[microangelito]

Hi,

My newly acquired PowerMac G3 B&W Rev 2 400Mhz won't write to my firewire laptop drive! My Powerbook G4, iBook G3, iMac, and Pismo read and write to it fine but the PowerMac G3 just reads from it and when I try to write to it it just hangs, shows a busy pointer and won't respond to anything but mouse movement although sometimes I can use the dock. It does this under both OS X 10.3.9 and OS 9.2.2!

Please help!

Thanks in Advance!

[Big Mac]

Sounds like the port's semi-dead. Have you tried using it with a different device?

[microangelito]

unfortunately apart from an ifire Griffin that I use for my Apple Pro Speakers on my Powerbook G4 which only draws power this is my only drive. Might a firmware update fix this? I also heard about resetting the firewire ports.

Thanks in advance!

[microangelito]

Another thing which may help is that I bought it after it had been stored since new till a few days ago when I bought it (10 years) as no one knew it had been stored till a clear out was carried out at the business. So it is BRAND NEW and it came in the original box with everything!

[reader50]

Does it have an optional power adapter? Sounds like it could be bus-powered, and your port isn't quite handing out enough for write purposes.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by microangelito 

unfortunately apart from an ifire Griffin that I use for my Apple Pro Speakers on my Powerbook G4 which only draws power this is my only drive. Might a firmware update fix this? I also heard about resetting the firewire ports.

You've actually got lots of FireWire drives. Just take one of the PowerBooks or iBooks and start it up while holding down the "T" key and it will become a FireWire drive for you to test your port with.

[microangelito]

So I did as you said and put my 800Mhz iBook G3 into target disk mode and plugged it into the PowerMac G3 B&W (I never thought of doing this because I wanted the drive to work with it) and I managed o copy a file to it of 51.3MB (the Quicktime 7.5 panther dmg) to it's hard drive, read it, and the copy it back to the Powermac G3 successfully!

Then I picked up the firewire laptop drive and plugged it in and tried to copy the same file over. It did the usual thing of showing the spinning wheel pointer, but this time I left it for a minute and eventually it came up with the copy window and got stuck and this point...

where it stayed for 2 minutes before eventually cashing the finder and I had to do a forced restart! Then I checked to see if it had copied on my powerbook and although it did appear it was unable to be opened!

Maybe it is a bus power thing although I don't have anything plugged in accept the keyboard, mouse and monitor and no extra PCI cards either!

All your help is greatly appreciated!

[msuper69]

From the OP's sig:

"Powerbook G4 1Ghz (TiBook), Powerbook G4 550Mhz, Powerbook G3 500Mhz Pismo, iBook G3 300Mhz Clamshell, iBook G3 800Mhz, Powermac G4 450Mhz Sawtooth, PowerMac G3 B&W Rev 2 400Mhz, iMac G3 DV Tangerine, ipod Nano 8GB 3rd Gen, various PC's, Some vintage macs."

Every Mac you list is a vintage Mac.

[CharlesS]

Yep, sounds like your FireWire port's dead.

[microangelito]

Hi,

I have found that if I plug in the drive via USB it works. So I looked on ebay and found a firewire module for the PowerMac G3 B&W which is fully working. I was just wondering if anyone has had firewire problems with this machine and replaced the module and found it to be fixed, or not?

All help is greatly appreciated!

P.S. Vintage computers are more than 10 years old and none of my listed macs listed are more than 10 years old (although I do have some). The reason I have old macs is because I still have a lot of classic OS software. I don't need more mac power I have a gaming PC for things that need power (like gaming! ).

[tooki]

Originally Posted by microangelito 

P.S. Vintage computers are more than 10 years old and none of my listed macs listed are more than 10 years old (although I do have some). The reason I have old macs is because I still have a lot of classic OS software. I don't need more mac power I have a gaming PC for things that need power (like gaming! ).

There's no industry-standard definition of "vintage", but Apple has one: computers discontinued 5–7 years ago. At 7 years, they become "obsolete". [Almost?] every one you list is vintage, and most are obsolete.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1752


I wouldn't put another cent into the B&W unless it's running a life-sustaining system. It's not worth it.

[Arty50]

Those machines had tons of Firewire problems. If I recall correctly, they were the first machines to use Firewire. The ports fried easily for some reason. It happened to a friend of mine and I recall helping him research it and finding out it was a really common problem. He had to buy a PCI card to get around it.