Installing RAM causing Firewire problem?

I have a 1.25 GHz iMac G4 that I inherited from my father-in-law. Has been feeling rather sluggish. Recognized yesterday that the problem might be insufficient RAM (only had the factory installed 256). So I purchased a 512 RAM extension and inserted in the user-accessible slot yesterday. Seems to be working fine. Only problem is that the firewire (400) ports no longer seem to work (at first, thought it was an external hard drive problem, but the iBook recognizes the external drive when plugged into the iBook). Anyone have any ideas? I ran disk utility repair permissions, which repaired some permissions, but made no difference....

Tried that. Still not working. Also tried the instructions often on a number of websites that recommend disconnecting all wires, disconnecting from AC, and then reconnecting.
As an additional detail, all that shows up in System Profiler under FireWire is "FireWire Bus:"
Another possible symptom: in the first shut down after installing the new RAM, shut down failed to shut down.
I may bring the machine to the folks that sold me the RAM.... (Unless people think that there's no possible way it could be the RAM..... I suppose I could always remove it and see if the FireWire ports come back....)

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