Can I use a FireWire drive as a FireWire extender?

[deckeda]

I read that the IEEE 1394 spec says a FW cable shouldn't be more than 4.5 meters.

For a project I need almost double that length.

My choices seem to be:
1) Unibrain's 10 meter cable for about $30.

2) a repeater, starting at about $30 I think. More if it doesn't come with a power source (didn't really look into this too closely.)

3) Two shorter cables with a powered FW drive in between?

15ft. cables are available for #3 but perhaps not cost effective. Just want to know what my options here are.

[Buzz]

Can I use a FireWire drive as a FireWire extender?

yes

[deckeda]

Thanks!

[freeradical]

Absolutely. The ability to regenerate a signal an infinite number of times is one of the real advantages of a digital signal. A regenerator simply has to decide if something is a high or a low and then clean it up.

This is why digital microwave radios systems that used time division multiplexers very quickly became more prevalent than analog systems that employed frequency division multiplexing. With an analog system, you could only have a limited number of hops before the signal to noise ratio rendered the baseband unusable.

[Racer X]

you aren't regenerating the signal. The repeaters are used to boost the signal. There are 30' cables that don't need an repeater or extender, but they cost more. they are just very low loss cables. I have a few in my office. You can also buy a 15" cable withe a repeater built in. Then you just plug in a regular 15' cable. Having a 15' cable attached to a powered hub, and the next 15' cable plugged into the hub will work too. I have been using FW hubs/repeaters with my specialized high speed video cameras for about a decade now.