Why Firewire ports fail (and USB too)

Macintouch: FireWire Part 5

At some point during this past Minnesota winter I'd plug a USB cable into the front of my PC and the machine would reboot. Turned out it was a static charge effect (the machine seems ok, but it's incredible how much voltage was traveling into that machine). I started grounding myself on the metal case and the problem stopped. It sounds, though, as though I should have grounded the cable as well.

This is a significant problem for Firewire and USB port designers:

Michael Johas Teener

I read Ron Doerynck's experience (and numerous others over the years) about FireWire port reliability ... and I wish there was a simple answer, but it's actually quite complex:

1) The static discharge protection on most FireWire ports is actually quite good and meets all industry standards (basically, it meets the 'body model' ... the expected amount of energy delivered by a charged-up human body when it touches the computer). Indeed, the FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 sockets and plugs have special features to intercept the spark and send it to chassis ground rather than let it get into the FireWire silicon. Unfortunately, the 'body model' is a bit optimistic if you live in Alberta (or Montana, or Wyoming, or ... especially in the winter), so you can deliver some truly huge jolts.

2) The other big problem is that frequently it's the FireWire *cable* that builds up the big charge (just walk across the rug in an Alberta winter holding that cable) ... the cable is *NOT* body model ... it's a really big, long capacitor and can build up an even bigger charge ... and the spark can be delivered right to the FireWire interface when you plug it in. The protection against this is to touch *BOTH* the computer *AND* the plug with your finger, or to touch the plug to the chassis before plugging into the socket.

3) There have been some devices (computers/boards/peripherals) with 'suboptimal' FireWire protection circuits, particularly when the cable is a bit out of specification and fails to make a good solid ground connection. The systems that shipped in the last few years all have pretty robust interfaces (although I haven't looked at the Mac Mini, so I can't comment on it). The interfaces on the Xserve are particularly robust.

If you have a ground nearby, ground your USB or Firewire cable prior to plugging it in during high-static weather. This is harder for laptops, I wonder if that's the reason laptops seem most vulnerable to port failure.

Configuring fans to cool a system

PC Cooling and Power

I've been adding fans to cool my tower system -- too many drivers. I think I've configured them incorrectly!

If my power supply is indeed exhausting air (I hope it is) I need one pusher fan up front and on the side, and set all the rear fans to exhaust. I'll try it ...

A quieter pc - some easy steps

Easy Steps for a Quiet PC

Yes, WD drives sure are noisy ...

Hard Drives

Hard drives are constantly rotating at extremely high RPMs....

If you care about noise, then that 10K or 15K RPM screamer is just out. Instead, you'll want to look at a quiet 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM hard drive with some kind of acoustic management and fluid drive bearings. The reference quiet hard drives are the older Seagate Barracuda IV and V models. I've seen comments that the newer 7200.7 models aren't as quiet, but I don't know if that means "these are loud" or if it just means "they're not perfect". The current king of high-capacity drives with good, quiet performance are the newer Samsung SpinPoints. I have a mix of Samsungs and Barracudas and I'm happy with both of them. I also have a newer Maxtor model with fluid drive bearings, and while not silent, it's definitely better than the older Maxtor I used to have. The only manufacturer I adamantly refuse to use is Western Digital -- their drives are just painfully noisy.

iMac G5 and the new MacTel machines: it's about heat

The sad story of the iMac G5 is one of the best illustrations of how badly IBM's chip design has gone (I'm still planning to buy one....).

Macintouch iMac G5 (Part 10)

Rob Porter

Is there a specific number of imac G5 users that have had these various problems mentioned on this site? I browse through this and many other sites that touch on the problems of the imac G5 but, I have failed to see a number that shows the comparison of imac G5s sold to the imac G5s returned for problems. I am an IT person at a large company (100 machines) and all but 14 of our machines are imac G5s and G4s, the rest are powermacs and 4 wintel machines. As of yet we have had no problems nor symptoms. Is there a specific run of machines that were affected?

[We have] 28 total imac G5s in a fairly cool large building but only 2 are used for graphics or photo editing and they are on automatic setting for the processor. All the machines stay on all the time and the only thing I have seen is were the sleep light stays constant instead of pulsing and only pulse when put to sleep by the power button.

[Ric Ford, MacInTouch]

The problem appears to cross a wide range of iMac G5's, occasionally affecting even the second revision now shipping, although some components have been changed. Previous statistics from repair depots and multiple-unit purchasers were not encouraging - well into the double digit percentages.

I'm fairly sure that it's a heat-related issue, which in turn relates directly to processor loads and modes. If you run your systems in a cool environment at low processor loads, I think it's less likely you'll see failures. I'm currently running my own very-early 20' model at 'Reduced' processor speed to try and keep it healthy, since I don't have any hours to waste on repair hassles. This makes it slower than a cheap eMac, but it's also quieter, and I seldom need high performance, plus I've still got the beautiful big screen.

Gordon's Tech: Why the name change

Very few people read this blog -- it's where I keep notes for myself on tech issues. The design is for desperate searchers, not readers. Still, here's why the name has changed:

Gordon's Notes: Why the name change?

OSX86: some reassuring news from users of the new development platform

Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page - 6/8/05

A developer provides some details on the development version of OSX86: (MacTel)

First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really.

All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come with the OS are already universal binaries....

They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports 64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.

It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900 doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia. The Apple engineers says they dev kit will work with regular PC graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So, when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the compatibility lab several times.

It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.

The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS...

They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so you can download drivers and run XP on the box.

Rosetta is amazing.... The tests I've run, both app tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.

... Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.

The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike [jf: I think Quart Extreme is enabled on this machine, it's disabled on OS X Tiger!])

I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K to PPC.

Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/x86 to Mac/x86 as much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support PPC.

I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well as the x86 versions.

This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch in 2 years.

Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.

They tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates very poor performance with existing software. Having developers rewrite for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for Intel. And that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL cases, not rewrite it.

iPhoto add-ons: printing

There are so many of these iPhoto Add-ons. The trick is how well they really integrate. Via Macintouch.

Photoprinto 1.2 is a utility for creating and printing photo albums and single sheets. It can import photos from iPhoto or from folders, create albums or single pages with customizable templates, add frames and captions, crop, apply effects, and more. This release adds compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, export to HTML and web pages, additional Core Image filters (Tiger only), Spotlight search support (Tiger only), and other changes. Photoprinto is $29.95 for Mac OS X 10.2.5 and up.

PhotoBooth 1.5 enables printing full size or cropped pictures directly from an iPhoto library or folder. When set to a standard or custom size (and when cropped), pictures are automatically resized to fit the selected format. This release adds compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and iPhoto 5, the ability to print multiple photos at once (including multiple photos on a single page), an improved interface for selecting images to print, and support for metric units. PhotoBooth is $29.95 for Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4.