[Ti] A story of 500MHZ G4 Firewire port woes

[Bob Fowles]

The general problem of firewire ports going bad is a known problem 
and discussed in apple.com discussion groups. I never heard of the 
problem until this June when the FW 400 port on my 500MHZ G4 (new in 
spring 2001) stopped working. I had been using it for backing up to 
an external drive with SuperDuper and for connecting to an iMac via 
Target Disk mode to write to CDs (my PB can only read CD/DVD). After 
reading the apple groups, I ordered a 2-port FW 400 PCMCIA card 
hoping that would solve the problem, but those ports didn't work 
either. At that point I assumed that my logic board was bad because 
there were several other problems that possibly indicated that. All 
Internet discussions of this port problem seemed to agree that the 
only fix was to replace the logic board ($$$).

I had been patiently waiting to get a new Macbook Pro when all the 
initial problems were resolved but it still appeared too early for 
that, so I bought a used G4 500MHZ PB without a HD. When I got it a 
few days after the problem with my old PB, I installed the HD, extra 
RAM, and airport card from my old PB into the new one. When I tried 
backing up to my external HD that worked also, but on the third 
backup the firewire port was dead just like on the old PB. I 
immmediately tried the 2-port FW PCMCIA card and fortunately it 
worked and has continued to work. The card requires that the attached 
device supply its own power.

I don't really know what casued the FW port on both PBs to fail, but 
I suspect a bad cable. I used the PB in two locations with two 
different FW cables. In location 1, the drive and cable had been used 
many times. In location 2, the same drive and a different cable were 
in use when the FW port on both PBs failed. Needless to say I no 
longer use the location 2 cable. I should also add that in all cases 
of using the FW port, I always powered the drive by the port and did 
not use an external ac/dc adapter.

By using the FW ports on the PCMCIA card, I have to use the adapter's 
external power and I can no longer connect to another Mac via Target 
Disk mode.

I thought this story might be of interest to Titanium lovers.

Bob Fowles, Centre County, PA