Firewire Dead

Brand new 1.8 Power Mac. All firewire ports on the blink.... Apple India Care doesn't know anything....

The only way that I've found to solve this, aside from taking the machine back to Apple [which, because it's Oscars season, is impossible at this time] is to buy a cheap Firewire card and use that until you can get the machine properly serviced. I bought a $19.99 FW card from Circuit City this weekend and have no problems thus far.

I'd rather not give up the PCI slot, but at this time -- I had no other option..

I'll add to this thread! I'm having the same problem, "no information found" on the firewire bus in the Apple System Profiler.

G5, dual 2ghz Powermac, 4.5mb ram, 10.3.7

For me the issue is fw800 devices. Nothing on fw400 seems to be an issue. But if I put more than two fw800 devices on line then the issues start.

For fw800 I have a Granite Digital 2-bay hot swap box and I have two LaCie Big Disk Extremes (500gb each). It doesn't matter if I run the devices through a powered hub or daisy-chain them. If I go over two then "no info...." in the sys. prof. and the fw connection becomes iffy and erratic.

I've run tech tools, reset the pram and smu, verify and repair permissions, etc. I did speak with Apple for about an hour and will follow up with them when I've had a chance to run the AHT.

Again, in my case it's always a fw800 item that is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Jon Roemer

I also add to this thread! Having the same problem.

I also have a G5 2 GHz Powermac DP with 4 Gbyte RAM. 1 FW800 Orange Micro 250Gbyte drive, 2 FW800 600Gbyte FWB2ATA35D drives, 1 iSight, and an iPod dock

I had no FW problems up until friday when I installed an EyeTV 200 unit.

When I have this device connected either with or without a 12V power supply, the complete firewire interface comes to a halt, and indeed in the Apple System Profiler "no information found" is displayed.

When I disconnect the EyeTV 200 the firewire starts working on the fly, also in the Apple System Profiler everything looks to be correct.

If I take of all FW800 devices, there are no problems.

If I put on one FW800 device with a short (50cm) cable, everything works, but sometimes I get "no signal" on the EyeTV200 unit (so I suspect communication problems).

Using a 4,2 mtr FW800 cable to that drive - or daisy chaining any other FW800 drive - wil also bring the complete FW interface to a halt.

I experience no difference with using the front versus back FW400 bus.

Jackey van Melis

15 Watts is all you get form a G5 FW Port, I have big FW Problems. This may work try unplugging the Drive or Any FW device & the G5 Just leave the Keyboard Mouse & Display. For 15 min; this will a lest reset the G5's FW.
Good Luck,
Thomas
P.S. Please look at my posts & let me know what you know.
Thank you.

I have all the same devices, plus; a LaCie d2 HD & Problems as you. Look under "PowerMac G5 LaCie FW HD and Finder issues"; Lots of info about this.
Hope this helps,
Thomas

Hi Phil you say, "Seems the complete lack of power for a while reset it, where just switching it off hadn't. Odd..."

That's not odd in fact that is what often resets the FW ports, especially if she disconnected the AC power!

Shut down your Mac and disconnect your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about half an hour then reconnect and try. Also disconnect the AC power, this helps to reset the FireWire port.

Hi Thomas, you are on to a good solution, which works in many cases, but take it a step further:

Shut down your Mac and disconnect your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about half an hour then reconnect and try. Also disconnect the AC power, this helps to reset the FireWire port.

I have experienced this problem before on Mac G4 dual 1GZ.
After two motherboard replacements, the install rep saw the problem, opened the case, pressed the reset button located near the airport card slot(it's a little button, look around!)and voila! The date has to be re-set after this procedure, but thats easy to do. I have lost my firewire around three times since and it's worked every time. Hope this helps. We grokked the problem as static zapping the firewire input while working with cables.

I think that's the pmu button. G5's do not have a pmu button, they have an smu reset which is accomplished by turning off the maching and disconnecting the power cord from the G5.

I've tried that and it has not solved the problem.

Thanks,
Jon

Thanks for the info. I've more or less done this but I need to do it more methodically.

I'll try it when I get back to my G5.

Thanks,
Jon

O.K.

Installed a LaCie FireWire 800 PCI Card, and transferred all FW800 devices to this controller.

Everything runs smoothly now, I even think everything runs much faster (but this is a first subjective impression).

€70 and utilisation of one PCI-slot to fix this 😉

Now my firewire-drives even shut down when I switch off the computer.

but apart from this solution, nothing else? all my firewire devices disappeared all of a sudden, i tried resetting the fw ports (unplugging everything for a while and all...), worked for a while for the front firewire port where my ipod is connected, but no luck for the back ports....any chance i can solve this without buying anything else?

thanks for your help...

vince

Got to ad my experience with my brand new Dual 2,5GHZ

In Opposite to all other mentioned Cases here, my Problem is that both FW400 Ports stop working only the FW800 port is still working.

observations made:
-Can connect any device to the FW800 port via FW400 adapter.
-iPod connected to the front FW Bus start charging but won't mount.
-No Information visible in System profiler (all but FW800 info)
-No difference if only the FW 400 port is used (Nothing connected to FW800 port)
-FW400 will not connect to any device. (main use for FW800 is a Audio Device, which is also compatible to FW400 but won't work to)

question:
like somewhere mentioned, is the FW800 and FW 400 from the same controller?

I know what your problem is. How? Why? It happened to me.

I purchased a 1.8 the October the G5's came out. A month later my drives started to dismount by themselves. It caused all sorts or problems. Disk Warrior saved my data like a champ. The drives worked perfectly with my older G4. Everything that was firewire didn't work. From my 2G ipod to my iSite to my external powered firewire drives.

It took Apple tech support transferring my case to the engineers to get this thing solved. AFTER MORE THAN 6 MONTHS of tech support phone calls, they made the decision of replacing my system. However Apple did try swapping out my power supply (nothing), and tried swapping out the logic board (nothing).

In the end Apple swapped out my system. However they said they were able to reproduce the problem. If I were you I would contact apple and see if you could get your system swapped out. They hooked me up with a dual 2.0 because the dual 1.8 only went to 4 gigs in RAM. My 1.8 went up to 8 gigs of RAM.

let me know if you/apple tech support needs more info... perhaps I'll give you my case number. It's rather lengthy but detailed.

Good luck