[G4] How check out a used G4? Firewire!

[Vicki Schalin]

jj wrote some very clever things, I can also add:

Make sure you check that firewire works. When I bought mine G4 500 
AGP (used by two people before me) the seller said he had never 
tested the firewire so he didn't know if it worked or not. He hadn't 
tested the DVD-RAM either. Later I tested DVD-RAM and it worked fine 
but when I should test the firewire (some week ago) it didn't work, 
and I am not happy at all.

I don't know if there is a way to test if firewire works other than 
plug something in (an iPod maybe?). But do the check somehow.


I also wonder if there is a way to check what is wrong with my 
firewire. We tested both ports and with two different equipment (1 
scanner, 1 iPod) and two different cables. All tests were done both 
under X and OS9. Nothing helped. Later we checked the 
X-startup-log-file (/var/log/system.log) that's written during 
startup and there we read:

Jan 15 11:23:01 name mach_kernel: Broken FireWire Phy, aborting 
AppleFWOHCI start()

So something is broken, but can it be fixed easily, or should I buy a 
PCI-card for Firewire?

/ Vicki
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