Mac Forum / General / Hardware / July 2004

Sounds like a disconnected or broken wire. I use the front port on my
2x1.8 maybe twice a week and haven't had any issues.

G

I have seen issues on the PC side of things with front firewire ports
(really, with ANY non-PCI based firewire).  What happens is although the
port is wired properly, there is sometimes not enough power being supplied.
So anything that does not supply its own power doesn't get enough to boot.
I don't see how this would affect something like another Mac in disk mode.

First I would open the case and check the wiring.  You might not be able to
see where it connects to the front port without majorly taking the case
apart, but you should see where it connects to the motherboard.  Look for
reddish connector sitting on a 9-pin header.  Just make sure it's seated
firmly.

However, since you say it's more than one computer, maybe Apple flubbed and
either the BIOS is faulty or there's a hardware problem.  Either way, with a
new machine like that I'd complain directly to Apple.

This is a bit further afield but I am having trouble with a new G4 and
my firewire ports.  I am using an OWC Neptune firewire drive and an
iSight.  They don't play nice together.  When I'm on the camera and I
try to access the drive, the camera drops off of iSight.  I have to
disconnect and reconnect the camera to get the iSight to work again.  I
also had trouble performing a large copy from the firewire drive to the
internal drive with the camera connected.  I twice tried to use Disk
Utility to copy the firewire drive but it pooped out halfway through the
copy.  Then I disconnected the iSight and was able to copy without a
problem.  So if you might try plugging in only one firewire device at a
time.