Not an "ordinary" Firewire/1394 problem with G4 mounting peripherals

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Paul Soderman - 16 Sep 2007 21:05 GMT

I know that Firewire can be flaky, but haven't come across this
problem before or in any search on the Web or groups. I'm hoping
someone can get me pointed in the right direction.

I have a G4 tower running 10.4.10. No problems for years. I have not
only the 2 FW ports which came with the Mac, which I understand are
attached directly to the motherboard, but also an Adaptec PCI card in
a slot, giving me another 2 ports. Anyway, I have an iPod FW cable
hooked up to the 2 Mac ports, as well as another FW cable that I
occasionally use to hook up a laptop to the Mac. The PCI card is used
for some external storage drives and trays on one cable, and the other
goes to a video converter box which is rarely used.

Recently, the Mac will not recognize an iPod hooked up via FW. I have
several iPods and know that there are not problems with those devices.
The other FW cable also will not mount anything. The iPods do get a
charge from the cable, so I know that at least the power is getting
through. I suspected that perhaps somehow the data end of the Firewire
ports could be screwed up, but I don't know if this is possible.
Further perplexing matters is that when I hook up a FW iPod cable to
the PCI card, the Mac does at first open up iTunes, in some way
"recognizing" the iPod, but then a message comes up that "An iPod has
been detected, but it could not be identified properly. Please
disconnect and reconnect the iPod, then try again". Nothing further
than this.

The external storage devices on the PCI FW ports still work and mount
just fine. I first thought that iTunes might be corrupted, so I
reinstalled; no luck. I also trashed some prefs and zapped PRAM a few
times. Finally, I reinstalled Tiger, to no avail. I also took the
power cord out of the Mac overnight, since I realize that FW can be a
bit finicky at times, but this didn't help things. The FW cables all
work OK, as I've tested them with my Powerbooks.

I'm hoping that there is some workaround for this and that perhaps
someone can offer a suggestion. Thanks much for any help!
Paul

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none - 16 Sep 2007 21:20 GMT

go back to 10.4.9, or wait until 10.4.11 (in a few weeks) or just use
USB for now. 10.4.10 changed some stuff with firewire, so while I've
never heard anyone say FireWire is flakey (but in your case with oddball
3rd party cards you might have issues outside the norm)

pull the oddball fw card, and it will probably work again.

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Paul Soderman - 16 Sep 2007 23:34 GMT

It is not the FW PCI card which gives the problems, but the original
FW ports on the G4 (the ones at the top of the back of the Mac). I'll
pull and replace the card anyway.

Also, I'll give a shot at going back to 10.4.9, but I'm not sure as to
how to go back to an earlier system; any help appreciated...

> go back to 10.4.9, or wait until 10.4.11 (in a few weeks) or just use
> USB for now. 10.4.10 changed some stuff with firewire, so while I've
> never heard anyone say FireWire is flakey (but in your case with oddball
> 3rd party cards you might have issues outside the norm)
>
> pull the oddball fw card, and it will probably work again.

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bearclaw@cruller.invalid - 18 Sep 2007 19:00 GMT

> It is not the FW PCI card which gives the problems, but the original
> FW ports on the G4 (the ones at the top of the back of the Mac). I'll
> pull and replace the card anyway.
>
> Also, I'll give a shot at going back to 10.4.9, but I'm not sure as to
> how to go back to an earlier system; any help appreciated...

You say you have several iPods. Do any of them connect to the
problematic computer? Is it just one iPod that fails? If just one, does
it connect to other computers via their FW ports?

I find myself wondering (since the other FW devices seem to load up just
fine) if the problem might be with the iPod (or whatever version of
iTunes you are using) instead of the FW ports or cables. Have you tried
a hard reboot on the iPod in question?

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Simon Slavin - 18 Sep 2007 21:04 GMT

On 16/09/2007, Paul Soderman wrote in message
<1189973133.086318.257440@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>:

> I'm hoping that there is some workaround for this and that perhaps
> someone can offer a suggestion.

You crossposted to many groups, some on which technical help is off-
charter:

comp.sys.mac.misc,
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,
comp.sys.mac.system,
comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc

If you want a reply pick the appropriate group and post just to that
group. You would help yourself if you'd read the charters for the .misc
groups, too.

Simon.

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http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / September 2007

Not an "ordinary" Firewire/1394 problem with G4 mounting peripherals