My powerMac G5 is having issues, which after much troubleshooting, I have narrowed down to a Firewire PCI card.
Short of replacing the card, is there anything else that I can do?
Any and all advice appreciated!
powerMac g5, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Apple TV, Airport Extreme, iPhone 4, iPad, Macbook Pro
Hi David, did it require special drivers in the first place?
What have you done to narrow it down to the card & not some Firewire device connected to it?
Any clues if you open Console and watch for clues when you have FW problems?
Hi BD,
Thanks for your post -- Answers below:
"did it require special drivers in the first place?"
I don't recall, but I do not believe that I installed drivers when adding the card --- pretty much plug and play.
"What have you done to narrow it down to the card & not some Firewire device connected to it?"
I have two external hard drives that are connected to the card. When the drives are connected to the card, I have sleep and shut down issues, and am unable to eject the disks. When connected to the Firewire port on the front of the PowerMac, everything works fine.
"Any clues if you open Console and watch for clues when you have FW problems?"
I have monitored Console, but unsure of what I should see that would indicate an issue -- your thoughts?
Did it sleep/wake before with FW devices plugged into this card?
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problems in Safe Mode...
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive
Reboot, test again.
When the drives are connected to the card, I have sleep and shut down issues,
What is the make/model of the graphics card?
There are known sleep issues with certain cards .
Are the external drives bus powered, or do they have power supplies?
BDAqua: I installed the FW PCI card at least 2-3 years ago. The computer did not experience sleep/wake issues until very recently.
I will try the Safe Boot sequence as suggested. I am assuming that will take me to "test for problems" sequence that will run a diagnotics program on the entire system?
Thanks for your help.
Japamac: My video card is a GeForce FX 5200. The only time that I experience the sleep and shut down issues is when the external drives are connected to the PCI Firewire card. My sense is that the issue is related to the PCI card, not the video card. Is there something else there that I am not thinking about?
The external drives have dedicated power supplies.
Thanks for your help.
Not a sequence, but test if it sleeps/wakes in Safe Mode.
Do'oH!!!!
I'm sorry!
I didn't mean to say "graphics" card. I meant to ask what the make of the FW PCI card is.... 😊
There are FW PCI cards that have known issues.
You say "lately"with regard to issues. What changed? External drive make? OS update?
FW cards are sometimes the same as USB cards with regard to mass storage devices. If a drive is mounted and active, when the machine sleeps, it sleeps too. However, when the machine awakens, or is commanded to wake, rather, the system remembers the previous drive state.
Problem is, that just before the PCI bus is powered up, the system stalls looking for the drives that were previously there.
Can't find them and won't, simply due to power on sequencing.
Since your card hasn't given you issues until recently, I would try pulling the card, cleaning the gold contacts with an eraser, and reinstalling the card.
Compatible FW cards typically have alternate power provisions, so it coud just be a card seating issue.
No resolution on this issue. I continue to have shut-down issues whenever I have an external harddrive connected to the system. Problems persist as I swap ports and drives in attempt to isolate which device is causing the issue.
I am consistently receiving the message "Logout has timed out because the application [FILL IN NAME OF ANY APPPLICATION] failed to quit".
Application can be any app that was active at some point in the session before I attempted logoff, even if I manually quit the app prior to logoff.
In looking through the other boards, I see postings on the issue from users who are on other Apple products. So I am wondering if this is an OS problem, and not a hardware issue.
Thanks to all for the help.
throw the card out buy a new one, they are small change items, its worth the cost just to test
Firewire cards are disposable items and are the weak link in the chain.
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