10-16-2008, 07:16 PM
I was looking for number of drives SATA supports, and came upon this wiki with good SATA-USB-Firewire speed comparisons. It doesn't account for the USB overhead "speed killing tax" difference between USB and FireWire.
Scroll down to the eSATA in comparison to other external buses chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
Now for the MacBook part.
More research sent me to this this Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire
and came up with this. Makes things more interesting-maybe?
FireWire S800T (IEEE 1394c-2006)
FireWire is enhanced to share gigabit Category 5e cable
IEEE 1394c-2006 was published on June 8, 2007.
It provides the following improvements
A new port specification which provides 800 Mbit/s over the same RJ45 connectors with Category 5e cable which is specified in IEEE 802.3 clause 40 (gigabit Ethernet over copper twisted pair)
An automatic negotiation that allows the same port to connect to either IEEE Std 1394 or IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet) devices.
Various minor updates to IEEE 1394b
Though the potential for a combined Ethernet and FireWire RJ45 port is intriguing, as of December 2007, there are no products or chipsets which include this capability.
Additionally regarding the new MBP,
Since FW 1600 and 3200 use the same type of port/connector as FW 800, would a firmware upgrade be all that was needed for the upgrade like when the Airport Extremes in MBP got upgraded to 802.11n?
Scroll down to the eSATA in comparison to other external buses chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
Now for the MacBook part.
More research sent me to this this Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire
and came up with this. Makes things more interesting-maybe?
FireWire S800T (IEEE 1394c-2006)
FireWire is enhanced to share gigabit Category 5e cable
IEEE 1394c-2006 was published on June 8, 2007.
It provides the following improvements
A new port specification which provides 800 Mbit/s over the same RJ45 connectors with Category 5e cable which is specified in IEEE 802.3 clause 40 (gigabit Ethernet over copper twisted pair)
An automatic negotiation that allows the same port to connect to either IEEE Std 1394 or IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet) devices.
Various minor updates to IEEE 1394b
Though the potential for a combined Ethernet and FireWire RJ45 port is intriguing, as of December 2007, there are no products or chipsets which include this capability.
Additionally regarding the new MBP,
Since FW 1600 and 3200 use the same type of port/connector as FW 800, would a firmware upgrade be all that was needed for the upgrade like when the Airport Extremes in MBP got upgraded to 802.11n?