My Firewire Ports have stopped working...HELP !

A

Altair

Registered
Hi.

Yesterday both my firewire 400 ports on my G5 stopped working. whenever i plugged a device into them nothing happens. They had always worked fine before.

What was weird was that when i plugged my Ipod into the front port it still charged the ipod but never actually loaded the device...i didnt get round to checking if this was the case with the back port.

anyway...

I read on some random forum about using the open firmware system to get them working again. heres what i did ...

- held down command + option + o + f
- typed "reset-nvram" and hit return
- typed "reset-all" and hit return again

the computer restarted and luckily my front firewire 400 port has started working again. however the port at the back is still not working, i decided to test the back port with my ipod to see if it would charge it but instead it just froze my ipod until i unplugged it which then made the ipod unfreeze and function properly again.

I have also tested the back 400 port with a firewire soundcard as well as a firewire hard drive and none of them work, so its not an ipod issue.

If anyone has any ideas or possible solutions it would really be apreciated. I dont fancy paying apple £300+ for applecare just so they can mend 1 firewire port.

regards
Carl
 
Something may have went south on the motherboard. Find your original install disks and run the hardware test to see if that is the case.
 
I just lost my firewire ports too, this is such a drag.

I've tried all of this too and still no luck. My iPod charges, when I plug it in, so it works, however it won't recognize anything and shows up as 'not present' on a hardware test. I've also tried the open firmware "reset-nvram" thing and had no luck.

Does anyone have any ideas here? I just can't afford to have anyone look at it and there must be a way to get this rig back up and running....

Still trying,

DB
 
Hi Carl,
Thanks! I tried the open firmware system commands you suggested, and it helped fix a few things, but not the mounting of the external FW storage device to the desktop.

It did get my CD/DVD internal device to start mounting all my discs again. That's a biggie for me, since I had a lot backed up to DVDs. Apple support told me it couldn't be fixed. You should be paid their salary.

I think that the front FW port on my G5 is now nonfunctional. After plugging various external FW devices into it with no results, I installed a multiple FW/USB port in the back & that is working fine mounting other FW devices, but still doesn't mount the external FW storage device to the desktop. [Maxtor, after numerous calls, still won't update their drivers for Mac].

Satcomer may well be right about the motherboard, but I also think that it may have something to do with the OHCI (Open Host Controller Interface) that makes computer to FW connection work. With current iPod updates, then maybe OHCI is disabling your connection at that port.

If I find any workarounds, I'll respond again to this link. I've saved it. Good luck in the meantime!
 
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