New laptop on the left with Thunderbolt 3 and 18 year old Nikon 4000 ED scanner on the right with FireWire 400… Like any reasonably sane person, I had done my research, however, the question if the daisy chain of up to four cables and adapters would actually work remained.
#Firewire 800 to usb converter upgrade#
All this adds up to headaches for users who are not locked into yearly/bi-yearly upgrade cycles and when connectors go from simply being superseded to eventually being labelled “legacy”, well…God help you.įor some context, I recently decided to take the leap and get a dedicated scanner for 35mm film: a Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 4000 ED to be exact. There’s a new “gold standard” connector to contend with every few years or so, from SCSI to FireWire to USB, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt…and there are no signs of it stopping. Still and motion picture film formats are positively glacial in their rate of change when compared to the innumerable options that have come and gone for connecting scanners, printers and other devices to computers over the past four decades.
FireWire allows connections of up to 63 devices, is "hot pluggable," easy to use, and doesn't suffer from the latency and CPU burden issues exhibited by USB 2.0.
FireWire provides performance for high-bandwidth applications including mass storage devices like hard drives. Used by most DV25, DV50 and other DV Camcorders, FireWire's ability to guarantee bandwidth and isosynchronous mode makes it a favorite connectivity standard among video professionals.
One of the fastest and most versatile bus standards ever devised, FireWire (aka i.LINK and IEEE 1394) makes a powerful addition to any computer. PCI Express (PCIe) to FireWire host adapters allow addition of FireWire to PCI Express (PCIe) equipped desktop computers. PCI Express to FireWire IEEE 1394 Host Adapter Home