An updated Apple tech support document alludes to the .
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Must be Microsoft/Intel/Pee Cee/Mac Haters' fault. No way Jobs/Ives can make an imperfect machine. :)
We are a large Apple warranty repair shop and I can say that a failed FW port is one of the least likely reasons that a Mac comes in for service. Bad CPUs are probably the number 1 problem we see on G4s. A failed FW port is a rare occurance.
I was imaging some machines at schoold with CCC, and sure enough I came to a machine that simple would not recognize any FireWire device. Thought it was odd until now. Hello AppleCare
I have a sawtooth G4, my FW memory stick reader stopped working with this machine this spring. I'm now running Panther and everything's working great again. Weird. Sounds like a software problem...hopefully fixed now...
Apple isn't perfect- just miles ahead of the competition.
I did a little searching after I saw that system profiler on 10.2.6 showed the firewire devices, but he devices would not work till I shut doen and unplugged everything, but mouse and keyboard and left off for wahile then restarted, and added all devices back one by one. there is an apple doc about this here
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338&sessionID=anonymous|18530273&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com%3a80%2f
I also seen some info about the problem here
http://www.osxfaq.com/tips/regester/index.ws
HTH
Imagine my shock. About the 4th day I had my new G4 quicksilver, suddenly the picture is getting weird, and it wouldn't recognize the Firewire CD-RW either. It was all going. 1-800-Apple had a new board in my Mac the next day, with a home visit by a tech from my favorite shop, so I wasn't put out. My CD-RW was still fried, and the iMac hard drive that I had been using as a Firewire target disk to transfer files -- it started clunking. I replaced it with a free replacement from Quantum. But what had caused all that? I'm not sure, but I think it was that the QPS CD-RW unit had a bad power unit. It was the other drive on the bus when I went into target mode. It fried the port, the iMac HD I had just upgraded, and the circuit board. Crazy? I don't think so. The power unit for the Firewire CD-RW was connected to my little ADC UPS, but it didn't have enough power for all those units, and no surge suppressor of any serious usefulness. The power adapter spiked, just the way the QPS people said the old silver-plug boxes with that serial number were prone to. That started a chain reaction.
I called 800-Apple, with an AppleCare number I had registered the day before. Once the guy heard about the dead firewire, it seemed to complete the picture. "Step away from the machine and wait for the repairman."
Take care in adding older fw devices to your chain, one
bad port can burn out a lot of other ports.(for instance,
One Powerlook 1100 Scanner killed the ports on a G4 450, three fw drives, a TI-book and a sony dv camera. It took a while to figure it out since my client neglected to tell me about a "burning cable smell" at the onset of these problems. In a small investigation, there is no way to predict these kinds of issues
with any device, aside from bypassing FW power with a hub
(which would burn out before your devices do). A nice piece of technology but if manufacturers don't regard specs FW issues will
rear it's ugly head from time to time. I will say that FW work great
for me most of the time, but be aware that when these devices
have power issues-they can ruin your day-financially and psychologicly.
Caveat FW.
FireWire devices here and never have had any. Maybe I should keep it that way!
Where does MacNN get off calling it a wide spread problem? What basis do they have?
If you click on the link labelled "widespread dead FireWire ports" you will find an Apple Technote that says "In rare cases, a computer's built-in FireWire ports, and third-party FireWire devices, no longer work correctly. The computer may no longer recognize the devices."
There are millions of G4 PowerMacs out there; A few people bitching the tech support forums does not constitute a wide spread problem.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2001
ah man
firewire is one of the hallmarks of macs