Hey guys, I’m new to this site, so bare with me if I am asking a redundant question. Do any of you guys have any links to Firewire circuits or knowledge about Firewire in general? It doesn’t appear that Sparkfun makes any Firewire breakout boards or carries any Firewire interface chips, so this may be a new idea for you guys. In case it helps, I am looking to use Firewire to interface an audio recording breakout box to a computer (similar to a lot of MOTU’s stuff). Thanks for any help you can give.
I don’t think anyone has really asked that question before. 400Mbps is a bit up there max, even at the low end of 100mbps it’s still significantly more than most microcontrollers are capable of supporting. I think that’s why it’s not a common commodity.
I don’t know about other manufacturers, but from TI this looks to be appropriate:
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/p … cb43a.html
You’re going to still need an external microprocessor with access to a fair ammount of flash memory (up to several hundred KB) to load the control program into the onboard ARM processor (which you’d have to develop either way anyway), but it has the correct digital links for what you’re looking for.
Now, one issue is that most solutions of this complexity need 4 layer boards. Last I checked SparkFun usually doesn’t do that, just 2 layer stuff. Plus with 400MHz clocks running around the board for the actual Firewire links, RF microstripping is going to be required. The part I linked to above does come in an LQFP package so it’s at leat hand solderable.