Drivers Improve WindowsXP Service Pack 2 FireWire

Drivers Galore

In theory, Windows XP does not have a clue when it comes to IEEE 1394b. Ipso facto, the system does not offer any suitable drivers and the hardware cannot be used reliably. That said, Windows XP recognized the Trust card as an IEEE 1394 adapter in the test and allocated it a standard OHCI driver. Although it wasn't ready for it, Windows created a network connection - according to the status display at 800 MBit/s - and with far fewer problems than with a standard FireWire IEEE 1394a connection! Operation and measurements were accordingly uninterrupted and effortless.

Although the OrangeWare drivers had to be allocated manually, they did not cause a fuss

It was quite another story with the current Release Candidate 2 of the Service Pack 2 for Windows XP: Using the new IEEE 1394b drivers in SP2, throughput sank to about a half to a third of the performance achieved in the other scenarios. Judging by the readings here, the drivers included in SP2 do not appear to be up to scratch. This assumption was confirmed by the following test to install the Unibrain drivers in Windows XP with SP2. It resulted in a drastic destabilization of the computer and meant that regular operation was no longer possible. The Unibrain drivers could only be installed after a complete reinstallation under XP with SP2. Although there were no similar problems with the OrangeWare drivers under Windows XP with SP2, throughput was down to a level similar to the Unibrain drivers. Although the OrangeWare driver had to be manually assigned under Windows XP SP1, it worked without a hitch at the first attempt. However, there was no increase in performance worth mentioning when compared with the Windows OHCI drivers.

UbCore From Unibrain: A Difficult Delivery

Unibrain's ubCore Version 3.2 driver was first installed on Windows XP with Service Pack 1. First of all, the 1394 network connection disappeared without replacement from the network environment. This is obviously not a software error, as we first guessed, but a user-unfriendly concept: Unibrain envisages manual installation for a network connection, something that is only poorly documented in the online manual. The appropriate drivers have to be reloaded specially from the ubCore "Firenet" subdirectory using the Windows hardware assistant. Only then does a corresponding network connection become available.

No connection could be made at the first attempt. The drivers had to be uninstalled, loaded again and the computer subjected to a number of restarts. After several attempts we were finally able to create a connection. This, however, was not stable, so that SiSoft Sandra permanently froze during attempts to take measurements and NetIO was repeatedly unable to create a connection. With the anti-virus and firewall software already installed, the Unibrain driver could not be gotten running at all. Even after deinstallation, it was impossible to create a stable connection. The Unibrain driver could only be coaxed into cooperation on a "clean", newly installed system - without anti-virus scanner and firewall.