Soldering on a FireWire port to 350Mhz iMac

[retta283]

Blueberry flavored iMac. Wondering if the board on the 350MHz has a spot to solder a FireWire 400 port to in the same place as on the higher end DV iMacs. I can't find clear enough pictures online to tell whether there's a spot to solder to or not. Case wise I can cut out the port pretty precisely, so that's not an issue. If anyone has schematics for the two models to compare and find out if I can solder on a FireWire port I'd appreciate it. I will update this thread if I find any info or go through with it myself. My iMac's casing is quite fragile, so I figure I'm gonna do a grand opening and hit everything I can think of in one go to avoid breaking the case in future...

 

[philgxxd]

I had this model but gave it away to @G4fanboy. Maybe he can chime in and take a look if its only the port whats missing or have the circuitry missing on the logicboard.
My 400Mhz DV from 1999 has actually a piggybacked firewire card on the logicboard maybe yours is the same and you can track it down.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I too have a 350Mhz Blueberry iMac G3 and the possibility of a FireWire retrofit is very interesting. I'd wager that the circuitry is missing because Tiger officially refuses to install on this machine due to the absence of FireWire but I'd welcome clarification - especially if it demonstrates otherwise.

My 400Mhz DV from 1999 has actually a piggybacked firewire card on the logicboard maybe yours is the same and you can track it down.

Can you elaborate about this please? I'd really like to know more.

 

[philgxxd]

Of course. I wrote about it in the Collectors section of the forum.
Thread 'iMac G3 DV 400Mhz from 1999 FIREWIRE doesn't work' https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-g3-dv-400mhz-from-1999-firewire-doesnt-work.2183159/

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thanks!