>> I bet there are committee drafts online somewhere on the web.
>I looked a little, and it seems that some of the specs you need
>to order from IEEE :-(

The way to deal with IEEE specs is not to buy the real spec (unless
you can afford it), but take the last committee revision, which is usually
very close to the final spec.

For example, check out:

ftp://ftp.symbios.com/pub/standards/io/1394/P1394a/Drafts/

It seems that you might still need the original 1394 drafts to make
use of that, though :-(

--Ken