What iPod part is this?

December 30, 2005 2:56 PM

Can someone tell me what this is? It's for my third gen iPod but I cannot find any info on the web about this part. I lost the manual.

posted by KevinSkomsvold to technology (5 comments total)

Looks like a firewire to USB adapter.
posted by Mr T at 2:59 PM on December 30, 2005

6-pin to 4-pin Firewire adapter. Laptops often have the little one.
posted by SpookyFish at 3:02 PM on December 30, 2005

It's a 6-pin to 4-pin FireWire adapter, for PCs that have 4-pin FireWire ports but not 6-pin ports.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:03 PM on December 30, 2005

Thanks! I thought, because of the symbol on it, that it could be a wireless something-or-other. Thanks for the quick responses.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 3:34 PM on December 30, 2005

that's the firewire symbol. i think it was supposed to convey something about the isochronous nature of firewire. in other words the two dashed lines (representing two different streams of data) meet at the center and emerge interleaved together.

from here:

1. FireWire supports isochronous data transfers, like those used when transferring digital video and other time-based media. Isochronous data transfers differ from standard asynchronous data transfer types in the sense that they guarantee the timely delivery of data between nodes (i.e., 30 seconds of streaming video plays out in exactly 30 seconds). This means that when an isochronous device such as a DV camcorder is connected to the FireWire bus, that device grabs an allocated portion of the bus necessary to guarantee the timely delivery of its data -- say 10 mbytes per second. The bus also automatically allocates 20% of the total bus bandwidth (i.e., 10 mbytes / second) for serial command overhead -- leaving only 30 mbytes per second (in our example) of available bandwidth for other devices. Once the FireWire bus bandwidth has been fully allocated, the bus will not recognize additional devices -- regardless of whether-or-not the connected devices are actually transporting data.
posted by joeblough at 3:58 PM on December 30, 2005