FireWire Woes

[AphoticD]

Earlier this week I was testing one of my DLSD PBG4 15” units and found the FireWire port was not recognizing my 3rd gen iPod.

I proceeded to then power up an original series PB G4 12” 867MHz and dropped it into FW TDM to see if the PB 12” drives would appear on the desktop of the DLSD... no luck, so I continued onto the next unit (victim) at hand; an SLSD 1.67GHz PB G4 15” and repeated the process. No sign of the drives mounting on the DLSD...

“Third time lucky” I thought, so I powered up one of my Mercury 1st gen Titanium G4s, dropped into TDM and hooked them together. Still nothing!

Still doubting the issue, I tried a different known good FW cable, still nothing.

I then thought to check that the 12”, SLSD and Mercury can still see each other over FireWire. After trying every combination, I had no signs of any FW communication...

Power is being supplied from FW on each Mac as the iPod 3rd gen shows that it is charging ok.. but no evidence of data over the ‘wire. Dropping into OF at boot shows nothing on ‘dev fw ls’ while the iPod is connected and in “Disk Mode”.

I noticed an odd smell coming from the SLSD when I realized that the DLSD had fried FW on 3 of my Macs!

Taking the easiest approach first, I dismantled the Mercury and could see two small burnt out diodes near the FW port.

I pulled out another Mercury unit to validate the markings on the damaged diodes and went hunting across all my odd logic boards to salvage from and came up with no matches.

The 2 diodes appear to be very much specific to this model Titanium, I went over all other model logic boards with an LED light and a magnifying glass and couldn’t find any matching diodes to poach. So now I am on the hunt for these particular parts.

Next up, I will dismantle the SLSD as I expect to see the damage quite visibly (based on the smell emissions). Fortunately I have a few non-booting boards for this series, which I should be able to poach from if the burn out is obvious enough to spot.

The one I am really not looking forward to is the PB 12” 867. They are notoriously difficult to work on. But I shall persevere!

Let this be a lesson for me; FireWire is a high enough voltage to fry another Mac: Proceed with caution and don’t expect the old Macs will be fine with anything I throw at them!

 

[DearthnVader]

Apple built in a booby trap, and I guess, in this case, you was the booby. ?

 

[TheMrKocour]

Same thing happened to me. I wanted to transfer some games from my Pismo to Quicksilver. When i connected them together i saw smoke from side of my Pismo! Pismo survived and runs ok, but FM is dead

 

[ervus]

Sorry to hear about the problems. I hope the repair is easy.

I have an OWC external firewire drive that I used mostly on a powerbook. One day I plugged it into an AGP tower and some magic smoke came out. OWC was no help so I opened it up and found the voltage converter chip was toast. I looked up the part number and it's rated for 24v. The AGP has 28v on the firewire ports (which is within spec). I called up OWC again and explained what I found. Again, they were less than useless. I guess I am the only one this ever happened to. Anyway, at least the converter failed open circuit so fixed it myself and used a 36v rated part. It came back to life and has worked since. Hopefully the diodes opened up like fuses and your firewire chips didn't see 20+ volts...

 

[svanstrom]

Let this be a lesson for me; FireWire is a high enough voltage to fry another Mac: Proceed with caution and don’t expect the old Macs will be fine with anything I throw at them!

My Haha-emoticon reaction was of course laughing with you; not me laughing at the whole "oh, I better try this repeatedly"-aspect of your sad day.

Also, I absolutely would have done the same. ?

 

[DearthnVader]

Same thing happened to me. I wanted to transfer some games from my Pismo to Quicksilver. When i connected them together i saw smoke from side of my Pismo! Pismo survived and runs ok, but FM is dead

FM?

Firewire Module?

Died on the Pismo or the Quicksilver?

 

[AphoticD]

More fun times... I put all of that aside and began working on another of my SLSD 15" PBG4's. I dropped into FW TDM and connected it to my other working Mercury TiBook. Now, these two Macs were completely separate from the earlier lot - I had not previously connected them over Firewire so I had no qualms about doing so...

The smell of fried electronics came out of the SLSD.

I took out my workhorse PBG4 SLSD 15" which I've had since new in 2004 and thought to myself "OK, if this burns out then it must be the cable."

It was the cable.

It is now cut in half and in the trash.

I opened up this Mercury expecting to see the same burnt out components found in the earlier unit, but everything looked fine, so now I'm not sure where to begin looking for the fix. Unless the same two diodes burnt without visible evidence...

Maybe the DLSD from the beginning of the saga burnt out something inside the cable, or maybe it was sheer coincidence, but in all I managed to burn out the FireWire capabilities of 6 of my old Macs this week.

 

[AphoticD]

Finally, just to confirm I am not going crazy here.. I found two totally known-to-work PowerBook G4 15" in my collection and connected them with a different FW cable, put one in TDM and booted the other into OF. `dev fw ls` showed the attached disk volumes as expected.

