Intel Corp is putting the brakes on its planned support for the IEEE 1394 Firewire high-speed digital bus interface, according to PC Week. Intel has planned to include integrated support for Firewire in the next release of its 440BX chip set, but according to the paper has been telling OEMS that, due to lack of demand, it has put the project on hold until the market is ready. The move could affect the delivery of Device Bay, the Compaq Intel and Microsoft joint effort to come up with an industry standard for interchangeable PC peripheral devices. Device Bay, for such peripherals as disk drives, modems, network boards, CDROM and DVD-ROM drives, was announced a year ago (CI No 3,131) partly as a response to the Network Computer, and the first supporting products were due on the market early in 1999. Specifications are based around Firewire and the USB bus, and support from Intel chipset, Microsoft operating systems and Compaq commercial and consumer products was all part of the original roll-out plan.
