I have a G5 dual 2.3 that's sometimes experienced similar problems with USB. Mine were intermittent, and usually a Safe Boot reboot to clear the boot caches would clear the problem up. In my case, there were three USB ports available, one on the front, and two on the back. I noticed that usually only one port would have problems, like it was dead or something. I also noticed in System Profiler that the ports would often describe differently, sometimes identifying themselves as USB 1.1 ports (OHCI) and sometimes identifying themselves at USB 2.0 ports (EHCI) "High Speed".
The keyboard & mouse I was using were both USB 2.0 compatible, and the keyboard had a "USB Hub" built-in, so I thought it was strange that the port would sometimes identify not as "High Speed" but rather as the older USB 1.1. I never was able to sort out what the cause was. I did most of the same things you did, reset the PMU, PRAM, NVRAM, and I even looked at which USB extensions were loading. You can download developer versions of Apple USB extensions that create detailed logs of USB functionality. There are separate versions of these extensions for each OS version, so you'd need to get the ones for 10.5.8 specifically. In my experience with unsupported OS X using xPostFacto I know that alternate versions of USB extensions (usually from earlier OS releases) often solve specific USB problems, but with a supported G5 using a supported OS version you'd think this generally would not be a good idea, other than perhaps using the developer version for 10.5.8 which I never did. My only advise is try a Safe Boot from the external HD, and if the keyboard & mouse aren't recognized, try each of the three ports. You might also want to try a verbose boot using Cmd-v at startup to see if there are any USB error messages during the boot process? -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "G-Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to g3-5-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
