Mac Forum / General / Hardware / August 2004

Firewire died on my Quicksilver G4 and I've been unable to restore it.

After trying everything, I gave up on the onboard ports and bought a Sonnet
Tango 2.0 PCI card.  Unbelievably, I can't see my firewire devices plugged
in through the PCI card either.

I verified the card works by dropping it into my PC; I could see my devices
connected through it there.  I've also verified that my firewire devices
still work fine by testing them on my flat panel iMac.

Specifically I have an ADS Pyro external firewire drive kit.  I cannot get
the drive to mount on the quicksilver, but it shows up just fine on the
iMac.  I also borrowed a friend's iPod, and while it got bus power from both
the onboard and Tango 2.0 firewire ports, I couldn't get data communication
through either.  Just like the ADS Pyro, the iPod's HD wouldn't mount on the
quicksilver but when I plugged it into the iMac it launched iTunes and
mounted the iPod volume normally.

I've done just about everything to try to restore functionality of the
quicksilver's onboard firewire ports.  *My guess is perhaps I haven't yet
done things in the proper magical order.*

I've zapped the pram, done an open firmware reset, hit the CUDA button on
the board by the CMOS battery, and repaired permission.  I've also tried
unplugging the power cord for 15 + minutes as was mentioned in an apple
knowledge base article.

I booted from the Hardware Test CD that came with the Quicksilver, and for
whatever it's worth, the extended test passed without any errors.  I've also
eliminated my hard drive and installation of 10.3.5 as a variable by booting
from the 10.3 install CD, and running the disk utility from there.  Booted
from that CD, the iMac sees the external firewire HD and the Quicksilver
does not.

So from what I've done thus far, I feel I've proved:

1) The fuse for my firewire ports has not blown (I get bus power to the
iPod)

2) The quicksilver's problem is lower level than the OS (I couldn't see my
firewire HD booted from the 10.3 CD either)

Though I've read a ton of reports about sleep mode conflicts with USB and
Firewire PCI cards, I haven't seen any reports of the firewire communication
not working at all!

To test if the card was functioning at all in the quicksilver, I tried
plugging a memory card reader into the Tango's USB half.  It mounted the
memory card as a volume properly, so the USB works, but when I walked away
and the system went to sleep, it wouldn't wake up.  So the sleep mode
conflict from leaving that device attached happened as expected from the
reports I read.

I had said the heck with my onboard firewire when I bought the Sonnet Tango
2.0, but whatever low-level plague has beset my Quicksilver, apparently isn't
letting me communicate with my firewire devices through the Tango 2.0
either.  So now I'm guessing the onboard ports can probably be re-enabled
with the proper magic recipe.  Any advice from gurus and people with
firewire revival success stories would be MUCH appreciated!

Hupjack