Board With Native Bridge Chip Evaluates FireWire Connectivity Solutions

An evaluation board provides an easy way for engineers to evaluate the performance of the firm's FireWire to ATA/ATAPI bridge solution based on the OXFW900 chip. The board features a complete three-chip solution consisting of the OXFW900, 1394 PHY chip and ROM. Connections are made using a standard IDE connector and two FireWire ports. The bridging solution is to be a fast and cost-effective way for manufacturers of removable media drives, optical drives and hard disk drives to provide FireWire connectivity. The OXFW900 is a high-performance native bridge chip with integrated Serial Bus Protocol. It can use generic device drivers and supports the standard IEEE 1394A PHY-LINK interface. The sustained IDE data transfer rate is 25 Mbps. The board is available on loan to OEMs free of charge for one month.