Re: Success and horror stories for USB and Firewire drives with Sun Blade.

From: Torsten Kirschner (torsten.kirschner_at_sandbox.no)
Date: 04/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:03:42 +0200

Raymond Toy wrote on Thursday 29 April 2004 15:24 :

>>>>>> "Elias" == Elias <nospam@charter.net> writes:
>
> Elias> There are no drivers or qualified devices other than 1394 video
> Elias> cameras for the IEEE 1394 ports. So, any bulk storage device
> will not
> Elias> work on the IEEE 1394 ports. You are right about devices
> working if
>
> I've always wondered why Sun did this. Did Sun expect the most common
> use of the 1394 port to be for video? I would have expected storage
> devices to be much more common. Are Firewire storage devices much
> harder to write software for than video cameras?

I would think so, yes.

Speculating a bit, I do not see Sun themselves selling Firewire storage
devices anytime soon. On the other hand, Sun appears to have some of their
own SCSI/FC disks and arrays angled towards that "low-end" segment, or at
least they used to. Such might lead to a conflict of interest when it comes
to opening up a market segment to competitors. Moreover, I have a hard time
imagening heavy duty SPARC server users being interested in how one might
attach a USD 300 disk to USD 300,000 server gear in order to store data
worth USD 30,000,000. [Numbers are obviously made up and exaggerated.]
Still, the commitment to Solaris x86 and its constant quest for more
drivers might eventually realize Firewire storage drivers for SPARCs as
well, if so by some competent open source hacker who needs that for her
home office B150 on a budget.
What I am trying to ask is, what would motivate Sun to spend the
substantial amount of money it takes to develop and test reliabe,
production quality drivers unless there is actually some sort of ROI? Sun
is developing all sorts of stuff all the time, but in times with limited
commercial success, I guess even they have to concentrate on what earns
money.
To be honest, I was amazed that Sun continued the SunVideo program at all.
I have a hard time getting excited about video conferencing to begin with.
I feel its use outside the porn industry is still to be proven. Why else
have any and all attempts to introduce videophones on a large scale failed
completely?

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