I have been havng trouble with a 3rd party audio interface and my powerbook. I have talked to applecare for more than 2 hours twice. Eventually the 5th or 6th person i talked to said he was going to contact the engineers and call me back. Eventually he called me back and said they have no clue. He told me it must be a problem with my 3rd party device. This is impossible. THe device works on 3 other macs in my house. I think they just have no clue what my problem is.
Does anyone know who I can talk to at apple, that would care that the applecare people are not helping me? Does anyone know if the applecare agreement requires them to fix my problem or to simply try and fail?
1.67 G4 Powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Is this third party audio interface connected via USB, or the audio out port of the machine?

If it is via USB, if you can reproduce other USB issues with the machine, that might be a case for AppleCare to look at. Secondly many third party USB devices are very flaky when it comes to Energy Saver. If the issue seems to happen after you close the lid of the machine, or put it to sleep, this may be one of those instances. Sometimes one USB port has more power than the others, so it might be worth testing the device in another USB port. The beauty of the Powerbook, is you don't need to use Energy Saver to save the screen. Just using the brightness keys to dim all the way will on a Powerbook dim it to pitch black, and you can disable Energy Saver at least while the lid is open through Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Energy Saver on the display.

AppleCare does have a separate office called Customer Relations which you can ask for by name when you call them. If you find multiple devices in the port seem to fail which you are having trouble with, then I would consider it a case for them to handle.

Another thing about audio trouble with any Mac. Sometimes it is a case that the clock battery or PRAM needs to be reset. Usually the clock battery issue doesn't appear until it is at least 3 years old, and more often than not after 5 years. To reset the PRAM, if you think the battery is young enough that it won't pose a problem when you do so, follow these instructions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

I would also run the hardware test that came with the machine with no peripherals attached following these directions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86287

If it detects an issue, that's more likely something AppleCare will be able to handle once they know it exists.

Mind you, your Powerbook may be under a battery exchange program. Electrical issues with the battery could affect other parts of the machine:

http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram/

Similarly, if your power cord for the machine is having trouble, that may impact other parts of the machine:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302461

iMac G5-1.8 (1st Gen)/PB G4 17" 3rd Gen 1.5 Ghz/iMac G4 OS 9/RCN Mac OS X (10.4.7) EyeTV 200, Olympus C-700, Epson P-R220, iSight, Airport Extreme, 5th Gen iPod

First of all the device is a 6 pin firewire 400.

All the power saving features are off, when I was on the phone with apple we tried the clock battery reset. As for the hardware test, my powerbook came with the wrong discs. For some reason, which apple tells me is impossible, I have the 10.4 discs instead of 10.4.2.

Also the device is an output as well as input device. The output works for some files. The device will output wav, aiff, and mp3;s and whatever file formats are in my itunes including songs I got from the itunes store. However, when I try to play a video(that I downloaded from itunes) in itunes or quicktime there is no sound output.
Apple does not know this, because I am waiting for them to send me the discs to do the hardware test.

Thanks alot for your reply. You seem to know your stuff.

Thank for letting me know about the Customer Relations. I definatly need to speak with them.

1.67 G4 Powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.2)