G4 Firewire ports went missing

[bq]

I have a dual 500mz G4. I just got it back from the shop where they discovered it had a bad stick of ram. After geting it back up and running I now notice that the firewire ports are not working/active. Any clues as what to do? Some kinda reset or troubleshooting I can do here?

Thanks,
BQ

 

[sebjenkins]

Can the System Profiler see the firewire ports ?
Are the firewire system extensions enabled ?


One strange case I had a long time ago, the firewire port genuinely did 'die' on my old G4 so I installed a Belkin firewire PCI card otherwise a logic board replacement would have been required !

 

[bq]

I choose the same work around you did. I added a PCI firewire card. _BQ

 

[BabyJeffy]

Sorry to bump such an old post.

My 400MHz G4 Powerbook just suddenly lost use of it's firewire ports the other day. I had an external hard disk plugged in and was writing to it... then the disk silently disappeared and the Finder spat an error (device missing *lol*).

Anyway - I tested another cable - nada. I tested the same drive using USB - no problem... back to Firewire - nothing. Tested on another machine using Firewire and the hard disk works fine. Back to my machine - nada. I tried my DVD writer and I continue to see nothing on my Firewire.

I put the old hard disk back in (which had a working OSX on it from several weeks ago). No luck with the Firewire hard disk -- or with the Firewire DVD writer.

So... I have tested several cables, several devices and a (previously working) OSX install... all on the same hardware. All yeilding the same result.

My question to the group is - have I missed anything... or am I just going to have to upgrade?

Thanks in advance,
Jeff

 

[sebjenkins]

oh dear, how about trying a cardbus or PCMCIA product that has firewire ports on it ?

 

[jmgalvin]

As the earlier posts say, the cheapest way to test this is to install a third party Firewire card and see if that works. Comp usa and places like it have them for 20 to 30 dollars.

Make sure it's Mac compatible

 

[sebjenkins]

jmgalvin, yes except in the first case it was a PowerMac G4 which a PCI card resolved, with the PowerBook it will need to be a CardBus product.

These are easily sourced and very cheaply from eBay amongst other places. But as the previous poster noted, make sure its Mac compatible. The one listed on the Belkin website is for Windows ONLY.

Hope this helps

 

[jmgalvin]

Yeah. My mind had skipped over the fact that he had a powerbook.

 

[BabyJeffy]

Thanks for the suggestion... I just happen to have a PCMCIA firewire card from the old G3 powerbook

I'll try the card out (I'm expecting it'll work perfectly) and post a followup.

I've had my eye on a G5 imac as a replacement for a few months now - waiting for the next MacOSX before I give up my $$$. This is just the kind of excuse I need!

Jeff

 

[jaysoul]

To Those who know

I have a five month old power G4 17" and everything has been great with this machine untikll ther other day, my external hardrives stop mounting on my desktop. I performed the option apple +PR boot but nothing happened.

HELP ANYONE!

 

[jmgalvin]

Jaysoul: Did you download and install any osx upgrades from Apple before the things disappeared? Sometimes the osx upgrades foul up the firmware on the external drives if the upgrade is installed while the drives are attached to the computer and turned on.

First, if your drives happen to have a usb plug, try connecting to the mac via usb - just to check the drives. If they're fine, and you have more than 1 drive, try plugging just one (if they were daisy chained use other than your previous first one) and see if thay mount via firewire.