[G4] Mass storage problem

[Ron Steinke]

On Jul 11, 2004, at 11:35 AM, Steve Goldstein wrote:

Stop right there.  Connect the two Macs with a Firewire cable. Re-start 
the laptop holdint down the "T" key (target mode).  It should appear as 
a mounted volume on the desktop of the "desktop" machine.  Then, simply 
drag the files from one to the other to copy.

--Steve

At 2:15 PM -0400 7/11/04, hachapitees at lightspeed.net wrote:
> I help a friend with his 2 Macs, but this one stumped me.
> He hooked up a external hard drive (USB) to his desktop G4 to copy
> some files over to his G4 laptop.

Steve's reply is fine if all you need to do is make a connection and 
copy files from one machine to the other and both machines have 
FireWire capability. But----What do you do to determine that the laptop 
will be able to recognize and use any other USB device when it gets 
connected?

It will be necessary to find out why the laptop is not recognizing a 
USB device. Does it recognize any other USB device? Is the cable 
damaged and need to be replaced? Is there a software conflict created 
by installing the software that came with the external drive? Etc, Etc, 
Etc.

This is not simply a data transfer question any more. It has opened the 
door to hardware and software problems which should be resolved to 
prevent future problems arising from the inability to recognize a 
device that should have appeared when it was connected to the laptop.

Do not stop at the first corner you come to and be sure to have a map 
handy to continue the journey.