Please Note: This blog post is part of a series of five posts altogether.
The posts include: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

The bus FireWire, or refered to as 1394 in several countries, offers a multitude of connections and power supplies possibilities. This series of articles paper gives you an overview of these possibilities in the context of FireWire cameras, which do not come with a power supply.

Overview

There are two types of sockets for FireWire interfaces: 4-pin and 6-pin.

1) 4-pin sockets connect the data signals only but do not connect the power supply of the bus:

2) 6-pin sockets connect the data signals as well as the power supply of the bus: