User manual UNIBRAIN UBCORE 3.1

[. . . ] ubCoreTM 3. 1 User Guide unibrain The 1394 Innovators e-mail: support@unibrain. com web: http://www. unibrain. com store: http://www. 1394store. com/ 1 ubCoreTM 3. 1 User Guide November 2003 Unibrain introduces to the IEEE-1394 users and developers community, the latest ubCoreTM version 3. 1, the first and only FireWire (IEEE-1394) driver suite that fully supports the 1394b standard. ubCoreTM is a set of low-level drivers with a top-down layered structure that provides the physical interface to various 1394 devices and includes the following advantageous features: · · · · · Full 1394b support at 800Mbps. Complete 1394a and 1394b SBP2 disk support for Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP. User friendly installation wizard. ubCoreTM combined with FireAPITM (Unibrain's 1394 Development Toolkit), provides to the software developer a powerful set of functions and tools that enables him to integrate 1394 technology into his product. [. . . ] The FireViewerTM shows the first three ports of each node, whether they are present or not. Select again the "View | Show Port" menu item to disable the display of port information. Caption and menu bar The window can be shown with or without a caption and menu bar. Double-click the left mouse button inside the window to switch between the two views, or select "View | Hide title and menu" and/or "View | Show title and menu" from the menu. When the window does not have a caption and menu bar, you can move it by clicking with the left mouse button into the window and dragging it to the desired position. When the caption is visible, it shows the number of bus resets that have happened during the machine's uptime. Always on top Check the "View | Always on top" menu item to make the window topmost. If this menu item is unchecked, you can check the "View | Foreground on BR" menu item to have the window come to the foreground whenever a bus reset takes place. 45 ubCoreTM 3. 1 User Guide Node Properties Right clicking on any active node will show a context menu that includes the Properties command. Selecting this command will display a small dialog box with information about that node. The next figure shows the contents of this dialog box which are common to all node types: The first line displays the node's Globally Unique IDentifier (GUID). The rest information is retrieved from the node's bus_info_block. Refer to the 1394 standard's documentation for a detailed explanation of these items. For FireNet nodes, the Properties dialog box looks like: 46 ubCoreTM 3. 1 User Guide FireNet properties include the UNC name of the computer, its operating system, the FireNet version it is running, the emulated MAC address it uses and its MTU size. For digital cameras, the Properties dialog box is as follows: Extra information includes the camera vendor and model, as well as the specification number. Bus anomalies When an anomaly occurs on the bus, and a valid topology cannot be derived from the self-id packets, then the tree cannot be drawn accurately. The application tries to communicate with any active nodes on the bus, and draws in solid color the ones that are still active. This situation might occur from time to time, especially when a device gets unplugged from the bus. The SBM driver checks for this condition and initiates a bus reset after a couple of seconds to correct the situation, so usually it won't be necessary to do this yourself. The communication between nodes is never halted due to a topology error, so you should not worry if this situation occurs. In the rare case when the problem persists, then there is some problem with some node on the bus. The only thing you might do in this case is disconnect a few devices from the bus until you restore a valid topology. Then you might have to reboot your PC, or shut it down, turn it off, remove all 1394 cables from it and then power it up again. This is a problem that has only occurred during our development, in cases where a serious software failure or driver crash has left the adapter in a state from which it cannot operate even after a warm reboot, but requires a complete power off. This also means disconnecting the adapter from the 1394 bus, because the bus itself supplies power to the adapter even when the PC is turned off. 47 ubCoreTM 3. 1 User Guide Menu The menu bar of the window contains a "View" and "Help" menu. You can also access the "View" menu by right-clicking the mouse button inside the window. View menu · · · · · · · · · · · Properties: This item is available only when the "View" menu is opened by right-clicking the mouse on an active node. [. . . ] one other PC of your 1394 network can access the SBP2 disk that is physically attached to your PC). So NEVER unplug or turnoff an external 1394 SBP2 disk before ensuring that this disk is not used by any PC in the 1394 bus! Introduction As is already mentioned the new ubCoreTM 3 provides and installs automatically complete 1394 SBP2 Hard Disk driver suite support. Unibrain's SBP2 driver is fine tuned for speeds of 800Mbps providing the fastest 1394b interface to external S800 SBP2 Hard disks. Moreover Unibrain provides the Fire-ShareTM SBP2 application for multi-share of 1394 SBP2 hard disks. [. . . ]