- Introduction :
latest series of recorders are undoubtedly among the best choices when it comes to fast recording demands. We experienced the power and the glory of the latest Yamaha's "diamonds" in the previous tests here at CDR-Info labs, proving that it's a fair choice for the average and/or the power user.

It's a nice surprise that Yamaha decided to support a very promising and relatively new standard that has so many capabilities... We are talking about the IEEE-1394 standard, also known as "FireWire". But, what is "FireWire" you might ask...

- What is FireWire?
Officially known as IEEE-1394, (IEEE stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) or FireWire is a new high-speed, low-cost interconnection standard. Adopted with flexibility and speed in mind, this technology represents the next generation of Plug and Play. With standard speeds of 100, 200 and 400 Mbps, it is ideal for connecting high-end consumer electronics such as digital A/V equipment, as well as specialized computer peripherals. All you need is the internal PCI card (that comes into the Yamaha package and identifies itself as "Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller") and a connecting cable to the drive (also included).

Although comparable to USB in that both do not require the computer to be rebooted in order to recognize newly connected devices, FireWire is capable of much higher data transfer rates than USB. Today's general trend is to reserve USB for low-bandwidth input devices such as keyboards, mice and desktop image scanners, while FireWire is better applied to high-bandwidth multimedia applications such as digital A/V processing - or in our case the highspeed drive of the Yamaha 2100 series.

- Benefits of FireWire:
FireWire devices are addressed dynamically and instantly when connected and do not require the host computer to be re-started. As well, when devices are disconnected, the computer reconfigures itself to represent these changes. Unlike SCSI, no cable termination is required, and devices (up to 63 daisy chained) can be connected in many different configurations. These advantages combined with the ultra-high speed capabilities of FireWire make it a perfect match for connecting digital A/V peripherals for realtime capturing of Audio / Video, or other speed-demanding devices. FireWire protocol and devices are widely used to the Apple Macintosh computers and lately in many PCs.

- Features:
Yamaha CRW2100xi is one of the first IEEE-1394 CDR-W drive that supports 16x writing. However as with it's 'brothers' 16x writing uses partial CAV writing technology.

- Package:
The RETAIL version that arrived in our offices included the drive box itself (CRW2100ix-VK), the Power cord & FireWire cables and the "Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller". The software included was the Adaptec's Ez CD Creator 4.02d-S25 version, DirectCD 3.0 and Take Two 1.0 (all into one cdrom), plus the very well known to the Macintosh users Adaptec Toast (version 4.1). The package also included an additional Yamaha CDR (16x certified), an HS-RW media and finally, the user manual (very well printed, high detailed; essential for novice users).