dead FW ports, Combo drive suggestions?

[Steffen Barabasch]

>Thanks. I've already tried every combination of turning off and on
>again and unplugging, etc. Seems to be a bad logic board. Is it time to
>retire my Cube? How much are these things?

If nothing helps, your FW ports are gone. This seems to happen quite 
often with Cubes and older PB G4 and has something to do with static 
discharge and overcurrent peaks, especially with unpowererd FW 
devices (like HDs etc.).

Since a friend of mine killed his FW ports by simply plugging in his 
external HD I'm extremely paranoid and even switch off my Cube when I 
connect it to our iMac (for cloning in target mode). Not actually the 
hot-plugging FireWire they promised us.

I'm planning to buy a FW Combo drive or something, and I'll make sure 
that a) the drive gets external power and b) that I get a FW hub 
first as sort of a fuse to blow first when something bad happens on 
the FW port (I remember a report when someone used a FW hub and when 
there was a potentially harmful discharge the hub died, but the Mac 
was just fine, so this seems to work as a means to protect your Mac's 
FW ports...)

BTW, any suggestions for a great Combo drive, external, FW? Pretty 
case optional ;-)

Native or hackable support from iTunes/Finder for burning and DVD 
Player for DVDs would be excellent, since that seems to be the 
crucial point with external FW drives...

Steffen
-- 
Steffen Barabasch (mailto:TheMirror at westend.com)