No Firewire in G5 iMac

[colinet]

I have a friend with a G5 iMac (pre iSight model) and the firewire appears to have died. He has never used it and doesn;t nee dit, but the computer now takes forever to start up and run various programs. I assume the hardware chesk is looking, looking, looking for firewire. I went round with all my wonderful repairs gadgets (Techtool Protege, Techtool Protogo) which of course all connet via the firewire port. This is how I found out it was stuffed.

It there any way to bypass the firewire alltogther? I assume to repair it would mean replacing the whole logic board in which case he'll just buy a new machine. They only really use this machine for email, a few letters and photos.

Anyone know if and where I can get the Apple hardware test for a G5iMac?

 

[mad jew]

Your friend should have the Apple Hardware Test as either a separate CD or as part of the restore DVD in which case you boot from it holding D.

 

[colinet]

Got the disc - run the hardware test which says everything is fine because as far as it's concerned there is NO Firewire!!

 

[mad jew]

Bitch! Okay, well try resetting the SMU. This resets some of the parameters associated with the optical drive, so this may help. It's certainly worth a try.

 

[colinet]

Tried that - no luck I'm afraid. I imagine the firewire bit on the logic board is probably no more than a single chip - wonder if I could get one of them anywhre.

Is it possible lightning could have done this? My friends get a lot of storms and have been zapped once before even though I made them get a Belkin lifetime warranty protector board (which they're had relaced once!)

 

[2ndPath]

I had a similar problem on a Powerbook G4. The software didn't report the existence of a firewire port any longer but didn't report any errors.

The reason was a broken chip on the logic board. I found a couple of pages on the web addressing exactly this problem (although on an iBook) so apparently this was a design weakness of the board. Later models supposedly had this fixed. However, I experience a similar problem on one of the firewire ports of a Powermac G5 later on. So they might still be prone to these problems.

By the way, I fixed the problem of my Powerbook by replacing the broken chip on the logic board. The chip was about $3 but the soldering work is a bit more complicated.

 

[colinet]

By the way, I fixed the problem of my Powerbook by replacing the broken chip on the logic board. The chip was about $3 but the soldering work is a bit more complicated.

This sounds more like it. Can you tell me where you got the chip? I imagine I can trace the chip by following the path back from the firewire sockets (or am I being simplistic here?) I'm rubbish at soldering, but I know an engineer who could do it. Where did you find out the details of what chip you needed? This is one of the early flat panel G5 iMacs (current degin not the table lamp) when airport/bluetooth were pay for extras.

 

[mkaake]

Same thing happened to my eMac about a year ago. After getting over the initial thought of "yay! I have an excuse to buy a new mac!", I searched the web, found others who had the same issue, and unplugged my mac for about 3 hours.

When I plugged it back in, Firewire worked just fine, and has, for the last year.

 

[2ndPath]

This sounds more like it. Can you tell me where you got the chip? I imagine I can trace the chip by following the path back from the firewire sockets (or am I being simplistic here?) I'm rubbish at soldering, but I know an engineer who could do it. Where did you find out the details of what chip you needed? This is one of the early flat panel G5 iMacs (current degin not the table lamp) when airport/bluetooth were pay for extras.

I think the chip was called TSB41AB1 and I think I ordered it at digikey.com. However, your machine is much newer than my Powerbook so they probably used other chips. I tried to find the web site explaining everything but I didn't find it.

 

[colinet]

Thanks for everyone's help. I tried everyone's suggestions and know beyond doubt that the Firewire is definitely totally dead so I have solved the problem like a politician would by pretending the computer does not have and never has had firewire and in fact there is no such thing as firewire.

I've installed the latest version of everything they had on their machine (10.4.8 over 10.3 etc) and it's all working nice and smoothly for all their email, internet and iPhoto needs.

I have also upgraded the machine with a Special Hi-Tech Bandaid stuck over the 2 firewire sockets with NO! written on it in black marker (if you plug anything into either FW port the entire machine locks up solid)