I broke a firewire port on my G4

[oliveloafe]

like a dumbass i tripped over my MOTU 896 chord and it bent the crap out of one of my firewire ports on my 450 dual G4. needless to say its not working. anyone know how i can get this fixed or how much it will cost??? thanks josh

[offramp]

I recently replaced a FW port on a Sony VX1000 miniDV cam, and it was no fun at all. Your port, however, is one of the larger ones, so handling it won't be quite so bad. If you're up to the task with a soldering iron, try ordering your port from Mouser Electronics; it'll either be part number 538-53460-0611 (thru-hole)$2.93 or 538-53462-0611 (surface mount)$2.75. Make sure you're grounded, and have a good, clean fine-point tip on your iron. Otherwise, order the part from Mouser and get a friend to tackle it.

[deanmass]

Buy a PCI FireWire card and put it on one of your other slots...

[offramp]

True, but then that wastes a PCI slot when the port can be replaced without a horrible amount of trouble...especially at the hourly rates that some places charge.

[oliveloafe]

thanks for the replies, i d rather not waste a pci slot if i dont have to. how much do you figure a shop job would cost? josh

[where02190]

If you got the apple protection plan and registered as a business, jsut call apple, tell then you got a FW port that isn't working, and they'll send an apple tech to you to fix it for free. Hope this is helpful.

[offramp]

Well, if you buy the part yourself, you can save the 100+ percent markup that a shop would charge (with something that small, it might even be 200 or 300%); as for hourly rates, those vary from shop to shop, there's no really defined standard. It shouldn't take more than an hour, I'll tell you that. Macs are pretty modular, and go back together pretty easily. The ports are right on the edge of the board, too, so it's not like they're deep in the middle of a bunch of circuitry. I really encourage you to try it yourself, if not only to save the money, then for the learning experience as well. Disassembling a G4 is not rocket science; eventually, you end up removing three or four screws that hold the motherboard in place...this is where the ports reside. As long as you don't hold the soldering iron on the solder joints for too long, you should be okay. And make sure you ground yourself before you touch any part of the motherboard.