FireWire on iBook G3 Dual USB no longer working.

[TheShortTimer]

Just a few hours ago, the FW port on my 10.4.11 running iBook G3 apparently died. My external drives (FAT 32 and NTFS) that previously worked fine via FireWire no longer mount but they work fine with the USB ports. As an additional measure, I've tested the external drives with my other Macs and they mount ok with FireWire.

To troubleshoot, I booted the Tiger installer from USB and ran Disk Utility from there to check if the drives might mount, as this would point towards a corruption on the installation on the HDD. I experienced exactly the same problem. I have also tried resetting the SMC, PMU and PRAM but iBook is still unable to detect and mount the external drives via FireWire. However, the iBook's HD does mount on my MacBook 5,2 with Target Disk Mode but it crashes Finder.

I'm suspecting that the FW bus has developed some kind of fault that's made it unusable or is there some kind of fix that I've overlooked?

 

[1042686]

First thing I’d look at are the solder joints connecting the FW port to the logic board. After decades of inserting & removing FW cables, a portion of them may have loosened from the logic board.

This happened to a usb1,1 port on an old p3 500mhz laptop I had. Cleaning out & resoldering the port with some fresh solder fixed the connectivity issue.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thanks, I'll almost certainly have to enlist an engineer to help me with that because soldering is not my strong point.

If I'm going to dismantle the laptop to check for solder problems, I might as well replace the 10GB HDD too.

Attempting to use FW triggered this Kernel Panic. Perhaps it might shed some light on the issue.

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x400 - Inst access DAR=0x00000000E0006000 PC=0x0000000000000000

Latest crash info for cpu 0:

Exception state (sv=0x26C6B000)

PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x40009030; DAR=0xE0006000; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x0076FE6C; R1=0x0F723AE0; XCP=0x00000010 (0x400 - Inst access)

Backtrace:

0x022AB700 0x00770CE8 0x007702B0 0x0053BBC0 0x00773738 0x002C12A0

0x002C1068 0x002C1AD0 0x002C20DC 0x000A9714

Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIBlockCommandsDevice(1.4.9)@0x76d000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.4.9)@0x538000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(1.5)@0x43d000

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.4.9)@0x538000

Proceeding back via exception chain:

Exception state (sv=0x26C6B000)

previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

Exception state (sv=0x2AE34000)

PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)



Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xFFFF0004): 0x400 - Inst access

Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:

Backtrace:

0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x000A8204 0x000ABB80

Proceeding back via exception chain:

Exception state (sv=0x26C6B000)

PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x40009030; DAR=0xE0006000; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x0076FE6C; R1=0x0F723AE0; XCP=0x00000010 (0x400 - Inst access)

Backtrace:

0x022AB700 0x00770CE8 0x007702B0 0x0053BBC0 0x00773738 0x002C12A0

0x002C1068 0x002C1AD0 0x002C20DC 0x000A9714

Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIBlockCommandsDevice(1.4.9)@0x76d000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.4.9)@0x538000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(1.5)@0x43d000

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.4.9)@0x538000

Exception state (sv=0x2AE34000)

PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)



Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELE@Model: PowerBook4,1, BootROM 4.2.0f4, 1 processors, PowerPC 750 (33.11), 500 MHz, 640 MB

Graphics: ATY,RageM3, ATY,RageM3, AGP, 8 MB

Memory Module: DIMM0/BUILT-IN, 128 MB, built-in, built-in

Memory Module: DIMM1/J12, 512 MB, SDRAM, PC133-333

AirPort: AirPort, 9.52

Modem: MiniSpring-DCP, Euro, V.90, 1.0F, APPLE VERSION 0010DCP, 6/10/2001

Parallel ATA Device: IBM-DJSA-210, 9.37 GB

Parallel ATA Device: SONY CD-RW CRX700E