FW 800 stopped working on a Quad

Question

My external drives stopped working yesterday, all of them at once. The computer had just thrown a complete wobbler, nothing would close, not even with force quit, and the fans went mental and eventually I managed to shut it down by holding the power button.
Booted again, opened Logic, and the first thing I noticed was that the Open Recent list was cleared... The 2nd thing I noticed was that none of my external drives had mounted. So after some faffing about with cables, I connected the first one in the link with FW400 (the rest still by FW800) and now they mount.
Only trouble is, my 828 is usually connected by FW400, and I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't a good idea to run this and the drives off the same bus. True?
Is there a way I can check in the system profiler if the 800 bus is ok? Or maybe the AHT? I'll try that if I can find the disc.
Just looking for thoughts and ideas, it might have to go back to the shop I guess. I bought it online as a refurb so I'm not sure it has a whole year's warranty.
Ok, thanks for reading,
Irvin
G5 Quad 6.5Gb, 7.2.1   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   PB 1.25Ghz 1.5Gb Ram, Motu 828Mk2, Motu Ethno, GURU

Answer 1

hi, sorry to hear about this.
you should have your FW audio/midi on a separate bus from your FW HDD.
sound like you overloaded something.
first, humor me and shut down the mac and pull out the wall socket for a few minutes.
this could clear the FW driver.
if not, the circuit could be blown, and being situated on the mobo, is hard to repair.
i'd try the drives on your other mac. if they work there, you've eliminated one problem.
if not, and the mac want to format them or something like that, you have directory damage. files may be retrieved using certain software.
i use TechToolPro. Google for others.
if you cannot retrieve the data. the only thing left is to zero the drive/s and start over.
please back up data on a regular basis.