Damage to mobo from misconnected 1394 leader?

[jlambvo]

Over the last couple of days, I've had these unusual system lockups. Everything is frozen, no error message or BSOD, I just have to do a hard reboot.

Thing that makes me leary is that it seems to correlate to the use of USB devices. I was just plugging in and unplugging a Morantz solid-state recorder via USB, and it did it once when I connected it, and once when I think it died. The other two times this occured were during internet activity, which I'm connected to via 802.11.

My reason for concern is that when reassembling my computer recently, I hastily put an IEEE1394 leader from my case (going to a front port) onto a USB header, which the manual says can cause damage. I probably boot up my system once like this and shut it down immediately...

I've been unable to find details on why and how this can cause damage. Is this a likely to be the case, or is something else more suspect?

Appreciated...
Jonathan

 

[wpshooter]

I know I have read that this is a definate, NO NO.

 

[jlambvo]

But if nothing were hooked up to the IEEE1394 port at the time, would damage still occur? Would simply connecting the case's internal firewire cable to a USB header on the motherboard cause damage?

I can't find any information on how this causes damage, much less how test for it