FireWire 'Issues'

Jonathan Rentzsch has posted a link to a very interesting white paper by James Wiebe of WiebeTech regarding FireWire meltdowns.

James Wiebe of WiebeTech has written an excellent, if somewhat academic, description of FireWire port destruction and its root causes.

About five months ago I privately implored James to publicly document the over-voltage protection they had quietly rolled into their Super Drive Dock, a feature which soon spread through their product line ...

I'm one of those unfortunate souls who has killed off a FireWire port and it was darned inconvenient.

After researching the problem a bit, I learned that WiebeTech had added power switches to their enclosures. I took advantage of buying a switched enclosure (a MicroGB+) about a month ago while purchasing a new FireWire PCI card for the G4 with the now dead port. It's unfortunate that this has become such a problem, but WiebeTech is doing a good job at delivering a functional workaround.

Posted by Dave at April 17, 2003 08:22 PM