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inserted into the socket upside down, the socket will be destroyed. Never force a FireWire con-
nector into a FireWire socket!
Devices connected to the FireWire bus are auto–configuring. You do not need to set IDs, DIP
switches or in any way configure the devices in order to facilitate communication between de-
vices or to configure of the bus.
FireWire devices on the same bus must be connected in a tree structure with no loops. This
means that devices can be connected to each other in any order, and any device with multiple
ports can act as a chain or a hub for other FireWire devices, but you should never be able to
get from one device to another by more than one path. If you construct a loop in the bus, it will
not operate properly and you will not be able access some or all of the devices on the bus.
Although you are able to attach devices in any order on the FireWire bus, the order of attach-
ment will have an impact on performance. Most current model FireWire devices support 400
Mbs operation, but many older devices may only support 100 or 200 Mbs operation. These
devices act as a bottleneck in the bus and limit the speed of any bus traffic that flows through
them. In order to maximize performance, you want to ensure that low speed devices are not
used to join high speed devices. In practice this generally means that you should attach your
302 directly to your computer or through a high speed FireWire hub.
To connect your Series 300 to your computer, simply interconnect the unit and the computer
with a FireWire cable. The FireWire bus provides a path for all communications between the
computer and the Series 300: audio, control and metering data.
The Series 300’s audio transport takes advantage of FireWire’s support for isochronous trans-
mission, in which the 300 can reserve a dedicated amount of bandwidth on the bus for moving
audio samples. Since the audio must be transmitted on a regular basis to ensure continuous
playback and recording, the isochronous mode is ideally suited to this task.
Control changes and meter data are transmitted using asynchronous transactions on the
FireWire bus. This transmission approach makes use of the unreserved bandwidth on the bus
and competes with processes like FireWire hard disk access for time. Under normal circum-
stances, this is completely transparent to the user. If the bus becomes overloaded, you may
find that disk accesses and meter updates slow down. If you are experiencing bus overloads,
you can always add a second FireWire bus with a third-party Host Bus Adapter or HBA. An
HBA, either PC-Card or PCI depending on your machine, will offload one or more devices to the
second bus.
2.6 Power
Series 300 models ship with a world-ready, 24 volt, 2 amp power supply. You can plug this
supply into any AC power source from 90 to 240 VAC, 50 to 60 Hz, using an appropriate IEC
power cord.
As with all electronic devices, when connecting an external power source to any Series 300
model, you should first connect the power source to 300 while it is in an unenergized state, not
connected to the mains or switched off. After the connection to the 300 has been made, you
should energize the power source.
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