[X4U] Macs which support "target disk mode"

[Jim Robertson]

On 1/22/08 6:01 PM, "Terence Cozad" <tcozad at covad.net> wrote:

> Not to sound flip but it almost sounds like the computer lost power. I have
> a mirror door G4 and have no problems with Firewire Target Disk Mode. If the
> computer shuts down that is power related. I would plug into a good outlet,
> make sure that the PRAM battery is good, if using a battery backup keep in
> mind that putting too much in one will shut it down (from personal bad
> experience) and you then need to plug into a different device or outlet.
> 
> If it still does not work I would suspect hardware or a bad firewire port
> perhaps. Try the other port. I know the old Blue and White G3 could not boot
> this way from the firewire port (I had one) but all towers since then
> should. 
> Just my 2 cent but hope you get it figured out.
> Terry

NO offer of help is ever considered flip :-)

And your datapoint (that target disk mode DOES work on the mirrored doors
without any keyboard incantations to invoke open firmware first) is
invaluable.

The G4's mirrored doors PRAM battery is depleted, but so far as I know, the
only negative consequence of that is if, as you say, the computer loses a/c
power it forgets what time and day it is. This is a brand new house, and
nothing else suggests we have bad incoming power.

We did fry the ethernet port on the mirrored doors  G4 a few years ago, but
solved that by putting in a PCI ethernet card. Perhaps the FW ports
themselves ARE gone. I guess I could test that by hooking up one of my
digital camera cardreaders that communicates over FW and see if the mirrored
doors computer can recognize them.

We don't have routine need for external drives, so I'm too cheap to spring
for an external FW case. My son is a typical kid. He has many gigabytes of
downloaded music and music videos, plus the movies he's made himself in
Final Cut express on that box, but if it takes more than the time needed to
click through the channels on the TiVo to accomplish something like this,
for him it's "c'est la vie" and he's on to something else...

Jim Robertson
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