Need help with USB problem on a G3 Mac.

[Alex_Clarke]

Hello.

I'm hoping someone here could give me some advice about a problem I am having with my USB external HD and USB printer.

I have a G3 Power Macintosh All-In-One, Model 510 (Beige), 233Mhz, 4GB HD. It has the 9.2.1 OS.

About three weeks ago, I was surfing on the internet and had JavaScript error and my computer froze. So I restarted, but I noticed that my external HD icon did not reload. And I also noticed that my Printer is no longer recognized.

The external HD is an 40GB LaCie USB. And the printer is a HP PSC 750 Printer/Scanner.

I had the drive and printer hooked up on older Power Mac and it worked fine, but I have since sold it.

Before the computer crashed, the printer and external HD were both recognized, and both worked fine. But now I cannot get either one to be recognized.

I've checked the System Profiler, and it sees the USB card, but it does not see anything connected to it. The Mac USB drivers are in the Extentions Folder, and have tried unplugging and replugging the connections, (they are connected to the back the computer, and not to a hub) but no luck.

I've tried Disk First Aid, but it doesn’t see a problem. I tried refreshing the PRAM, that didn't work. Then I tried doing a fresh install of the system software, but that did not work either.

I was told by a friend I should buy and install Norton Utilities and see if it can fix it. But before I spend anymore money I wanted to come here and ask if anyone can give me any advice at all?

This problem is close to making me pull my hair out! Aggh!

If there is anything else I can try please let me know. Thank You for your time. :)

[dickbaker]

You mention that the Mac USB drivers are installed, but you don't make it clear if you've reinstalled the driver software for the drive and the printer. Have you already done that?

[Alex_Clarke]

Yes I've installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled the Printer drivers, but still have the same problem.

The External HD was running off the Apple USB driver that's already in OS 9.2

I've tried doing a fresh install of all the software, but still have the same problem The System Profiler still doesn't see anything connected to the USB card.

[ytswy]

I don't know if this will help, given that the devices were working previously, but we've had problems with USB on Beige G3s running 9.2.1, in these cases upgrading to 9.2.2 has fixed the problem.

The upgrade is a free download, so it might be worth trying.

[Macguru]

Are we talking about Arthemis [apple-history.com]? So your USB card is PCI add in?

>I've checked the System Profiler, and it sees the USB card, but it does not see anything connected to it.

A friend of mine once added a Sonet USB/Firewire card to his Gossamer tower G3. It made me pull my hair out too. The computer could see the card, but nothing worked from it either. Tech support told us to switch the card from PCI slot, zap the Pram and reboot. It didn't work. It turned out the card was defective, but the Mac could see it.

Hope we can find out...

[Alex_Clarke]

I wanted to thank everyone for the responses. :-)

Well...I tried moving the USB card to a new slot, I zapped the PRAM, changed the PRAM battery, but still nothing appears connected to the USB card.

The only conclusion I can come to is the USB card has somehow gone bad. I haven't the foggiest how that could have happened though. Has anyone ever heard of PCI cards going bad after a crash?

I'll buy a new card this weekend, put it in and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I'm all out of ideas.

[Macguru]

>>Has anyone ever heard of PCI cards going bad after a crash?

It is more likely that the sudden frying of some electronic component in the card caused the crash, IMHO.

Do you know someone with a PCI Mac to give the card a try before you replace it?

[Alex_Clarke]

Nah. Everyone I know has PC's. And even if one of them had a Mac, none of them would let me monkey around with their PCI slots. Haa-Ha. :D