Firewire devices will not mount

[TrickeyJFru]

Hi, I have been reading through the posts and it seems many people have had similiar problems that I have ran into. I have tried some of the suggestions and was able to fix some of my trouble, but I still cannot get my firewire devices to mount. Here is the long and the short of it:

Before I upgraded to Tiger I could connect my DV camcorder and my external Western Digital HD. Since Tiger, neither will mount. My computer doesn't even seem to recognize that I have a firewire port.

So what's the deal-i-o? Am I mistakenly blaming this on Tiger? Was the timing just coincidental? In some of the threads I read, it was suggested that the problem likely lay with the port itself. If this is my problem what causes it, can I fix it, and is it costly? It sounds like one of those scary expensive repairs

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[mad jew]

Strange.

In the System Profiler, click on Network and see if FireWire is even recognised by your computer. Then, if it is, plug something into the FireWire port and see if anything changes.

 

[TrickeyJFru]

trying system profiler

Thanks for responding to my questions. I tried your suggestion, this is what it says both with and without a firewire device plugged in:

"FireWire Bus:

Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec"

 

[mad jew]

Okay, well at least the system knows you have a FireWire port. Sorry but I don't quite know where to go form there. Hopefully something will hit me soon.

 

[TrickeyJFru]

thanks for trying.

 

[mad jew]

No problems. I've been having a bit of a look around and this problem was pretty well documented for PowerBooks in 2000 but since then, FireWire's been pretty reliable.

Nevertheless, Apple has a Support Page on FireWire not working. Does any of this apply? To be honest, it doesn't look very helpful.

 

[ibjoshua]

My original white iBook 500 recently did the same thing. I tried every possible suggested solution I could find on the web, but no luck. Apparently the 'PHY' sometimes burns out on the motherboard and unless you are a solder fiend there isn't much you can do about it.

Anyway here's the different resets that can be tried:

Open Firmware
1. Shut down your computer.
2. Turn the computer back on and immediately press and hold command-option-O-F until a command line appears.
3. Type: reset-nvram and press <return>
3. Type reset-all and press <return>.

PRAM
1. Shut down your computer.
2. Turn the computer back on and immediately press and hold command-option-P-R until you hear the startup sound for the second time.

PMU (Power Management Unit)
Resetting the PMU is a machine-specific operation.
See: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

If your PHY is fried then these instructions may be of use to you:
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/16/page2

i_b_joshua

PS I used it as an excuse for a lovely new iBook G4 12" 1.33.

 

[Epicurus]

I've got a couple of LaCie FW drives and a 3G iPod all plugged into my FW port on my PB15. One of the LaCie drives (with FAT32 formatting) mounts fine every time I turn it on. The iPod works fine also, every time. The other LaCie drive, however hardly ever mounts and when it does it shows up as an unformatted 29GB drive when it actually is a 160GB drive. I've tried hooking the drive up to a PC with FW and it mounts fine and I can see all my data. The only problem is with my PB. I've tried disconnecting the other drives from the FW port but that doesn't work either. Obviously it is not a problem with my PB port (right?) since it works with the other drives. Its weird, but I've learned to live with it (for now).

 

[TrickeyJFru]

thank you

Thanks for your help. I do appreciate your checking into the matter for me. Unfortunately, all the suggestions I dared to try on my own yielded no results. Guess its off to the Genius Bar for me. I will post to let you know what they say. Possibly I should do as you suggested and use it as an excuse to get a new machine...If only I were independently wealthy...