Know your gear
IEEE-1394, also known as FireWire, iLink or DV, is a versatile, high-speed, and low cost method of interconnecting a variety of computer peripherals and consumer electronics devices. FireWire provides a direct digital link among up to 63 devices, with transfer speeds up to 400 Mbps. Digital video (DV) camcorders, scanners, printers, videoconferencing cameras, and fixed disk drives can all share a common bus connection not only to a PC, but to each other as well.