firewire ports not working

Hi, my G5 tower (dual 1.8 Ghz) doesn't recognize my Canon GL2 anymore. I tried a few firewire cables and none of them work (they used to). So I think its a problem with my firewire ports. I called my apple retailer and the guy said I should buy a Allegro FW800+Firewire 400 PCI adaptor card. It's about $140 so wondering if it's worth the money or will end up not working either before I invest.

Any help appreciated,
thanks,
doug.

Before spending your money try Repair Permission from Disk Utility.

Then have a look at this if no joy:-

What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire or USB device

Keep us posted?

douggie77 said:

Hi, my G5 tower (dual 1.8 Ghz) doesn't recognize my Canon GL2 anymore. I tried a few firewire cables and none of them work (they used to). So I think its a problem with my firewire ports. I called my apple retailer and the guy said I should buy a Allegro FW800+Firewire 400 PCI adaptor card. It's about $140 so wondering if it's worth the money or will end up not working either before I invest.

Any help appreciated,
thanks,
doug.

Click to expand...

I had a 1.8 G5 in the past that had issues with fire wire going out on a regular basis especially in the back, not sure if this a common problem with this model or not. So what I found to work many moons ago was an open firmware command.
Shut the Mac down
Re-start holding the O,F, option, and command keys until a white screen is reached, this will be the open firmware screen. You will be prompted to release keys at this point.
Type in the command line, reset-nvram. Press enter, next command line type in, reset-all and the computer will re-boot. This should repair the ports until something causes them to go out again. I found the front port to be the most reliable. So hope this will help. Regards

Thanks a lot guys, I'll try those fixes. I'm now worried that it's actually my camera port not my mac. Another camera I was using (Sony HDR-FX7) is not responding when hooked up via firewire to my friend's computers. This happened after I tried to import it onto my mac into FCP. Might be wrong thread but any idea how importing into FCP can damage the camera ports? I've done it hundreds of times before and no problem. First time I used her camera though, it was previously only with Canon GL2.

Thanks again.