Good stuff here.  Thanks.

 I usually go with the cheap and mass produced stuff which means USB,
but I'm going to look seriously at a combo FireWire/USB2 motherboard
on my next purchase.

 JimL

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 06:30:47 GMT, Barry Twycross <barry@netbox.com>
wrote:

>In article <4p4Ha.85950$hd6.2138@fed1read05>, Michael Frazier
><MLFrazierJr@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought Firewire was much slower than USB 2.0 ???
>> 
>> Can a balanced (read non-Macaholic) please enlighten us all on this?
>
>I don't know where the idea of "much" slower would come from. As
>pointed out the raw bit rates of the connection are 400Mb/s for
>FireWire (1394a) and 480Mb/s for USB2, "much" doesn't seem to come into
>that. Also the latest version of FireWire (1394b) adds 800Mb/s and
>1.6Gb/s, but only the 800 version has been implimented yet.
>
>Raw bit rates don't tell the whole story. FireWire people I know reckon
>that about 35MB/s is what you'll get out of the fastest FireWire
>devices. For USB, the transfer rates are limited by the host controller
>implimentation. The current crop of controllers max out in the
>20-24MB/s range. 
>
>Currently FireWire is most probably the faster technology.
>
>The next generation of USB host controller is promising to up the
>transfer rates into the 35-40MB/s range. I've seen one manage 31MB/s,
>which was limited by the hard drive it was attached to. That controller
>should be able to manage 39MB/s with a faster device.
>
>I don't know how fast a FireWire 800 device would be able to manage in
>reality, presumably a little faster than the current version.
>
>In Future FireWire will probably continue to be the faster technology.
>
>All of these transfer rates are so much faster than the cf device in
>the original question, its hardly worth worrying about.