So, speaking of Mercury; We are at the tail-end of the planet Mercury being in retrograde and technology failure is known to be a side affect of such planetary shifts. Maybe I could have planned my testing and repairs around the stars better...

 

[Amethyst1]

It was the cable.

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear about your trouble. Would have driven me absolutely mad. May that blasted cable burn in hell so to speak.

 

[AphoticD]

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear about your trouble. Would have driven me absolutely mad. May that blasted cable burn in hell so to speak.

I am trying hard to remain emotionally detached

 

[DearthnVader]

More fun times... I put all of that aside and began working on another of my SLSD 15" PBG4's. I dropped into FW TDM and connected it to my other working Mercury TiBook. Now, these two Macs were completely separate from the earlier lot - I had not previously connected them over Firewire so I had no qualms about doing so...

The smell of fried electronics came out of the SLSD.

I took out my workhorse PBG4 SLSD 15" which I've had since new in 2004 and thought to myself "OK, if this burns out then it must be the cable."

It was the cable.

It is now cut in half and in the trash.

I opened up this Mercury expecting to see the same burnt out components found in the earlier unit, but everything looked fine, so now I'm not sure where to begin looking for the fix. Unless the same two diodes burnt without visible evidence...

Maybe the DLSD from the beginning of the saga burnt out something inside the cable, or maybe it was sheer coincidence, but in all I managed to burn out the FireWire capabilities of 6 of my old Macs this week.

You're just a glutton for punishment today.

Maybe go out, or back to bed, but don't do anything else with FW, you've had enough "fires" already.

 

[svanstrom]

Speaking of Mercury; We are at the tail-end of the planet Mercury being in retrograde and technology failure is known to be a side affect of such planetary shifts.

As soon as I start to hear explanations about how their asparagus was in the aquarium etc I stop feeling sorry for people. ?

 

[AphoticD]

You're just a glutton for punishment today.

Maybe go out, or back to bed, but don't do anything else with FW, you've had enough "fires" already.

Yep. Tools down. Better go play outside today.

As soon as I start to hear explanations about how their asparagus was in the aquarium etc I stop feeling sorry for people. ?

The universe works in mysterious ways...

Maybe my lesson here is patience. More patience. To not get frustrated when things don’t work out. Gotta go with the flow!

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

Now I understand a little more, why it was called "FIRE"-Wire.

 

[philgxxd]

That sucks BIG time...

But i think i have a solution to prevent something like that.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Yep. Tools down. Better go play outside today.



The universe works in mysterious ways...

Maybe my lesson here is patience. More patience. To not get frustrated when things don’t work out. Gotta go with the flow!

Or like everyone else, you just expect FW to work as it should. I think most everyone would have done something similar. Maybe it's worth buying one of these?

Intellinet, 5-in-1 RJ45, BNC, RJ11/RJ12, USB and FireWire Cable Tester, TS-I094 | eBay

$30.00 but you could run through FW cables to ensure they are ok. I have alot of them and this thread has got me thinking differently about it more as a investment as preventive maintenance. Having to pull 6 portables apart to get at and replace teeny tiny componentry and all the time it will take makes 30 smackers not seem like so much.

 

[AphoticD]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Yes, I should buy some new cables and adapters to avoid such things in future!

I think that cable I had served me well for nearly 20 years. Until it one day decided to fry my Macs

Here are some photos of the damage on the mercury board, for the curious;


1. In the center here, the 7z*F and 8YY diodes went pop.


2. And from another angle.


3. The flash shows the damage a little clearer here.


4. ...


5. This is the same array of diodes (upside down) from my other Mercury (prior to the damage done to that unit)

I notice the marking aren't exactly a match. @LightBulbFun would you have a schematic for the 400MHz Merc? I might be able to drop in something similar from another logic board.

Some spare parts boards from around this era which I went hunting on are;
1. 550MHz Titanium Onyx
2. 1GHz Titanium
3. iBook G3 600MHz
4. iBook G3 700MHz
5. PowerBook G4 12" 1GHz

I can't find any exact matches, but there are some similar like 8HY or 8YC.

 

[Raging Dufus]

I think that cable I had served me well for nearly 20 years. Until it one day decided to fry my Macs

That's...frightening. One would not expect a simple cable to degrade like that! Great, now I have trust issues.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I notice the marking aren't exactly a match. @LightBulbFun would you have a schematic for the 400MHz Merc? I might be able to drop in something similar from another logic board.

sadly I dont have anything that old

but if its any help on the SOT23 devices that have let out the magic smoke

the 8Y device is an MMBZ5248 which is an 18V Zener diode

the PXJ marked SOT23 device is some sort of voltage regulator I think

and the device marked 5Dp is a BC807 switching transistor

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

View attachment 1732324

I wish I could use my DVD burner with THIS... (burner has only FW port, no extra power. That was the case, why I was hunting for such thing )