camera shuts down USB ports...

[Simon Gregory]

Hi,

My dad has a 1.6 G5 iMac and a new Pentax *istD digital SLR camera.

When he plugs in the camera he gets an eror message saying the USB device is drawing too much power, and the USB port will be shut down. Also, the mouse loses power when the camera is plugged in. This happens with the USb ports on the keyboard, also the ones on the computer. The camera appears to have the correct transfer setting on the menu.

iPhoto doesn't recognise the camera, and there is no disk icon on screen.

He has had 2 previous digital cameras which worked fine

He has to restart the computer to get the usb port back. and has tried this with and without the camera plugged into AC power with supplied adaptor.

The local Mac tech syas it could be a Logic board problem, but this has already been replaced once. Does anyone else have an opinion on this problem??

Thanks...

 

[nagromme]

Can you try it on another computer? Maybe another iMac at a store? Or do you have access to an powered USB hub to try?

This does sound odd and maybe hardware-related. (Meaning maybe the Mac, maybe the camera?)

Insufficient power for certain devices is expected with a keyboard USB port, but not the built-in ones.

If you do have a bad motherboard, using a powered (plugs into wall power) hub could dodge the issue possibly.

 

[jwdawso]

need power adapter

The camera needs too much power. Are you plugging in directly to the iMac, or to the keyboard? Make sure it's directly plugged into the iMac. If that doesn't work, plug it in to a power adapter, or plug it in to a powered usb hub, or get a media card reader and use that instead. This is not unusual.