The Computers Back Connector Panel
FireWire
FireWire is a serial bus designed by Apple Computer as a replacement for legacy interfaces
like serial ports, parallel ports, and SCSI. It is commmonly used to connect a wide variety of
consumer electronic devices such as digital camcorders. There are two speeds of Firewire;
FireWire 400 with a maximum speed of 400 Mbits per second, and FireWire 800 with a maximum
speed of 800 Mbits per second.
There are three types of FireWire connectors. There is a 4-pin connector and a 6-pin connector
both of which use FireWire 400 or FireWire 800. Then there is a 9-pin FireWire 800 connector.
FireWire 800 is backwards-compatible, which means it will shift down to 400 Mbits per second
when connected to FireWire 400 port or device.
FireWire supports plug-and-play, hot-swapping, daisy-chaining, and using hubs to support
more devices. You can daisy-chain a maximum of 16 FireWire devices. Using a hub you can
connect a maximum of 63 FireWire devices to a port. Several companies make adaptors, which
allow you to plug devices with 9-pin connectors into 6-pin ports and vice versa.
eSATA (External Serial ATA)
eSATA is a port for an external SATA hard drive. ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment)
is a parallel interface used for internal hard drives. Previously called IDE (Integrated Drive
Electronics), as drive speeds increased ATA maxed out because of EMI (electromagnetic
interference) between the parallel lines. Serial ATA (SATA) was developed to overcome this
limitation, and eSATA is a port to connect an external SATA hard drive.
Back Panel Connectors
So although the computer's back panel appears to be a complicated mess, each connector
has a specific shape, number and pins, and polarity key that allows only the proper cable to be
plugged in. If you have a device that you need to connect to a computer, study the connector
at the end of the cable, and find a port on the computer that has a connector that is the same
size and shape with a mating pin pattern.
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