The case of the iMac G3 and the missing Firewire

Well, a few months ago, I convinced my wife to get a Mac. For her, it was a space issue on her desk (she liked the iMac's all-in-one design); for me, I needed to get her over to the "dark side" for my own peace of mind (and less problems than her PC).

A local vendor (which had never sold Macs before) actually had some older iMac G3 CRTs in stock for around US$100. Couldn't beat that, so we took the plunge. It would be a nice addition to my awesome PowerBook G4 that (I dare say) I could not live without.

Thus begins this story.... Two days ago, I wanted to upgrade the hard drive in this iMac. So, I started trying to backup the current hard drive, only to find out that the Firewire ports were no longer working. After a few minutes on Google and Apple's support site, I found what I was looking for. Apparently, this can happen if the power goes out suddenly and knocks the iMac's PMU (Power Management Unit) for a loop. I thought to myself: the power had gone out several times a couple weeks ago. But, luckily, there was an easy fix:

• Restart the iMac, while holding down Option-Apple-O-F to enter Open Firmware.
• Release the keys when instructed to do so.
• At the prompt, type:
  
  reset-NVRAM [hit return key]
  
  set-defaults [hit return key]
  
  reset-all [hit return key]
  
  Note: these are all case-sensitive.
• This will restart the iMac, and you may have to reset your clock.
• If the above steps don't work, try shutting down the iMac and then pull the power plug for about 15 minutes. Plug it back in, and power the iMac up.
• Everything should be working now!
  

As an aside, this "Indigo" iMac is an amazingly-designed machine. The Harman/Kardon-designed sound system is designed to use the entire case to enhance the sound, and everything inside is placed perfectly (and easy to service). Another note: the iMac G3 has a video port on the back-bottom, under a perforated cover. Never knew that was there, but I'd assume you can do video mirroring (and possibly spanning) using this port. Nice to know it's there, in case the CRT fails at any point.

Learn something new everyday....