Firewire 800 port no longer works

my time machine backup for years on my 2.8Ghz iMac Extreme has gone through the FW 800 port to the same WD drive. unfortunately i recently had backup failure issues, but did discover that it still worked through the FW 400 and USB ports (all of which are inputs on the back of the WD My Book). with no other FW 800 port in the house to test, i naturally assumed that the problem was in the notorious WD drive's port. and i wanted my faster backup speed back. so i actually got WD to swap out for a new external drive under warranty (it's 3 years old, i have no idea why they did it, but hey.....). however, on arrival today, the iMac's 800 port now appears to be the initial troublemaker since i still get no response from it, but everything works just dandy through the 400 and USB ports once again.
so now that i know the trouble is actually in my iMac, is there anything i can do except for applecare, which i have on this machne until november 2010? the nearest apple store is literally several hours away as we live in the boonies of upstate new york. so for me, applecare is always the last option. so far i blew compressed air at it just to clean it out, but that's it. if i take the back off, are there any odds that i may find a loose wire or something? i'm not sure if i've ever opened this particular iMac, so i can't remember what it looks like in there, and don't know if it's worth a disassembly.
any advice appreciated!!

It might be something you can address. Have you done either SMC or PRAM reset? At the very least I would do that.
If that doesn't take care of it you can run a Apple Hardware Test to see if there is a hardware problem.
After you have done these actions and it still doesn't work definitely call Apple, the US number is: 800-275-2273. When you call let them know what troubleshooting steps you have taken.
Regards,
Roger

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