PCI card trouble - firewire and usb2.0 in G4
 

Hi all, well let me first say that I'm a (God no!) PC user that, through employment, is forced to troubleshoot macs. Many mac users would have PC users convinced that "troubleshooting a mac is unnecessary" - i suggest they come work with me for a week ;)
Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on my current dilemma. After searching around the web and finding nothing, I want to pick some experts' brains.
We are running a G4 tower, 800mhz, 1gb ram, standard stuff. I had previously upgraded from OS9 to OS 10.2 and performed the necessary updates etc. I plugged in a USB2.0 card to give us the ability to load USB2.0 capable external drives into the machine. It worked, first time, then never worked after the next reboot and hasn't worked since. Not really urgently needing USB2.0 on that machine we just let it slide. Recently we needed extra firewire plugs so I installed a PCI firewire card. I had read that firewire cards were a fairly standard thing and pretty much any brand would do. After installing, the card worked.... that is, until next reboot. Same as the usb2.0 card, the damn thing stopped working. I decided that I wouldn't let this beat me, so I upgrade to 10.3.3. Finder disappeared and things were messy... sooo I formatted and installed 10.4. All the updates later, still no sign of the cards wanting to work. I tried plugging them into different PCI slots but no success. I looked further into it, and found that in system profiler the cards were in there. I also tried hooking up the usb keyboard to the usb card and it works. The firewire card randomly mounted an external cdrom drive I had plugged into it, but then as quickly as it behaved, it stopped working again. So... what the heck could possibly be wrong with this system? I've also tried zapping the pram, booting up holding the option key (as was suggested in one forum), spitting at it, kicking it, giving to charity, going to confession... nothing works! It just SITS there, mocking me... HELP!

Matt... barely holding on to his sanity

try resetting the card in the PCI slot.

press the cuda button located next to the ram slots.

boot into open firmware and reset the NV-RAM (press and hold Command-Option-P-R, type "reset-nvram" and press Return. Then type "reset-all" and press Return. then type mac-boot, return key)

last option return the card for a new one.

What chipset does the FireWire card report in System Profiler?

What FireWire related messages are present in your logs after bootup? You can easily view your logs using the Console app, which is found in /Applications/Utilities.

Not all FireWire cards are created equally, some are very bad. NEC's FireWire chipset, for example, is not worth the effort you need to throw it into the trash.

Also, you should know that with any sufficiently advanced piece of gear, troubleshooting is needed. I've had to troubleshoot my toaster before. There are no magic elves that make Macs impervious to this rule.

Trevor

Tried, no luck (btw the cuda button is next to the battery)

Tried, no luck (btw when you type reset-all it actually resets the machine for you)

Doesn't make sense since I have 2 separate cards, there couldn't be something wrong with both cards.

i'll keep trying...

Doesn't say, it says the vendor id is 104c. The chip on the card is a texas instruments card... usually fairly compatible and often recommended by companies as the chipset to use over other chipsets.

Log says this:

Mac OS X Version 10.4.10 (Build 8R218)
2007-09-20 12:01:46 +1000
2007-09-20 12:01:49.575 SystemUIServer[80] lang is:en
Sep 20 12:01:50 Server mDNSResponder: NOTE: Wide-Area Service
Discovery disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay
192.231.203.132.
Sep 20 12:02:01 Server diskarbitrationd[37]: SystemUIServer [80]:19975
not responding.
Sep 20 12:03:47 Server mdimportserver[190]: -[ABAddressBook
sharedAddressBook] Can't ABACQUIRE_FILE_LOCK
Framework/AddressBook/ABAddressBook.m:2746

Only thing I can think of is the "diskarbitrationd" line...?


Though my mac using friends would like to convince me otherwise :) To be honest I would probably buy a mac for my recording studio if they weren't so darn expensive, even though i do have trouble with them at work, they are quite stable most of the time and that's definitely a good thing.

Thanks for your help (both of you) thus far... The only other thing I could think of that may be an issue is a power supply not supplying enough voltage... could this cause this type of issue?

Matt

Btw, the USB card vendor ID is 10b9 , for what it's worth...

Matt

That's right. A FireWire Vendor ID of 104c is Texas Instruments. And that should be a pretty good chipset.

Do you have a log for diskarbitrationd in your /var/log directory?

Are you running any system hacks?

Is there anything unusual about the disks connected to this computer?

Trevor

No log.

No system hacks.

Nothing unusual that I have seen. The drive isn't having issues with sectors or file table or anything...

Anything unusual about the other disks connected to this computer?

Trevor

Nope. They work on pretty much any machine they are plugged into. We're talking about a variety of external devices, some are Lacie's, one is an icecube, one is a Laser/LG dvdrom drive, have tried playing around with permissions on the drives while they were plugged into different machines and then plugging them into this one, but with no luck.

Have you run any kind of hardware utility on it like TechTool Pro.I'm just wondering if there is something wrong with the PCI ports.How many drives internally and externally are plugged in to the mac?
Stewie

As a troubleshooting test (not as a permanent solution), try disconnecting everything external from this box except an Apple-brand wired keyboard and mouse.

Then connect a single FireWire external device to the computer and test to see if it operates normally.

Trevor

Trevor, Have tried your suggestion already, the machine runs next to no software or hardware, since it's our server box we try to keep it as free from clutter as possible.

Stewiesno1, haven't tried to do that yet. Will get hold of techtool pro and let you know how I go. For the record, I have tried multiple pci ports, so if there was something wrong it would most likely be with every pci port... which doesn't sound feasible, though anything's possible so I won't rule it out.

someone... anyone...? Seems this thing may have me beat. Still haven't got hold of techtool pro, if I run that and it tells me my pci slots are stuffed then I have no idea what I'm going to do, short of replacing the whole motherboard, which is more money and time down the tube...

OK, ran Tech Tool Pro and it didn't detect any issues. I couldn't test the PCI slots specifically, just do tests across all hardware etc. Anybody have any other ideas?

Did you ever test the power supply?

No I didn't. I was reluctant to pull that power supply out. Is there any difference between a normal PC power supply and the G4 power supply? Or do I have to get a specific power supply...? We only have emacs and imacs in the office apart from 2 pcs so it makes it hard to swap bits around.

No other ideas then? Will have to chase down a power supply, if that sounds like it could be the culprit... though reluctant to spend the time and money if that's not the issue....

Couldn't it be tested with a multimeter instead of by replacement?

I suppose it could. Though I am a novice when it comes to using multimeters so wouldn't know where to start...

I don't have much experience with them myself. All I know is that you're having issues with all of your PCI slots, so the probability is low that they are the root problem. You've tried multiple cards, so again, the probability is low that they are the problem. You've done all the standard troubleshooting. (I assume there are no uninstalled firmware updates.) Checking to see if the power supply is producing and the PCI slots are receiving sufficient power is the only other thing I can think of. I don't know if there is a difference between the PS in your Mac and a comparable PC's PS.

There are differences in the PSU's between Macs and PC's.Shape is the biggest. You need the external dimensions to be the same size or smaller and mod it to fit with brackets etc if using a non standard one. The pinouts also are different. ATX have been modified to work in some Macs but from what I remember it involved some soldering.
Stewie

As to the USB card... I've never had any luck with USB 2.0 cards in Macs unless they used the NEC chipset. The NEC should work without third party drivers.