[TankCdr]

Looking for help. Suddenly the Firewire 400 port on my 6 week old PowerBook G4 is acting up. Here are the relevant facts:

I normally connect as follows: PowerBook FW400 port to BookEndz Dock then to Apple 20in Cinema Display. To the cinema display, I attach an exteranl 80GB drive and either my iSight or my iPod synch/charging cable (as the situation warrants).
This configuration has worked fine up until this weekend.
As of today the iSight and external drive mount and are usable, but if I plug in my iPod it isn't recognized by iTunes and doesn't mount but still charges.
All devices are visible to Apple System Profiler.
If I daisy chain another unpowered HD to the external, it doesn't power up or mount and isn't visible to ASP.
If I undock my PowerBook and connect the iPod directly it isn't recognized either.
If I plug an unpowered external FireLite drive directly into my PowerBook, it doesn't mount.
I have rest my iPod and it is working fine.
I have already searched Apple's support pages and tried the procedures they recommend.
I suspect there is something wrong with my FW400 port. Before I take my beloved PowerBook in for a technician to look a itt, I figured I'd ask the community for advice/suggestions.

TIA

[Ruahrc]

This is a long shot- but did you by chance update your iPod recently, using the newly released iPod updater? And have you reset your computer try to remedy the problem?

A similar thing happened to me after I updated my 2G iPod with the updater. It would not mount initially- but after I rebooted my PB it worked just fine.

Sorry if you have tried these things already- as they are most likely the first things you tried

Ruahrc

[TankCdr]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've restarted my PowerBook a few times and I know all my software is up-to-date.

[JKT]

Have you reset your Power Management Unit (PMU)? If not, search the Apple.com knowledge base for the how to with your specific model mac.

[John123]

Originally posted by TankCdr:
Looking for help. Suddenly the Firewire 400 port on my 6 week old PowerBook G4 is acting up. Here are the relevant facts:

I normally connect as follows: PowerBook FW400 port to BookEndz Dock then to Apple 20in Cinema Display. To the cinema display, I attach an exteranl 80GB drive and either my iSight or my iPod synch/charging cable (as the situation warrants).
This configuration has worked fine up until this weekend.
As of today the iSight and external drive mount and are usable, but if I plug in my iPod it isn't recognized by iTunes and doesn't mount but still charges.
All devices are visible to Apple System Profiler.
If I daisy chain another unpowered HD to the external, it doesn't power up or mount and isn't visible to ASP.
If I undock my PowerBook and connect the iPod directly it isn't recognized either.
If I plug an unpowered external FireLite drive directly into my PowerBook, it doesn't mount.
I have rest my iPod and it is working fine.
I have already searched Apple's support pages and tried the procedures they recommend.
I suspect there is something wrong with my FW400 port. Before I take my beloved PowerBook in for a technician to look a itt, I figured I'd ask the community for advice/suggestions.

TIA

I posted a thread about this a week and a half ago. Same problem. Things were great at first, and then they tanked a couple weeks later -- specifically with regard to mounting/seeing the iPod even though the iPod would charge.

Let me know what you find out, because it's ticking me off too.

[TankCdr]

Update; reset the PMU and ran the Apple Hardware Test. The test reported all was well, but I still can mount my iPod! Now, I need to find my USB 2 synch cable....

[TankCdr]

No luck so far. Found several discussions on the Apple Powerbook support discussion pages. For example:

Apple Support Discussion

They offer a variety of suggestions none of which have worked for me. Several people with similar issues claim Apple tech support has told them a fix will be out soon through Software Update. I'm calling Apple tomorrow on this. Not being able to using Firewire is unacceptable.

VJT