If it's there then it should work.

Scott

I can confirm that connecting two firewire cards before the computers are powered up is a bad idea. I fried my ADS Pyro card AND my ADS firewire drive caddy doing this. Oddly enough, the $18 generic firewire card in the other machine was unaffected.

Whatever combination of device and order of plugging in. You don't get such destruction with ethernet, in my experience.

I suspect the problem derives from where zero-volts is relative to. That probably depends on the PSU or some JEDEC/IEEE directive. In my situation, the combo USB2 and FW PCI card bit the dust, well the USB2 port kept working, but I swapped it nonetheless. Your motherboard could be at risk depending on the implementation. Belkin does provide a molex connection on the PCI PCB to supply additional current.

I don't think that firewire has such a bad name as we are painting here though.

So the recommendation is to plug in the firewire cable after you boot, is that right? I have not read anything about this, in fact there is very little information about using a firewire network.

I am aware of the unibrain software, but if you are only transferring files or accessing media files, is that software an asset?

Thanks for the extra information.

Dave T2

Of course, if your using the firewire card as a network you might have
problems capturing with dropped frames---might---

JJK