Firewire failure on my emac

I have had a Firewire port failure on my emac. Have tried unplugging overnight - no joy. Have tried the advice on http://homepage.mac.com/psexton/Resume5.html about resetting nvram. No help. No other faults with emac noted and everything else working fine.
Any thoughts?

Keith,
After following macjack's tip, try using a different Firewire cable, preferrablly a known-good one borrowed from another computer, or a new high-quality (read: expensive) one. I've had strange Firewire port loss on more than one computer that eventually turned out to be the cables originally supplied with some peripherals. If a thin cable developes kinks or frays slightly internally (especially where the cable is attached to the connector), you can get intermittent shorts from the cable and than cn knock out the Firewire ports.
One way to check: after unplugging everything and waiting 30 minutes, re-attach only the power cord (and keybord and mouse, of course) and resatrt. Immediately check Apple System Profiler and see if the Firewire ports are recognized at all. If it is, then reconnect one Firewire device; if the ports disappear from ASP, either the device or the cable is suspect.

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