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[refinery]

hi everyone,

having a bit of a weird problem here that i'm getting stumped with. I have a beige g3 minitower which ive been trying to get back to life... had this thing since 2001. Currently, everything is working fine except firewire and usb cards. Ive also got two motherboards, and the behavior is present on both. I should add, I am using a PC power supply, with the jumper set to PS2 on the g3 motherboard. The machine is working fine with other cards, presently an acard 6260m and ati 9250 graphics. Its running a Rev. B ROM. Ive got an intel 40gb ssd with sata/pata adapter running the OS, which is 9.2.2, which boots off the Acard. The drive was cloned over from my beastmode MDD.
The cards *do* appear in system profiler under PCI cards, but there's no USB or Firewire bus shown, and plugging in devices has no effect. Ive plugged in flash drives, keyboards, mice, wifi adapters and none of them seem to get any power, even though the cards ive tried (adaptec 3020 and a siig combo) are both connected to power via molex. the system extensions for usb and firewire are present and enabled according to extensions manager. ive tried both cards in my MDD and my Gigabit G4 and they work fine in those systems. board and pram resets have no effect.

kind of running into a brick wall here repeatedly now for a couple weeks trying to figure out what's wrong here. does anyone have any suggestions? could the fact im using a PC power supply be causing it? unfortunately I dont have the original PSU anymore, at least, I dont think I do. But if the system is working fine otherwise what difference should it make? Should I just look at replacing the logic board?

Thanks for any tips or suggestions anyone might have.

[devils_advisor]

You need the very last driver version. There is a pack over at macintosh garden. I had the same problem.

[IIO]

i believe any 9.x should support usb and fw via PCI as is, the geneerci deriver was only needed forOS  8.5

but i had trouble with my cards, too, some day.

[refinery]

You need the very last driver version. There is a pack over at macintosh garden. I had the same problem.

well, this half worked. I used the collection of files from "usb card support 1.4.6" and now my USB is working!! hooray! 
its also now shown in system profiler with several USB busses present.

but, with firewire 2.3.3, 2.4, and 2.5, still no change. perhaps I need to have a firewire device connected in order for it to become active?
but I would think it would just show up in system profiler with no devices connected...
im trying to find the firewire adapter for the drive i have....

[refinery]

so this is still vexing me... i have now tried 5 different firewire and combo firewire/usb cards...
always the same thing. card shows present in a PCI slot, but no firewire bus actually shown, and nothing recognized.
system profiler shows the two extensions are present and loaded, currently 2.8.7. (i dont have authoring support enabled)
are there perhaps other extensions necessary?

I also found a post on here where someone was talking about a 5V fuse or other circuit being blown, which was why his USB wasnt providing power to the attached devices.
i would think if that were the case, neither USB or firewire would work, but could that be a possible culprit?

[GaryN]

There are TWO FW extensions needed for non-Apple FW PCI cards

"Firewire Enabler" 2.8.7
and
"Firewire Support" 2.8.7  (I'm guessing THIS is what you're missing)

"Authoring Support" is only needed for FW CD or CDRW drives

[refinery]

i will double-check tonight but i'm pretty sure they are both there.
i recall seeing three FW-related items in extensions manager and the authoring support was disabled but the other two were enabled.

[GaryN]

I'm reading and re-reading all you've written and I'm not sure exactly what you mean re: FW devices.
I get it you tried all kinds of USB stuff but have you actually tried any FW devices with the FW card?

[macStuff]

good luck hope u figure it out

[refinery]

I'm reading and re-reading all you've written and I'm not sure exactly what you mean re: FW devices.
I get it you tried all kinds of USB stuff but have you actually tried any FW devices with the FW card?

yes, no firewire devices are seen, no drives are mounted, nothing is seen in system profiler. its as if there is nothing there.

in my other OS9 machine, a dual 500mhz G4, when these exact same cards are inserted, in system profiler they show both a firewire/usb card under the PCI slot, and, they show both a firewire and a usb bus in the device tree.

on my beige G3, the card shows up as a firewire/usb card in the PCI slot, but only a USB bus is shown in the device tree.


and i did check, I have both extensions as required in the extensions folder and system profiler shows they are loaded.

[FdB]

Seems that USB on a Beige G3 is a bit easier to achieve… FireWire on the other hand,
perhaps a bit more problematic. See: http://www.atpm.com/7.12/segments.shtml

Now, suppose that we might need to know which “combo” card you actually have…
and whether or not you’d consider using FWB’s Hard Disk Toolkit?

There’s my two cents. Hope it helps.

[macStuff]

how many notches are in the firewire/usb cards?
if it has 2 notches the reason it might not be working is because its not compatible with 3.3v rated pci cards and requires a 1 notch 5v pci card

[refinery]

im willing to try FWB toolkit, i think i may have a copy of it somewhere actually.

cards i have tested:
sonnet tango - had this forever
siig combo card - https://www.amazon.com/SIIG-Firewire-437554-001-437554-002-Combo/dp/B0045JSNLK
adaptec AHA-3020 (not the 3020a)
some junk no-name card ive had forever
Syba SD-FWB-32B

the siig and syba are FW800 cards, i know i would not get FW800 out of them but i would think they would still work as FW400 cards (like they do in the G4)

[refinery]

how many notches are in the firewire/usb cards?
if it has 2 notches the reason it might not be working is because its not compatible with 3.3v rated pci cards and requires a 1 notch 5v pci card

this could be the answer. all the cards I have are two-notch.

[FdB]

Well... if one of them is showing up in the Profiler and it's not getting the necessary voltage...
maybe try giving it its' own voltage from the power puck that comes with many FW drives?

Okay, two more cents there.

[GaryN]

the siig and syba are FW800 cards, i know i would not get FW800 out of them but i would think they would still work as FW400 cards (like they do in the G4)

See? That's what you get for thinking. There's no really good reason to assume that because something works that way in a computer with a native FW bus, the same thing will happen in your setup.

What I find most puzzling is:  The Sonnet tempo should work, absolutely work with no issues.

[IIO]

there we go. it is firewire 800 and it is probably also usb 2.

[refinery]

only two of the cards i tried were FW800. the others were all FW400.
Again, these cards work FINE in a G4 gigabit running OS9, including the FW800 cards, at FW400 speed.
the drive in the beige is actually a clone of the gigabit G4's drive, so the extensions are identical.
they are all USB2 however, and USB has worked fine on all of them.

i went ahead and ordered a $10, 5V combo card off ebay. We'll see if that works when it arrives.

[refinery]

What I find most puzzling is:  The Sonnet tempo should work, absolutely work with no issues.

the USB on the sonnet works fine.


if the 5V card doesnt work, im going to investigate replacing the motherboard.

[macStuff]

how many notches are in the firewire/usb cards?
if it has 2 notches the reason it might not be working is because its not compatible with 3.3v rated pci cards and requires a 1 notch 5v pci card

this could be the answer. all the cards I have are two-notch.

yes its the pci spec of the older g3 - it requires a 5v one notch card.
it cant provide the card with the right voltage it requires because the 3.3v pci spec wasnt released yet when that g3 was made... so it doesnt even see the card because it literally is not functioning properly

out of all the cards that you have is any one of them a 1 notch 5v card?

the beige g3 is from 1997 but was sold until sometime in 1998
pci spec 2.2 came out at the end of 1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

so thats your problem.
the motherboard is likely fine