IEEE 1394 Drivers (Windows CE 5.0)

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Microsoft® Windows® CE IEEE 1394 is a high-performance serial bus that allows you to add or remove devices on the bus while it is active. IEEE 1394 uses two types of thin serial cables that do not need terminators or device identifiers. One is 6-pin-shielded cable with two pairs of pins for data transport and one pair for peripheral power. The other is a 4-pin cable similar to the 6-pin cable, but without the power pins. IEEE 1394 also supports multiple speeds and daisy chaining devices together for branching for peer-to-peer connections.

IEEE 1394 supports asynchronous and isochronous data transfer. The following table shows a comparison of IEEE 1394 asynchronous and isochronous data transfer.

Data transfer type Description
Asynchronous For traditional memory-mapped, load and store applications, asynchronous transfer is appropriate and adequate. Asynchronous transfer provides guaranteed delivery and reliability is more important than timing.
Isochronous Isochronous data transfer, on the other hand, provides guaranteed data transport at a pre-determined rate. This is especially important for multimedia applications where uninterrupted transport of time-critical data and just-in-time delivery reduce the need for costly buffering.

In addition, IEEE 1394 supports a peer-to-peer interface, which allows recording from one camcorder to another without a desktop computer. The peer-to-peer interface allows multiple computers to share a peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the desktop computers.

The IEEE 1394 implementation borrows largely from the Windows-based desktop platforms. For more information about implementation there, see a Windows-based desktop platform driver development kit (DDK).

This IEEE 1394 documentation assumes knowledge of topics such as memory descriptor lists MDLs and the Windows Driver Model (WDM). Windows CE WDM support is strictly for IEEE 1394 support and not for general driver development.

In This Section

  • Power Management
    Describes the power management capabilities provided by the Windows CE operating system.

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