Hey all, I think I've isolated a serious problem on my s900. I just bought a new laptop size USB 2.0 Firewire drive enclosure. They are designed to be able to run directly off the bus power. I also just bought a new USB 2.0 PCI card a few weeks ago . Well, when I tried the new mini enclosure on my s900, it wouldn't even light up the drive when hooked firewire. When I hooked usb, it was able to copy a small file but when I tried a larger one, it just pooped out and stalled the machine forcing a restart. So today in order to verify the enclosure was working fine, I tested both busses on a friends G4 AGP and EMAC. It works like a champ and copied 4 gigs in just 10 minutes using ONLY the bus power.
So it would seem that I am having some form of power supply problem. I don't know if this lack of power output has anything to do with my other problems but I guess it's possible. Maybe my video card isn't getting enough juice? Ever since I had fried my cpu a year ago from a drive molex plug coming loose and arcing, I have never been able to properly power a small firewire laptop enclosure without an external power adapter. Eventually my other enclosure wouldn't even work even with a power adapter. Normally these should work bus powered anyhow. So since I just bought a brand new usb 2.1 card 2 weeks ago, I doubt the card is the culprit. And of course firewire doesn't work at all to bus power the little guy but that card could have damage. To the knowledgeable on the list, does this sound like a power supply loosing its oomph? I really don't have all that much running in the machine so I doubt it's being overtaxed. Since I get absolutely no bus power to my firewire no matter which plug I use, my guess is my firewire card is damaged too from that past zap, but it does at least send a data signal to other firewire units that have their own power supply. Can somebody tell me how I would test that my power supply is providing adequate power for my pci cards? I guess I need to rule out that its not mobo related too. Finally, whether this power output problem could be the culprit in those other weird problems I'm having. Of course one of the best things to do might be just to buy a new power supply which can be gotten pretty cheap and see how things work. I just remembered, I'm using a second s900 case I bought so that would mean that that power supply is also failing. I do have a beige G3 here I could throw everything into but I wouldn't be able to use my G4 Sonnet card or my XLR8 carrier with G3. Unfortunately the Beige only has a 266 cpu in it so right now so that may not be a viable alternative. So I guess I need to make the s900 well again. Thanks Dave -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
