Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (46110)	6/7/2000 5:03:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

TP - Interesting viewpoint, but completely incorrect both technically and historically. A couple of errors - there were lots of other developments going back to the mid-80s to address peripheral problems. There were many more contenders in 1995 than firewire 1394 and USB - including 2 different fibre-channel designs. Fibre and SCSI-3 are also multi-master peer to peer technologies which support connect/disconnect, and both are much faster than firewire 1394. The development of SANs using Fibre clearly demonstrate systems with no PC in the middle. 1394 is just a cheaper medium-speed technology with slightly better connect/disconnect robustness. 1394 was not ready for prime time until 1998 because of problems with the state engine as defined in the spec. MSFT was an early 1394 advocate. Firewire has a maximum throughput of 40MB/Sec, about like a SCSI-2 device and only 25% of an ultra SCSI-3 FW device. A single 64/66 PCI channel could handle 10 firewire devices with bandwidth to spare. So having it as a peripheral is hardly a limitation. MSFT introduced plug and play with Windows95 - without that, USB would not work as designed, nor would 1394. The USB 2.0 spec was not an attempt to squash 1394 - it was a reaction to market pressure to "go with what is working". All 1.0 devices will work on 2.0 USB. The rest of your argument is the same as I heard when 100MB ethernet was introduced - yet people have come to accept that one needs CAT5 wiring for 100MB, even though it looks the same as older RJ45 cable for 10MB... that seems kind of a silly argument. USB2.0 is pretty much backward compatible except for cable and hubs, just like Ethernet enhancements.