[defaultmike]

Fellow board members... after a bizarre incident with my Dual 2.0 G5 (which I will mention afterwards) my firewire no longer works. For reasons that I will also explain afterwards, the easiest option is to buy a firewire PCI card. I need to find the cheapest option available that works with a G5. I'm looking for a card with 1-2 ports. and theres no need for Firewire 800. All I care about is making my iPod work with my mac (please don't suggest getting a USB 2.0 cord as I actually would rather invest in a port that I might have some use other than my iPod, and my USB ports are already all taken (yes, all 7 of them) :P ).

As for the bizarre story...
I went to college in the US to study Graphic Design in Georgia, where in my Senior year I bought my G5 (at launch). It's a Dual 2.0GHz G5 with 2.5gigs of Ram, a Tv Tuner card, Radeon 9600, and bluetooth. Along with my G5, I bought the 17" monitor, and the Applecare for both. After I was done with college this july, I came back to Brazil, where I'm from.

The incident happened in late november. I took my computer (monitor, tower, etc) to my room. My dad's tv had broken, and I lent him mine, and since I wanted to see tv, I decided to put that Tv tuner card to good use. So I set everything up in my room and was happily watching TV.

All of a sudden, I remembered that my brother in law, who lives with me and is also an Art Director was using my G5 for some projects, so I decided to back all his work up so he could work on his PC. I have a firewire & USB2 external harddrive, so I decided to use that.

I plugged the hd to my firewire port, and plugged it into the Surge protector. Now the On/Off switch was in off, and I hadn't even plugged the whole plug into the surge protector, just the tip of it when all of a sudden.... my external hd literally (and God knows I mean literally) caught on fire. This was like the second it hit the plug! So I didn't even continue plugging it in, I disconnected it immediately. and disconnected the firewire cord from the front panel of my G5.

my computer continued to work perfectly, but I decided to turn it off just for precaution. I opened it up and everything looked fine. So I closed the case and hit the On button in the front... nothing, I hit it again... nothing. I opened the case and closed it tighter thinking that I had sorta left it open and tried again and nothing! So I panicked, then I decided to hit the on button in my 17" Apple Studio display, and bam, the G5 comes back to life! I was relieved!

The on light didn't light up in the front panel button, so I guessed I had messed that up. I tried out the USB port in the front with a mouse and it worked fine. Then I try the firewire port with my iPod and it would charge it, but not connect it. I got a little scared, but I figured the ones in the back had to work right? wrong! none of them.

but it was all ok, after all, I had my Applecare, which the Apple sales person in the US had told me was worldwide (reason why I bought it). so I take my computer to an apple certified place here in Brazil and they tell me that they're gonna need to replace the front panel and the logic board. the open it up and with a flashlight show me that I burned up both. In the logic board, there was a little spot where the transistor (or whatever) had totally burned up.

He then told me that the Applecare only worked in the country where it was purchased. I freaked out and told him I had been told in the US that it was worldwide, and he showed me in the Terms of Agreement where it said that only laptops were covered worldwide...
man, I almost cried.

Sadly, I know that it costs more to pay for it to get fixed here than to take a trip to the US and get it fixed there in the Applestore. but the much cheaper option is just getting a firewire PCI card and using the screen to turn it on and put to sleep, which isn't a big deal for me.

of course, one of my friends mentioned that using a computer with a fried part of the motherboard will end up messing it all up.... any thoughts on that?

So what Im looking for is a cheap PCI Firewire card that's compatible with a PCI-X G5 phew. thanks guys!

[Paul]

the G5 is more than a year old?

wow, I haven't been paying attention...

What store did you buy the applecare in states side? Maybe we can get someone to talk to them about your situation...

How long ago did you buy applecare?

[defaultmike]

hey Paul , yeah, unfortunately it's a bit over a year old. Sucks cuz the Apple repair center would have to accept Apple's One Year Warranty... I bought everything from the Apple Online store. I talked to some guy there about the warranty being worldwide (after I bought it) he assured me it was, and even asked his superior just to be sure.

I'm hoping the G5 won't just crash n burn on me randomly some time.

I'm also trying to get some "Applecare certificate thing" (which I was also told over the phone that I didn't need since we had resolved everything over the phone). But maybe if I can get that I can "trick" the Apple Authorized Service place here in Brazil into doing it...

[Paul]

you shouldn't need to trick anyone... to save yourself a longdistance phone call... i would suggest poking around here: http://www.apple.com/support/powermac/ and look for someone to complain to.
submitting something here: http://www.apple.com/support/feedback/ if you can't find anything... but re-reading your story again... it seems that this wouldn't be covered by warranty anyway... applecare doesn't cover "accidents" like dropping your computer or getting fried from a power surge...

you could try to contact the manufacturer of the HD and surge protector to see if they could possibly provide any leads...

some surge protectors also come with warranty protection if you get fried equipment while using them... but that is usually on the non-cheapo models...

[defaultmike]

The good news* is that the front panel is pretty cheap, and the Logic board only* costs US$1,000!!!

*this equals sarcasm :P

[Gargoyle]

Hmmm that's the second Dual G5 2Ghz that I know of that has blown its firewire chipset by using an external HD. Your story was much more dramatic, in the other story the HD didn't burst into flames, but the guy did admit that it was a cheapo make.

[usurp]

can you please tell us what brand was the external harddrive which fucking caught on fire so we all dont buy one just like it

[defaultmike]

A 60Gb Firewire/USB 2.0 AcomData........ yep, I guess that'll teach me to buy cheap computer parts! (The ironic part is that every single thing I ever bought besides for this is Premium/known brand stuff)

[Ryan]

I have one of those(it was a gift), but its 120GB. I haven't had any problems with it, but it is incredibly loud.