02-21-2010, 08:52 AM

Hi all, i've got a very stable powermac g4 dual 1.25 mdd..i just bought a 9pin to 6pin fw cable for use with my new MBP and since i've had bad experiences with burnt fw ports on single fw port apple notebooks, decided to test my maxtor hdd 6pin to the 9pin fw800 port on my g4..

That's when things became weird..I made all the fw connections before powering anything up, and after powering everything up found that i could not power up the g4..when i pressed the power button it just lit for a second but refused to start up..so i plugged everything out, and was able to boot the mac up..i tried to plug the 9 pin end of the cable to the power mac and the computer just powered off straight away by itself..any clues as to what is going on? I'm a little apprehensive about trying it on my new mbp now.. i've never used the fw800 port on the g4 before...thanks in advance!

02-21-2010, 10:21 AM

Sounds like its drawing too much voltage, my advice is to not use an adapter, instead, get a FW800/USB card and use that, mines from a PC and worked out of the box, sadly, most of my devices don't have FW

02-21-2010, 10:35 AM

hi thanks for the reply! What do you mean by its drawing too much voltage? Cos I only plugged the 9pin head (other ends not connected) to the fw800 port on g4 and it powered off....i've since taken the plunge and tried on my mbp..it powered up but the maxtor hdd did not get detected..its as if nothing was connected..this should mean that the cable itself is bad right? Thanks!

02-21-2010, 10:44 AM

A short perhaps?

02-21-2010, 10:52 AM

hmm it happens everything its plugged in..might be a faulty fw800 port...in any case the cable seems to be shot so i'll exchange another one or get an adaptor..thanks for the help..