Dead Firewire ports
 

Hi. Has anyone had any problems with their Firewire ports? One of mine just stopped working. I have been participating in threads on apple.com, and macfixit.com and others have reported the same problem. Nothing mounts or is recognized in 9.2.2 or OSX.

Many are complaining, no one has a solution. Tried zapping pram, reset motherboard and other stuff. It just stops working and it seems there is nothing that can be done about it.

If anyone else has experienced this I would love to hear from you.

Dual 1ghz (not the MDD)

Thanks, Keith

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

Yes, I had this problem not too long ago...firewire just stopped working. Tried everything...finally called the Apple Store and was told it would require a motherboard swap, as the firewire circuitry had failed. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you might have the same problem. Bye, bye computer.

J

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

Try powering down the computer and the FW drive, unplugging all FW cables, then plug only one FW drive in, power up the drive, then power up the computer.

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

Hi!

This is crazy, since I had the exact same thing happen to me yesterday. I have a brand new (week old) Dual 1Ghz model (MDD) that still runs OS9, and the firewire ports died on me as well. In my case, both of them don't work anymore..I don't know what caused it; I have an older G4-400 which I used for years with the same drives with no problem.
I really needed to get some work done so I screwed the HD's out of their FW case and into the mac (they're IDE ATA drives anyway).
It is really unfortunate since I don't have time to send the machine back for repair, eventhough it is still under warranty. I'm considering getting a PCI firewire card instead.
Could it be a design flaw in the latest machines?

Cheerio,

Joris

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

Just happened two days ago on my wife's G4!

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

They say that firewire is Hot swapable but I have killed a couple of drives this way. A Final cut pro editor told me that if you plug firewire devices in while the computer is on that you run the risk of blowing out the firewire ports. Both on the mac and on your drive. This seems crazy to me, but since I started to plug stuff in with the computer off, I have not had any problems.


Gaffer

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

I had this problem a while back on a G4/733. I tried everything including zapping P-Ram, reinstalling the OS, different firewire devices, removing all PCI cards, etc. I was getting ready to take the computer in for a motherboard replacement and in a last ditch effort tried connecting it to another Mac via firewire and holding down "T" at startup. The other Mac recognized the G4 and firewire has been working ever since. Go figure...

-Jordan

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

Guess I'm not alone. As far as the logic board goes, a couple of others at apple.com said they did that and the problem returned a couple of days later.

Can't use PCI cause I'm outta slots. I could internally install hard drives, but I still can't use my ADVC-100 DV box.

So I'm buying another comp. Seems an expensive fix for a firewire port.

Guess I'll have to go back to shutting down to to plug/un-plug firewire. Feeling like SCSI days.

Thanks for all the replies, Keith

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

This is the main reason we went back to SCSI drives here at our post facility. We ended up having LOTS of FW port problems and also had drives that would dissapear even though they worked fine for months. We fixed the drives with DW and then went back to SCSI because we can't afford these problems. When it gets more stable, we will try again.

Re: Dead Firewire ports
 

I had this problem a while back on a G4/733. I tried everything including zapping P-Ram, reinstalling the OS, different firewire devices, removing all PCI cards, etc. I was getting ready to take the computer in for a motherboard replacement and in a last ditch effort tried connecting it to another Mac via firewire and holding down "T" at startup. The other Mac recognized the G4 and firewire has been working ever since. Go figure...
-Jordan

Thanks Jordan, I'll give it a try. I assume "T" at startup tells it to look down the Firewire ports? Also, was the other MAC a G4 with a similar OS, or just another MAC with Firewire?

-Keith