iMac firewire problem

For as long as I remember, my iMac DVSE (500 ghz, Panther, 640 meg) has refused anything through the Firewire ports.The other day I swapped the HD (30 meg) for an 80 meg one. On the off chance I plugged in my son's iMac and it worked! Then tried a CD burner - it worked! 10 minutes later, Firewire was a dead as it was before. What is happening please? (And is there a cost-effective way of fixing it?) Thanks! TONY

Tony3ts said:

For as long as I remember, my iMac DVSE (500 ghz, Panther, 640 meg) has refused anything through the Firewire ports.The other day I swapped the HD (30 meg) for an 80 meg one. On the off chance I plugged in my son's iMac and it worked! Then tried a CD burner - it worked! 10 minutes later, Firewire was a dead as it was before. What is happening please? (And is there a cost-effective way of fixing it?) Thanks! TONY

Click to expand...

I ran across a reference that dead firewire ports are a common problem on the cube model. The listed cure was to use the programmer's reset. The instructions are: "Shut down the computer, hold down the programmer reset, and press the power button. If you've done things correctly the power light will flicker." The writer had no idea why the FW ports went out or why the reset brought them back.

I have no idea if this will do it for your iMac but you may want to try it.
Badger

Tony3ts said:

For as long as I remember, my iMac DVSE (500 ghz, Panther, 640 meg) has refused anything through the Firewire ports.The other day I swapped the HD (30 meg) for an 80 meg one. On the off chance I plugged in my son's iMac and it worked! Then tried a CD burner - it worked! 10 minutes later, Firewire was a dead as it was before. What is happening please? (And is there a cost-effective way of fixing it?) Thanks! TONY

Click to expand...

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After I wrote the reply above I found a French site that has details of why this happens and how to fix it (even a tutorial on replacing a chip if necessary). The url for the translation into English is: http://www.hardmac.com/article.php?id=16.
Good Luck,
Badger

Badger - many thanks for your tip. I did the open firmware trick and installed the LaCie burner. Amazing! It worked! Then I attached an iPod and it refused to show up on iTunes. In both cases System Profiler showed that there was a device there. So I repeated the open firmware thing. This time the music CD I put in the CD burner triggered an alert that the disk was unreadable by MacOS X (it hadn't been 5 mins earlier, it had played.)I'm really confused. There doesn't seem to be a consistent set of actions that work, or cause it to screw up. So frustrating - for about 5 minutes I thought I'd cracked it. Is pressing the programme reset button the same as doing that open firmware thing? Any assistance anyone can offer? TIA Tonyhttp://www.mac-forums.com/forums/mac_images/images/icons/icon9.gif